Why real leadership starts with a capital E (for Empathy)

In my last musings I discussed the price many of us in the legal world are paying for our occupational roles in helping to keep the scales of justice tipped in favour of our clients and in delivering quality of legal services that is required of a profession.

The heavy workloads, the intense pressure to meet deadlines, the long working days and weeks are taking their toll in numbers reflected in the 85% of us across Australia and New Zealand that responded to a recent Law Council survey to say they'd experienced depression. And then there was the matter of those lawyers who, (57% of us) after getting pushed to the brink of their emotional and mental wellbeing, decided enough was enough and chucked in their costly law degrees, in a bid to stay sane and take another vocational path.