Yoga and therapy fail to stop law firms’ burnout

Working culture is proving to be bad for business as well as mental health, find Adam Mawardi and Lucy Burton

‘People are locked into jobs they hate as their lifestyle requires a lot of money to fund’

‘It hasn’t affected our business decisions yet. But it probably will and it should’

When a law firm partner hit the ski slopes with a client last week, the topic of mental health could not be avoided. The legal sector’s toxic culture was all anyone was talking about, with a growing number of lawyers opening up about their struggles following the death of a senior partner in the City.

Some older workers are starting to question everything they’ve learnt after being told at the start of their careers to work Saturdays, put in long hours and sleep under their desks. Bringing toothbrushes into work is their norm. Most of these lawyers have got ahead as promised, but they’re starting to wonder at what cost? Some say their children don’t want to go near a career in law, having seen the amount of time their parents gave to their jobs.

It presents a potential recruitment crisis. Younger workers are rethinking their career choices after learning that back-to-back 20-hour days and crying in office lavatories are commonplace in the industry. One legal assistant says junior fee earners often have to deal with “law firm hazing” from senior staff, who speak to them rudely and expect them to “take it on the chin”.

“You get given unreasonable amounts of work to complete in a very short amount of time, and they don’t care what you have to do to get it done,” she adds. Elizabeth Rimmer, the chief executive of the mental health charity Lawcare, says everybody in the sector is scrambling to find a solution to the staffing crisis, but most don’t know where to start. “I think most law firm [bosses] are probably thinking: ‘We want to do something about this, but we’re just not quite sure what we need to do, or how to do it’,” she says.

“There’s lots of organisations and people out there selling solutions and sometimes people just think, ‘Well, we’ll just get that in and that means we’ve ticked that box.’ I haven’t seen any real evaluation of the measures that firms have put in place.”

Even clients are paying attention. Imran Bhatia, general counsel of Westmont Hospitality, one of the world’s largest franchisees of Hilton Hotels, said conversations with lawyers about how to work better together are “definitely happening”, although billing systems and tender processes have yet to change. “It’s something we’re definitely aware of,” he says. “It hasn’t affected our business decisions yet. But it probably will and it should.”

It would be unfair to accuse the sector of only just waking up to the issue. For years, big law firms have been rolling out mental health helplines, free on-site therapy and well-being perks such as free yoga and massages, cash allowances, concierge services and bring-your-dog-to-work days. But these can often seem like gimmicks to those affected. Most people in distress don’t pick up the phones, and those who have reached out for help say that their distress call hasn’t been taken seriously. Some argue that nothing will shift until there is a fundamental structural change, such as getting rid of chargeable hours. A mother of two toddlers flagged in a recent Reddit post how her male bosses had just told the firm’s lawyers during a “tone-deaf ” meeting that they must bill at least eight hours every day and “shouldn’t sign off until you’ve hit that number”.

She said that her bosses told her: “If you want to make partner, the first thing people will look at is whether you’ve hit your hours.”

She added: “You can never unplug completely, even on vacation. There’s no such thing as going off the grid.”

Amanda Rajkumar, former global head of human resources at Adidas, believes law firms wanting to tackle this issue must look at their structure. “No one will admit to coping issues [under the current system] as you will become ‘difficult’ to resource and eventually probably end up with a low performance rating,” she says.

Many staff feel trapped. Edward Stratford, co-founder of the legal recruitment agency Fort Stratford Partners, believes that in the same way professional football clubs help star athletes plan for life after the game, law firms should offer financial planning advice to junior lawyers to help them better manage their careers.

He often meets partners who are miserable in their jobs, but require half a million pounds to move as they have boarding school fees and ski holidays to pay for. “I’ve just seen it so many times when people have just been locked into jobs that they hate just because they have a lifestyle that requires a load of money to fund it,” he says.

The industry is divided on what the answer is. While some call for an end to the billable hour, others say measuring success by profits made per equity partner needs to be scrapped because it piles pressure on staff and makes everyone “feel like a spreadsheet”. One partner who leads a department at a City law firm argues that the real problem is not billable hours, but the always-on working culture prevalent in professional services. Lawyers are paid extraordinary sums to be at the beck and call of clients.

“There’s still plenty of associates who sign up to the big hours and want that lifestyle and are happy to do it,” he says. The partner argues that lawyers have always faced these pressures, but today’s health and wellbeing-obsessed generation are just more alive to personal sacrifices than their predecessors cared to be.

“In the past, people just went down to the bar, had a few drinks and tried to forget,” he says. Dominic Griffiths, head of Mayer Brown’s London office, who suffered in silence after battling a mental health crisis years ago, believes the single most important thing the industry can do is remove the stigma. “The only way you break that down is by getting more partners talking about their experiences, because many senior lawyers will have, to some extent, suffered with their mental health at some point in their career.”

But not everyone agrees that change is needed. While some are calling for a revolution in the legal sector, others are pushing back. There is a perception among some that those calling for flexible working and a better work-life balance are work-shy. Others argue it is often reasons outside of work that cause people to face a mental health crisis.

“I’ve had to deal with very stressful situations and depression. But I’ve never felt that work was the cause,” says one legal boss. “There have been situations [at work] which are hard to deal with, but never anything as significant as the challenges I’ve faced in my personal life.

“I don’t mean to be dismissive, but we’re in a hard profession.

“We’re paid a lot of money and clients demand a 24/7 service. If you charge £1,000 an hour, clients expect you to be there.”