Your wellbeing is not fixed. The extent to which you are thriving is something each of us has the ability to influence, which is why I’ve chosen to focus my career on enabling individuals and organisations to flourish. In my position as director of employee wellbeing, I am tasked with designing and implementing a custom wellbeing curriculum for everyone at Morgan Lewis. As part of that effort, I am in charge of a recently launched internal initiative we call ‘ML Well’.

We are striving to reinforce the intellectual, physical, emotional, and occupational health of everyone who works at our firm, with an underlying emphasis on engagement and community. Our programme will include regular educational programming focused on how to design lives of meaning and fulfilment, as well as how to confront challenges to wellbeing, such as substance misuse and mental illness.

All of this is a logical extension of some steps the firm has already taken to cultivate wellbeing, including becoming one of the first signatories to the American Bar Association’s (ABA) ‘Pledge on Lawyer Well-Being’. Additionally, we are collaborating with attorney mental health expert, Patrick Krill, to foster awareness and discussion around the disproportionate prevalence of substance misuse and mental health issues occurring in the profession.

Before joining Morgan Lewis, I studied Applied Positive Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, and I incorporated many of the field’s pioneering concepts in my career as a management consultant, specifically in the area of leadership and talent development. I now have the opportunity to put that background to work in this first-ever director of employee wellbeing position at Morgan Lewis.

While Big Law does not always have a reputation for fostering the idea of ‘flourishing’, fortunately the management of my firm has enthusiastically embraced these ideas. In designing our efforts, we recognise the tension between wellbeing and the inherently stressful aspects of the legal profession. Still, while we acknowledge this fact, the science tells us there are things we can do as individuals, teams, and as an organisation to enable each other to better thrive. At the end of the day, we expect this effort will not only benefit our employees but also enhance our ability to deliver exceptional client service.

At Morgan Lewis we take a multi-dimensional approach to conceptualising the factors that affect wellbeing. I find it helpful to think of wellbeing like the weather. When you talk about weather, you are talking about several different factors – temperature, precipitation, wind, and so on. It is the same with wellbeing. When we talk about wellbeing, we are talking about multiple different factors that, taken together, describe a person’s level of thriving.

It is important to note that ML Well serves both the legal and professional staff at Morgan Lewis. This was a deliberate decision, as we recognise the importance of taking an inclusive approach to our efforts. Many (if not most) of the stressors our lawyers face also affect our professional staff.

Morgan Lewis leveraged the ABA’s wellbeing framework, which is adapted from the World Health Organization’s model, to create a custom multi-dimensional approach to conceptualising wellbeing in a way we feel will be palatable to all our employees – attorneys and professional staff alike.

The ML Well portal, located on our intranet, is comprised of cutting-edge resources, tools, research and news, all of which we have organised by the different wellbeing dimensions. So, let’s say you are interested finding out more about how to bolster your intellectual wellbeing, you are able to search for tools, programming, and resources related to that particular dimension.

Further, the platform is able to recognise the office, practice group, and department of each user and customises the content on each person’s homepage to ensure relevancy. For example, we have an office that hosts a monthly book club, an event that helps promote intellectual wellbeing. Employees who sit in that office will see that event in their portal, since it is relevant to them.

When it comes to the content and resources we share, we also recognise that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to wellbeing. What we aim to do is provide a variety of tools that employees can try out and adopt based on what works best for them as unique individuals.

Our overall objective is to weave wellbeing into the fabric of our culture. In addition to building out new and innovative programming, we will be targeting existing avenues of employee contact. For instance, Morgan Lewis has a robust pro bono scheme. Each year we hold a firm wide community impact week, during which we give specific focus to philanthropy and the connection to community wellbeing. Other examples include physical wellbeing events in local offices (step challenges, yoga, etc.), mindfulness meditation offerings, gratitude exercises, emotional intelligence trainings, and the integration of wellbeing into our various professional development events.

For other firms or in-house legal departments considering incorporating wellbeing into their strategic priorities, I offer you a few pieces of advice: something is better than nothing. This tension of wellbeing and the inherent stresses of the legal profession can be an intimidating one to grapple with. On the flip side, there’s a lot of opportunity. Don’t be afraid to start small. Secure the buy-in of your leaders and other key stakeholders. Finally, be inclusive of all employee groups and their unique needs.

Copyright 2019. Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided as a general informational service and it should not be construed as imparting legal advice on any specific matter.

