Just weeks before Stewart Dolin committed suicide in 2010, he told his therapist he still felt anxious about his position at Reed Smith, the global firm he had joined as a result of its 2007 merger with his former home, 140-lawyer Chicago firm Sachnoff & Weaver.

To the outside world, Dolin’s position may have seemed secure. A former management committee member at Sachnoff & Weaver, the 57-year-old had been chosen to lead Reed Smith’s corporate and securities practice. But his therapist testified this week in a Chicago trial over Dolin’s suicide that the 2007 merger left him for years racked with anxiety and self-doubt.