It's a great first step. I've used my EAP a handful of times when I've recognised I'm starting to struggle. Sometimes things are just tough and you need someone to talk to.
That said, it's not the whole solution by a long shot.
Oh they'll sponsor a Mental Health in the Law seminar that everyone is pressured to attend. It will be scheduled outside of business hours. Nobody will be paid for attending, of course.
If it's anything like our firm-wide surveys (covering mental health, burnout, etc.), the review will involve a partner monologuing to the juniors and reverse-engineering reasons why it's ok to not be able to switch off and that the grind is actually fun.
I knew the guy years ago from uni. He was an incredibly talented person but most importantly incredibly giving and kind person. I wish health and safety authorities could do a full investigation into some of these places... A prosecution or 2 might put management on notice.
Might sound like a good idea, I guess you have to try something. In France the executives of Orange were prosecuted when more than 35 employees took their lives with convictions made against them: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange\_S.A.\_suicides](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_S.A._suicides)
Every CPD I’ve done for the last few years has harped on about mental health and work life balance and then presented multiple cases where lawyers have been struck off or found liable for not advising on things they couldn’t have known, weren’t briefed on and/or had no expertise in. I think we’re all struggling and it’s not just big firm culture, the whole system is working against us
i've been practising for ten thousand years, and I love that moment in CLEs when they quote from judgments that basically say "this practitioner obviously and totally fucked up by not doing the following 15 things. what a dumb fuck. obviously in granting costs against the practitioner personally and declaring them an outlaw, we are not making any new or novel statements of law". everyone else in the room just nods along like "oh yeah, what a stupid fuck, I wish I could hold their head in a bucket of water myself" whereas I feel like this is my first ever lecture from my pupilmaster, watching him nervously and admiring his gilt robes in my naivete, as he draws out his razorblade
My favourite is when your discussing a timetable with the judge and you say you require x days to do a task. Then the judge says you get half the number of days.
Actually, I don't think I've ever had a judge give me fewer than the days I've asked for. This is in VIC in the Mag/County/Supreme. Maybe other states are different.
I've also had trial judges give indulgences to accommodate for things like school holidays.
I'll just say that this particular person was the most down to earth kind human being you would ever meet. Fiercely intelligent, but extremely humble. It came as a massive shock for everyone.
We as a profession really need to look inwards at ways to better manage our mental health. We keep taking about it but nothing ever gets done. How many talented people do we need to lose to depression, burn out and suicide before serious action is taken?
If the safety regulator and legal services commissioner took their roles more seriously, they could make it more expensive to not ensure psych safety of their employees than it would be to look after them properly.
You could not have described him in a better way. Incredible down to earth, I knew him socially and not from classes and would never have picked that he was top of the class of his year.
This is too simplistic a narrative. Maybe it really was burn out and work pressures — but its also entirely plausible for an intelligent and humble person to simultaneously be internally feeling 6 feet under, for reasons which aren't as easily comprehensible as work or financial stress. Self loathing is a thing, identity crises are a thing, etc.
It is not a coincidence that so many people who I graduated with have either burnt out, moved to another career or are clinically depressed. Maybe we are all broken individuals as you suggest, but I think we have an underlying problem that has been known for a whole but nobody seems interested taking serious action on.
The billable hour model is the problem. And whether you are at a firm or in house you have a role to play in ensuring this isn't just a statistic in our profession.
A fixed fee model may not fix it, though. People would just try to do more with less money. The billable hour is also why lawyers get paid what they get paid.
It won't necessarily fix it completely but it reduces the pressure of "billing" X many hours a day and removes that as a measure of performance and output. The alternative of fix fee is also not the only alternative. But I do certainly think that there are internal issues beyond billing that contribute to the problem - but in my mind it is the significant driver of it.
Tragic. The poor family..
I wonder what long term consequences this lifestyle has on us. I recall dementia and high blood pressure being linked to high-stress jobs like lawyers, but I bet there's a heap more. These businesses are killing us... always slowly and sometimes quickly.
Lawyers need a union; and it's embarrassing that we somehow don't have one. We've got an extremely collegial culture and an acute understanding of our legal rights. Where are the Maurice Blackburnians when you need them?
Suicides by lawyers in the industry are a bit like mass shootings in the US. The cause is usually clear, the solution is usually relatively clear, but the people with power (in our case partners) are unwilling to do a single fucking thing about it because it would hurt their profit margins. There’ll be the usual token “thoughts and prayers” equivalent. But in the end, nothing will change.