‘Ted’ was not old, maybe in his mid-60s. He was the managing partner of his mid-sized law firm in regional England. His colleagues told me that he seemed always bright and cheerful. Last month he committed suicide.

About one in three lawyers of all stripes ideate suicide once a year. Criminal lawyers and barristers come top, closely followed by solicitors in small firms or one-lawyer practices. Almost none of them confide in anyone – even their doctors – about how they feel.

Lawyers don’t succeed in committing suicide as often as doctors or dentists and overall their rate of depression is lower, much lower – they come last in the ranking of the ten most depressed professions. However, that may be an underestimate because recent research has shown that lawyers, like Ted, who are mostly perfectionists, are loath to admit that there is anything wrong with them.

I am working with the Law Society of NSW in Australia to create an outreach project which will create safe places for lawyers to discuss their mental-health problems and be guided to appropriate treatment without feeling medicalised. The programme will also be looking at the business of law – the stressors that solicitors, in-house lawyers, and barristers face and which are the primary causes of much of their mental ill health.

Those with the most serious mental health issues are law students and junior lawyers. My good friend Professor Bill Henderson of Indiana University Law School told me recently that about 70-80% of law school graduates worldwide will never practice law and this knowledge means about 40% of them suffer from major depression, which does not bode well for the mental health of lawyers going forward.

Depression is by no means the only mental health issue lawyers face. Mental ill health is increasing because of the snowballing stressors lawyers work under, including growing competition from other lawyers and from digitised law, and the rising demands on partners and others for more and more revenue with less and less support.

A number of studies have shown that chronic stress among lawyers is increasing by over 70% every four years. For the profession this is simply intolerable. Humans were not designed for it.

Besides depression there are other major mental health issues that lawyers face – most of which are stress-related.

Anxiety

Depression and anxiety often go hand-in-hand and neurogenetically they are very similar. However, anxiety encompasses a wide spectrum of disorders going from minor generalised anxiety disorder (GAD) to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Alongside GAD and PTSD, other anxiety disorders include panic disorder, social phobias, specific phobias (for example, agoraphobia and claustrophobia), and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Each requires a different approach.

Many lawyers do not realise that they are suffering from anxiety until it has come to dominate their lives or led to a really serious mental or physical illness.

What is important about GAD and other versions of anxiety disorder as far as the legal profession is concerned, is that their symptoms are mostly survival techniques driven by fear and work stress. The greater the stress, the more severe the anxiety response.

Of course, many people have a genetic predisposition to anxiety, just as with depression but, as many studies have shown, this disposition is mediated by context, experience (especially childhood experience), and work environment.

Burnout

One of the most prevalent personality traits among lawyers is, as mentioned earlier, perfectionism; that, combined with an often-crazy schedule, makes them more prone to burnout than any other profession except medicine. Since perfectionism is what they are often praised for, this trait is reinforced.

Burnout is a defence against intolerable pressure. The latest research sees lawyer burnout as a symptom of an ailing organisation or practice. Any cure must therefore be aimed at de-stressing legal practices large and small.

There are certain factors that protect a workplace from burnout: a sense of purpose and belonging; a transformational and inclusive management style; clarity and specificity around behaviours; clear goals; and sufficient autonomy to allow lawyers to get on with their work without undue interference. Without these, a practice is more vulnerable to burned-out people.

Lawyer burnout rather than depression is the cause of most suicide attempts.

Chronic stress

Nearly every lawyer has a stress problem. Workplace stress among lawyers (and other professionals) is increasing exponentially. Chronic stress can lead to heart attacks, cancer, and a whole range of mental and physical illnesses. It’s a good idea to de-stress each individual lawyer, but a much better approach – and paradoxically the easier option – is to de-stress the practice.

Research has shown there are a number of factors that contribute to workplace stress in law firms large and small. These factors, together with burnout issues, can amount to a toxic work environment: overwork; isolation; role and authority conflict and ambiguity; career development barriers; difficult relationships with seniors, co-workers, or both; bullying – especially by ‘rainmaker’ partners; harassment (sexual or otherwise – usually otherwise); and de-personalisation.

Should the stressors continue, a lawyer is at significant risk of developing severe physiological and psychological disorders that can lead to increased absenteeism, presenteeism, organisational dysfunction, increased errors and decreased work productivity, and even death.

