Bench & Bar September/October 2025

that right around the time we master one password we’re being directed to come up with another one, even more nonsensically scrambled and twice as long. The counter productive endgame to such shenanigans is that contemporary passwords so far exceed the capacity for non-enhanced human memory that many of us resort to writing them down and squirreling them away somewhere in our physical workspaces. Other stand-alone words with considerable modern impact include safe words (another topic for another time, but really mentioned here only to bedevil my editors), cuss words (ditto), and—most recently debuted, and of exceptional relevance to mental health and wellness—starting words. These aren’t the stirring words that jump start our interminable briefs or our bedaz zling oral arguments. Rather, they’re the starting gun, the kickoff, the ante for online puzzles like “Wordle” that keep us sharp, enable friendly competition with similar inclined friends and colleagues, and give us something to do during opposing counsel’s bedazzling oral arguments. Wordle is brilliant in its simplicity. It gives players six chances to figure out a five-letter target word. First, you enter your starting word—an actual word, not just a jumble of letters. If by chance your starting word is that day’s target word, game over. If not, Wordle tells you which letters in your start ing word landed in the right place, which ones are present in the target word (but in different places), and which aren’t featured in the target word at all. This game is so much more fun than a dry recitation of the rules might suggest. Law yers tend to do well, and Wordle doesn’t spare the compliments once we hit pay dirt. There are no ads, and it’s possible to play for free (see instructions at https://tinyurl. com/cnet-wordle) with or without a New York Times subscription (I didn’t think I represented them, but I ran a conflict check just to make sure). Wordle wisely limits us to one word per day, so we can’t engage in bingeing and burn ourselves out. My starting word is “Salet” (a Renais sance-era helmet), thanks to the folks at

MIT, who developed an algorithm to give players a bit of an edge. As lawyers we discourage people from sharing personal data, but this isn’t like disclosing your Social Security number. A substantial proportion of the roughly 3 million Wordle-playing population use this starting word. According to neurologist Elana Clar, M.D. and a host of similar experts, Wordle is one a number of games that “can improve atten tion, verbal fluency, memory and processing speed—all skills that can decline with age” (https://tinyurl.com/clar-neuro). Concerted attempts to remain cogni tively agile handily reflect the guidance proffered by the “National Task Force on Lawyer Well-Being” (the “Task Force”), an

entity “conceptualized and initiated by the ABA Commission on Lawyer Assistance Programs (CoLAP), the National Orga nization of Bar Counsel (NOBC), and the Association of Professional Responsibility Lawyers (APRL)” and made up of several other “participating entities” from within and without the American Bar Association (https://tinyurl.com/ntflwb). The Task Force has identified six pillars or “dimensions” that combine to “make up full well-being for lawyers,” one of which is the “Intellectual” dimension that involves “engaging in continuous learning,” “the pursuit of creative or intellectually challenging activities that foster ongoing development,” and “monitoring cognitive wellness” (https://tinyurl.com/ ntflwb-report). Word.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR DR. ERIC Y. DROGIN is a Norton Healthcare Louisville Hos pitals Medical Staff member with clinical privileges in adult psychology. He teaches on the faculty of the Harvard Medical School, where he serves as the Affiliated Lead of Psycholegal Stud ies for the Psychiatry, Law, and Society Program at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and participates in the Program in Psychiatry and the Law at the Massachusetts Mental Health Center and the Forensic Psychiatry Service at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. Proud to be a Kentucky lawyer for the last 35 years, Dr. Drogin is a former chair of the ABA Science & Technology Law Section and a former president of the American Board of Forensic Psychology. Please contact him at eyd@drogin.net with your suggestions for lawyer mental health and wellness topics.

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