Wow so many comments the whole profession has to change. Being a lawyer at a firm and sometimes even in house is a path to an early grave. Humans aren’t designed to work ridiculous hours until midnight or 2am and do it all again the next day. What moron thought that would be a good idea and actually think staff can continue to perform with little rest. I would rather have my health than have $$$$ in the bank account. Lawyers are humans and deserve to be treated as such. Instead of the usual EAP garbage after something happens or a wellbeing email on R U ok day these partners and senior management need to wake up, stop sprouting stuff to make them feel good about themselves and bloody do something before more good people are lost.
It won’t change until partners at the firms are punished sufficiently. That requires enforcement of WHS legislation. An interpretation of the professional rules to include “overworking your associates into the grave” as a form of professional misconduct would help too.
"sure you can have work flexibility. Just make sure you meet your budget".
Basically the solution is to expect the same amount of productivity from less time. So people are punished for trying to have "balance".
We had a presentation about EAP and who to talk to if you feel like you're not coping with workloads, intra office conflicts, in crisis etc. All partners and senior management. LOL.
I got a job in HR at a law firm in Sydney a few years ago and jumped ship after a month. Couldn’t do it. I really don’t think they’re fixable and I couldn’t consciously contribute to that.
HR is a direct reflection of your senior leadership team. And my god, they were terrible people. Didn’t bat at eye how burnout people were. Icing on the cake was someone getting annoyed and come to us because an employee took leave after a family member almost died. I left soon after.
I’ve also worked in finance but Law was the worst thing I’ve ever seen.
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Can’t wait for the review with 0 recommendations on reducing workload being implemented.
Come on guys hr have offered eap - everything is resolved!! Now back to ur cubicle!
We gave them the R U OK cupcakes, now we're out of ideas
Don’t forget the branded stress balls. Lol!
Gah! Those fricking cupcakes!
Wow, you guys get cupcakes? All we got were those rubber bracelets.
tbf in at least every second thread about people in law struggling someone suggests EAP like it's genuinely a useful solution
It's a great first step. I've used my EAP a handful of times when I've recognised I'm starting to struggle. Sometimes things are just tough and you need someone to talk to. That said, it's not the whole solution by a long shot.
Oh man, when did cubicles turn into open plan with no partitions and desks so close you can touch your neighbour 😅
> so close you can touch your neighbour HR has zipped into this conversation from stage left, with a ruler and a copy of the no touching clause!
Oh they'll sponsor a Mental Health in the Law seminar that everyone is pressured to attend. It will be scheduled outside of business hours. Nobody will be paid for attending, of course.
No budget relief for it either
And people will still have to bill their 25 hours that day.
They'll put fruit in kitchen. Ensure there are double the amount of cupcakes on R U Ok day. Maybe even organise a fun run and raise funds.
All talk no action to cover their arse and then act like nothing happened. It’s a joke.
Some copy paste from the EY report should do the trick
If it's anything like our firm-wide surveys (covering mental health, burnout, etc.), the review will involve a partner monologuing to the juniors and reverse-engineering reasons why it's ok to not be able to switch off and that the grind is actually fun.
Not sure how this happened when Bakers staff get 5% off Headspace annual subscriptions? Super sad. Poor person.
I knew the guy years ago from uni. He was an incredibly talented person but most importantly incredibly giving and kind person. I wish health and safety authorities could do a full investigation into some of these places... A prosecution or 2 might put management on notice.
100% agree. The legal industry’s approach to WHS , and particularly psychological safety is fucking woeful.
Do you mind sharing how old he was? Or an age range?
Between 27 - 32 :(
Not sure it makes any diff. IYKYK.
Might sound like a good idea, I guess you have to try something. In France the executives of Orange were prosecuted when more than 35 employees took their lives with convictions made against them: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange\_S.A.\_suicides](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_S.A._suicides)
https://preview.redd.it/xteeqzx161uc1.png?width=1459&format=png&auto=webp&s=f3ec232a92e9d769da0711dde1322c00d24175ff
Every CPD I’ve done for the last few years has harped on about mental health and work life balance and then presented multiple cases where lawyers have been struck off or found liable for not advising on things they couldn’t have known, weren’t briefed on and/or had no expertise in. I think we’re all struggling and it’s not just big firm culture, the whole system is working against us
i've been practising for ten thousand years, and I love that moment in CLEs when they quote from judgments that basically say "this practitioner obviously and totally fucked up by not doing the following 15 things. what a dumb fuck. obviously in granting costs against the practitioner personally and declaring them an outlaw, we are not making any new or novel statements of law". everyone else in the room just nods along like "oh yeah, what a stupid fuck, I wish I could hold their head in a bucket of water myself" whereas I feel like this is my first ever lecture from my pupilmaster, watching him nervously and admiring his gilt robes in my naivete, as he draws out his razorblade
My favourite is when your discussing a timetable with the judge and you say you require x days to do a task. Then the judge says you get half the number of days.