Conclusion

The problem of mental ill-health in the legal profession is really a problem of the way that law is practiced today and won’t be solved until we marry the business of law with human design-specs. That’s one of the things we hope to achieve in NSW.

As chair of the Young Barristers’ Committee (YBC), one of my first tasks is to set the committee’s priorities for the year. Along with business as usual (e.g. Brexit and court reform), the YBC needs to identify key issues facing barristers in their first seven years of practice, and then to try and address those issues.

As you can imagine, this is not a straightforward task. The Bar is a vast and diverse space. We may all be ‘barristers’, but the job of a junior criminal practitioner, racing all over the country, doing trials solo from the first day of her second six will be almost unrecognisable to the junior Chancery barrister, who may not cross-examine a witness by herself until she’s put in several years as fourth, third, second and finally first junior.

The pay, the pace, the content – these key hallmarks of any profession – diverge so widely for the Bar, that one may wonder whether it is meaningful to talk about the ‘job’ or ‘life’ of a barrister at all.

It is clear that there are sector-specific issues. The woeful inadequacies in pay at the publicly funded bar quite properly continue to dominate headlines in legal news and more widely, and that issue will form one of the YBC’s three main areas of focus this year.

But it is also quite clear there are themes, interests, and threats which unite all junior barristers. Our other two priorities for the year which affect the junior bar as a whole: (i) equality, diversity and social mobility (EDSM), and (ii) wellbeing.

Equality, diversity and social mobility

This topic covers an enormous range of work, and the Bar Council has a dedicated EDSM committee, headed up by Robin Allen QC. I would like to draw attention to two particular issues on which the YBC is focusing: judicial bullying and harassment.

Judicial bullying has been in the spotlight quite significantly over the past year. This issue came to the fore in late 2017, when a criminal barrister tweeted about how some judges ‘belittle and undermine’ advocates, and how this can have a significant impact not only on justice, but on the barristers’ wellbeing.

Within minutes, other advocates came forward with their own experiences of how judicial bullying had affected them. This prompted numerous articles, discussions, and lectures, and in February this year, the Bar Council issued guidance on tackling judicial bullying.

Clearly there are a great many judges who are decent and courteous and professional. But it is equally clear that judicial bullying is a real problem which resonates with many barristers (particularly those practising in crime) and further that it is a problem which disproportionately affects women and minorities.

All bullying is unacceptable. Judicial bullying is particularly egregious, given the disparity between the status of the bully and victim, and the inevitable erosion of confidence in the rule of law which accompanies a judicial bully’s actions.

Victims of judicial bullying need to feel empowered to report these incidents in a confidential environment in which they will be taken seriously and have appropriate repercussions. The Bar Council provides guidance to barristers at wellbeingatthebar.org.uk, and also operates an equality and diversity helpline to assist. The Bar Council is also working on a system to assist barristers in reporting bullying.

Harassment is an equally prominent issue. In June 2018, the Bar Council released the findings of its ‘Third Working Lives Survey’. Over 4,000 barristers provided ‘useable’ responses to questions regarding their perceptions and experiences of harassment, bullying, and discrimination.

The findings were stark. Reports of harassment, bullying, and discrimination within the barristers’ profession, as well as reports of observing the same, had increased over the years: 21% of employed and 12% of self-employed barristers reported experiencing harassment or bullying in the two years prior to the survey, an increase of 3% at the employed Bar and 5% at the self-employed Bar.

Reports of discrimination roughly mirrored that trend: 16% of employed and 13% of self-employed respondents said they had experienced discrimination, a 4% increase at the employed Bar and 5% at the self-employed Bar.

This was also echoed by the increase in observed bullying, harassment, and discrimination: 30% of employed and 17% of self-employed barristers had observed bullying or harassment (up 9% and 8% respectively), while 20% of employed and 15% of self-employed barristers had observed discrimination (a rise of 5% and 7%).

Across seven protected characteristics (gender, age, ethnicity, religion/belief, disability, sexual orientation, pregnancy/maternity), the most common form of reported bullying/harassment was based on gender (53% – up 5% from 2013 data).

At the self-employed Bar, 50% of those reporting bullying or harassment cited another barrister or colleague as being responsible.

It’s clear that bullying, harassment, and discrimination are unacceptable behaviours. The Bar Council offers a confidential helpline, training, and support to individuals and chambers. Any barrister facing harassment or bullying should use these services. We are also working with the Bar Standards Board to ensure rules about reporting encourage chambers and others to call out and deal with unacceptable behaviour, rather than stay silent for fear of the consequences of speaking out.

