Lawyers are more stressed than ever. However, HR professionals within law firms are stepping in to help. Kate Gibbs reports
As Australian law firms lose their lawyers at all levels to firms in London and Dubai, as well as to the in-house teams of their own clients, they have called in their HR teams to find out why they are leaving and do their best to stem attrition.
Alexis Navie, Corrs Chambers Westgarth national HR manager, asked which came first – was it the stressed out individual who decided to go into law, or the stressful job that imposed the same on those who worked in it? That, HR professionals in Australia’s law firms agree, is the question.
Lawyers are susceptible to stress because they are high achievers and perfectionists, but there is also something inherent in the job itself, said Marlene Murray, personal development (PD) director at Blake Dawson Waldron. When lawyers have been working long hours on a particular matter, this problem worsens and they will often face burnout and exhaustion.
Recent studies have shown that law is the most depressed profession. A JohnHopkinsUniversity survey found that while lawyers have now surpassed doctors as the highest-paid professionals in the United States, lawyers suffer from depression at a rate 3.6 times higher than employed persons generally.
At a recent lecture in Sydney, associate professor Dr Mamta Gautam, a leading Canadian psychiatrist who specialises in professional health and wellbeing said that lawyers rank as the most depressed out of 105 professions she surveyed.
“Twenty-five per cent of lawyers suffer from elevated feelings of psychological distress: inadequacy, anxiety, social isolation [and] depression,” Gautam said. A disproportionate number of lawyers commit suicide, with up to 11 per cent of lawyers contemplating suicide monthly, she added.
An explanation can be found in the fact that lawyers are very gifted people intellectually, according to Corrs Chambers Westgarth’s Navie. Part of the problem is in the “nature of the beasts themselves”, she said. “We are talking about the top percentage of the intellectual population.”
Jorja Hicks, HR adviser for Lander & Rogers Lawyers, agrees that “lawyers tend to be high achievers and demanding of themselves, which can create pressure in the workplace”.
Whichever came first, the lawyer or the work, law firms are now being forced to find ways to deal with the issue. The list of what can constitute stress is long, HR professionals agree. “You see a lack of engagement; too much time alone with your door shut; not talking to people and engaging and getting out there; [with] people who want to shut themselves away, you might be concerned that they were disengaged if it is different to the way they normally are,” said Blake Dawson Waldron’s Murray.
“It is a scary thing to know exactly what to do. Even in HR we are not equipped with the skills to address those issues. So often what happens is people have dressed it up as a performance problem. How could such a well performing person turn into someone with attitudinal problems?” asks Navie.
Lander & Rogers’ Hicks said the firm recognises that the profession of law can be stressful, “but we work hard to ensure those pressures are carefully managed”.
Blake Dawson Waldron’s Murray argued most firms feel that the culture is moving towards ensuring that their lawyers can maintain a sustainable career, and that they are not about to walk out the door and into the next overseas or in-house opportunity.