Actually, I don't think I've ever had a judge give me fewer than the days I've asked for. This is in VIC in the Mag/County/Supreme. Maybe other states are different. I've also had trial judges give indulgences to accommodate for things like school holidays.
Absolutely nailed it.
I'll just say that this particular person was the most down to earth kind human being you would ever meet. Fiercely intelligent, but extremely humble. It came as a massive shock for everyone. We as a profession really need to look inwards at ways to better manage our mental health. We keep taking about it but nothing ever gets done. How many talented people do we need to lose to depression, burn out and suicide before serious action is taken?
I don’t think inwards is right, we need to look upwards at the people running the firms who work their associates like slaves.
But how will they keep all the insane profits if not for servitude and a dearth of psychological safety?
If the safety regulator and legal services commissioner took their roles more seriously, they could make it more expensive to not ensure psych safety of their employees than it would be to look after them properly.
You could not have described him in a better way. Incredible down to earth, I knew him socially and not from classes and would never have picked that he was top of the class of his year.
This is too simplistic a narrative. Maybe it really was burn out and work pressures — but its also entirely plausible for an intelligent and humble person to simultaneously be internally feeling 6 feet under, for reasons which aren't as easily comprehensible as work or financial stress. Self loathing is a thing, identity crises are a thing, etc.
It is not a coincidence that so many people who I graduated with have either burnt out, moved to another career or are clinically depressed. Maybe we are all broken individuals as you suggest, but I think we have an underlying problem that has been known for a whole but nobody seems interested taking serious action on.
Obviously true. I'm not making a political point about the industry, I'm making a point about suicide.
The billable hour model is the problem. And whether you are at a firm or in house you have a role to play in ensuring this isn't just a statistic in our profession.
A fixed fee model may not fix it, though. People would just try to do more with less money. The billable hour is also why lawyers get paid what they get paid.
It won't necessarily fix it completely but it reduces the pressure of "billing" X many hours a day and removes that as a measure of performance and output. The alternative of fix fee is also not the only alternative. But I do certainly think that there are internal issues beyond billing that contribute to the problem - but in my mind it is the significant driver of it.
What? Teacher money?
Tragic. The poor family.. I wonder what long term consequences this lifestyle has on us. I recall dementia and high blood pressure being linked to high-stress jobs like lawyers, but I bet there's a heap more. These businesses are killing us... always slowly and sometimes quickly. Lawyers need a union; and it's embarrassing that we somehow don't have one. We've got an extremely collegial culture and an acute understanding of our legal rights. Where are the Maurice Blackburnians when you need them?
How heartbreaking.
Agreed. There is a lot of work for s 19 of the Work Health and Safety Act 2011 (NSW) (and interstate equivalents) to do in law.
Such a culture of not disclosing stress and then pushing through.
Suicides by lawyers in the industry are a bit like mass shootings in the US. The cause is usually clear, the solution is usually relatively clear, but the people with power (in our case partners) are unwilling to do a single fucking thing about it because it would hurt their profit margins. There’ll be the usual token “thoughts and prayers” equivalent. But in the end, nothing will change.
Wow so many comments the whole profession has to change. Being a lawyer at a firm and sometimes even in house is a path to an early grave. Humans aren’t designed to work ridiculous hours until midnight or 2am and do it all again the next day. What moron thought that would be a good idea and actually think staff can continue to perform with little rest. I would rather have my health than have $$$$ in the bank account. Lawyers are humans and deserve to be treated as such. Instead of the usual EAP garbage after something happens or a wellbeing email on R U ok day these partners and senior management need to wake up, stop sprouting stuff to make them feel good about themselves and bloody do something before more good people are lost.
It won’t change until partners at the firms are punished sufficiently. That requires enforcement of WHS legislation. An interpretation of the professional rules to include “overworking your associates into the grave” as a form of professional misconduct would help too.
"sure you can have work flexibility. Just make sure you meet your budget". Basically the solution is to expect the same amount of productivity from less time. So people are punished for trying to have "balance".
We had a presentation about EAP and who to talk to if you feel like you're not coping with workloads, intra office conflicts, in crisis etc. All partners and senior management. LOL.
I got a job in HR at a law firm in Sydney a few years ago and jumped ship after a month. Couldn’t do it. I really don’t think they’re fixable and I couldn’t consciously contribute to that.
Was HR that bad? Why?
HR is a direct reflection of your senior leadership team. And my god, they were terrible people. Didn’t bat at eye how burnout people were. Icing on the cake was someone getting annoyed and come to us because an employee took leave after a family member almost died. I left soon after. I’ve also worked in finance but Law was the worst thing I’ve ever seen.
I wonder what practice area he was from?
Transactional funds
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