The YBC will be meeting with junior barristers this summer to assess whether their experiences mirror these broader findings and to explore what, if any, further support is required to assist junior practitioners who face harassment, bullying, or discrimination.

Wellbeing

The law has always been a pressured profession. Whether you are safeguarding people’s livelihoods and liberty, holding public bodies to account, or setting out your solutions to commercial conflicts, barristers’ input invariably comes at the knife edge of change – and the stakes are always significant.

The internet, smartphones, and laptops give us unparalleled opportunities for more effective working. Need a case? You no longer need to trek to the library. Forgotten a document in chambers? Ask someone to scan it to you. Looking for a provision in the CPR but can’t remember where it is? Google it.

The Bar deals in information – whether it’s evidence, case law or advice. And technology has been of exceptional assistance at helping us access that information more readily.

But over the past 20 years, there has also been an explosion of information across the board. The occasional letter has been replaced by 40,000 WhatsApp messages. The carefully crafted bundle replaced by 150 emails, each of which has tens of emails embedded within it. And online resources like Westlaw mean that a 20 second search can throw up hundreds of cases each of which you now feel compelled to check to do your job diligently.

This builds on pressures historically associated with the job: developing and maintaining a good client base; doing a sterling job on every case; maintaining cash flow; cultivating good relations with other members of chambers; dealing with the particular stresses and isolation of being self-employment and chasing that elusive unicorn of the work-life balance.

Regardless of your age, seniority, personal circumstances, or practice area, the Bar can be a stressful and demanding profession. For many that is initially part of the thrill. No one comes to the modern Bar by accident. Junior barristers everywhere have that common quality – we are the sort of people who have enjoyed jumping over increasingly high hurdles. But we are also the sort who will keep trying to jump over those hurdles, ignoring the fact that we’re smacking into them until we physically can’t lift ourselves off the floor.

This is a common theme – from the magistrates’ courts to huge commercial arbitrations. Juniors of all stripes are working longer hours, with more information, unable to switch off, experiencing constant nagging feelings of agitation, exhaustion, and stress.

This was well-illustrated by the Bar Council’s 2015 ‘Wellbeing at the Bar’ survey. Approximately 2,500 barristers took part. Of those:

• More than half regularly experienced difficulty sleeping;
• More than half found it difficult to control/stop worrying at least some of the time;
• More than one-third found it difficult to control/stop worrying all or most of the time;
• One in six felt in low spirits most of the time;
• 59% felt they demonstrated unhealthy levels of perfectionism; and
• Two-thirds felt that showing signs of stress equals weakness.

These statistics speak for themselves. Wellbeing is everyone’s problem. And that isn’t really surprising given how we work. We are constantly plugged in and switched on. In part that is a response to the rest of the sector: solicitors email over papers at 17:00 for a hearing the following day; your client is in a wildly different time zone and wants a telecon.

But in an age when people work, relax, listen to music, read, and find love, all online, then the boundaries between work and life can all too easily become blurred and finding that elusive balance becomes even harder.

I don’t have all the answers. Mostly I’m just glad I don’t have all the problems either.

But it is clear to me that there are steps which barristers, clerks, practice managers, chambers, and other workplaces more generally can be taking to manage this issue:

• Recognise that wellbeing is important and something which needs to be prioritised;
• Use the Bar Council’s wellbeing hub for guidance, action plans, and helplines which you and your workplaces can and should be utilising;
• Set clear boundaries for work. The Bar Council is in the process of preparing ‘Email’ and ‘Sitting Hours’ protocols, encouraging the Bar and judiciary to adopt codes of conduct limiting the hours in which we can reasonably be expected to be in court or respond to emails;
• Be sympathetic to the wellbeing of others and wellbeing initiatives more generally; and
• Be mindful of your own wellbeing.

It is tempting to dismiss these initiatives and treat them as a sign of weakness, inconsistent with our profession. In a job where mental integrity is the ultimate prize, barristers are unlikely to want to admit a weakness which correlates to failure.

To that I would say the following: stress is real. Its effects are progressive and can be devastating. Electronic working has significant changed the working environment and the stresses to which its participants are subjected and balance and control are elusive. You don’t get to pick when you burn out, or how that burnout will impact your life, or whether you will be able to recover from it. Your mental health is too high a price to pay for any success.