Courtney Wilson bravely recounts her personal struggles and warns disorders can masquerade as self-improvement
The legal profession is a high-pressure environment where long hours, tough competition, and perfectionism are the norm. While these demands can drive success, they also make lawyers vulnerable to mental health struggles, including eating disorders.
Courtney Wilson, an associate at Rachlin & Wolfson LLP, knows this firsthand. What started as a pursuit of success in law school spiralled into an eating disorder that took control of her life.
In her second year of law school, Wilson was excelling academically. But when in-firm interview invitations went out, she was shut out, while peers with fewer achievements secured multiple offers, she says.
“I saw on social media peers with objectively worse grades and fewer accomplishments getting multiple in-firm interviews, and they seemed to fit this conventional idea of what a young female lawyer should look like,” she says.
“And I also noticed that my male counterparts seemed to sidestep that scrutiny altogether.”
Believing appearance played a role in career advancement, she decided losing weight was the solution.
One of the dangers of eating disorders, Wilson says, is that they can masquerade as self-improvement.
“It started innocently as I was telling myself I’m doing this for my health, and weighing 270 pounds obviously means you’re not in the greatest shape,” she says.
But what began as a diet quickly became an obsession. She started tracking every calorie, skipping meals, and over-exercising.
“For every pound I lost, I felt like I was one step closer to being taken seriously. And then came the validation from peers, colleagues, and teachers,” she says.
Her body eventually fought back. Deprivation led to bingeing - uncontrolled, compulsive eating episodes that left her feeling ashamed.
“I think I ate probably almost everything in my house, and in an uncontrolled manner,” she says.
The sudden influx of calories triggered sweating, heart palpitations, and nausea. Overcome with guilt, she felt compelled to purge.
“I felt so guilty and so shamed at what I’d done that I felt the only way to undo the supposed damage was to purge by self-induced vomiting,” she says.
Wilson was diagnosed with anorexia restrictive subtype, which later evolved into anorexia binge-purge subtype.
Wilson says her daily life became dominated by strict food rules and isolation.
“I kept going into this destructive cycle of starving myself for days, then binging, then feeling a lot of shame,” she says.
She obsessively tracked her food intake, weighing even the smallest portions. Her body started breaking down - she was constantly fatigued, struggled to focus, and began losing her hair.
Her parents encouraged her to seek professional help, and she was referred to an intensive eating disorder clinic. But then the COVID-19 pandemic hit, shutting down in-person services.
“I thought I was being told, ‘you’re on your own again,’” she says.
Wilson says she then pushed through articling, hiding her struggles. But the turning point came during a trip to British Columbia when she saw the physical toll of her disorder.
“I went to get my hair highlighted, and just chunks and chunks of my hair came out in the foils. That was when I realized I couldn’t wait for public care anymore,” she says.
She turned to private care and started intensive therapy, seeing a dietitian and therapist twice a week, and later a psychiatrist.
“By the end of it, I weighed just above 130 pounds… and you could actually see my ribs. That’s how the recovery process began,” she says.
Wilson believes the legal profession’s demanding culture fosters eating disorders.
“Eating disorders thrive on control,” she says, adding that appearance also plays a role.
“There’s absolutely an unspoken value on appearance, and I think that people are striving to fit that appearance so that they will be successful, as I did,” she says.
The competitive nature of law school and firm hiring processes intensifies these pressures, she says.
Wilson says there is no universal recovery blueprint. However, she says the profession itself needs to do better in recognizing mental health struggles.
“The old guard was taught that you are not learning if you're not working 80 hours a week and if you're not pulling your hair out at a brief you're trying to finish... But that is a reflection of the old mentality,” she says.
What worked for her, she says, was being upfront about her mental health needs during job interviews.
“I was very open in the interview that I have mental health issues, that I see a psychiatrist, and that I won’t function in an environment where I’m being yelled at or overworked,” she says.
However, she acknowledges that many young lawyers fear disclosing mental health struggles during hiring.
“Lawyers have among the highest rates of mental health issues, and whether or not someone discloses it or not doesn't mean that they don't have something going on in the background,” she says.
While more and more firms offer mental health initiatives, Wilson says that they must be more than just PR statements.
“True mentorship isn’t about mimicking old patterns of abuse or neglect. It’s about cultivating the strength of the next generation and protecting their well-being,” she says.
