Buffalo News
Sunday Profile /Dan Lukasik
Attorney Aids Colleagues
By Louise Continelli NEWS STAFF REPORTER
Updated: 02/17/08 6:50 AM

Dan Lukasik of Lancaster was voted by his peers into a Who’s Who in Law. He also was selected as one of Upstate New York’s Super Lawyers. But this super lawyer is concerned about depressed lawyers, and he’s started a groundbreaking Web site for lawyers suffering from depression.

When feelings of hopelessness aren’t challenged, Lukasik says, it’s like living in “a house whose windows are never open. You’re walking around in the darkness.”

Despite his success, Lukasik has struggled with depression, like some 86,000 other attorneys across the state. According to one study, lawyers are almost four times more likely to develop depression than people in other professions.

Lukasik is now helping others who endure the same symptoms he had. Lukasik says he first went to his doctor with physical manifestations of his depression — chest pain, interrupted sleep, body aches and episodes of fatigue “that felt like cement running through my veins.”

His family physician pointed to an emotional cause and recommended that he get further help.

“I felt dread,” admits Lukasik, adding that he “was so battered by depression’s symptoms that I grudgingly went.”

Lukasik says he discovered that “depression was a complex disease and that how I felt wasn’t my fault.

“I was not thrilled with this news, but I was somehow hopeful. Relief would come in the form of medication, which soothed me when my mind and body could not do it alone.”

His Web site was created with Brandon Michals, owner of Infinext, a Web site design company in Amherst. Lukasik, who also organized a support group for attorneys, stresses that there are productive lawyers who carry the burden of depression.

“You don’t have to be falling apart,” he says.

Lukasik, who also helped create the pioneering Erie County Bar Association’s Committee to Assist Lawyers with Depression, accepted the State Bar Association award with Erie County Bar President Cheryl Smith Fisher.

“The awards ceremony was a very moving event to me,” he says upon his recent return from New York City. “When I began my work, I really didn’t know what was going to happen. The award came as a complete and pleasant surprise to me.”

He also will receive the Distinguished Alumni Award for Community Service from the University at Buffalo Law Alumni Association.

Fisher noted that Lukasik, a partner with Cantor Lukasik Dolce & Panepinto, has “struck a national chord,” with his attention to lawyers who can be left — after representing people in most difficult matters — “sleepless and sad and exhausted.”

Problems of attorney depression, anxiety and burnout will be examined April 11 at a daylong symposium that Lukasik is organizing at the Ramada Inn in Amherst.

Have an idea about a local person whose life would make a good profile or a neighborhood issue worth exploring? Write to: Louise Continelli, The Buffalo News, P.O. Box 100, Buffalo, NY 14240, or e-maillcontinelli@buffnews.com