Cute Puppies Save Law Students. Yup, You Read That Right.

Law students are under a tremendous amount of stress as part of preparation for the work. However, for young people who are still learning how to deal with stress and insane competition, it's easy to get lost and forget that we need goodness and light in our lives.

Insert the best idea I've heard in a long time. Puppies were brought in to lighten up law students, some of which stayed at school to study over Thanksgiving break. It's a lesson in balance and a reminder that loving an animal is good for the soul.

“Especially this time of the year, law school seems to ruin your life,” said Allison Tisdale, 24, a third-year from Texas who didn’t go home for Thanksgiving because she had to study. Holding a squirming puppy, she said, “you get to be human again.”

After the Yale Law Library added a “therapy dog” named Monty to its collection in the spring, a number of other law schools have used the gentle yapping of puppies to break the stifling pressure that blankets their campuses. Thursday was the second time Mason’s law school, in Arlington County, partnered with a Chantilly-based rescue group for “Puppy Day.”

Studies have found that the legal profession has higher-than-average rates of depression and problems with substance abuse. Many law schools now teach students how to balance the stress of late-night legal research, tort outlines and case summaries with healthy habits: running marathons, volunteering or hanging out with a pet.

“If people don’t learn how to balance their lives in law school, and then, if they go to a big firm, chances are they won’t balance their lives there, either,” said James E. Leffler, executive director of Lawyers Helping Lawyers, a Virginia nonprofit organization that offers assistance with substance abuse and mental-health issues. “They need to learn to take care of themselves and to also look out for their colleagues.”

And maybe, when animal causes need their help, they will donate a little time to help animals in need. Puppy love is the best kind, after all.