In-house lawyers are under stress. Here are some ways to help them.
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Doing a lot of work with little resources, often isolated by remote work, often feeling undervalued or neglected – the sources of professional stress and burnout for in-house lawyers vary, many of them take on a new role due to dissatisfaction.
That puts more responsibility on managers to watch for signs of burnout and step in more aggressively to help, according to a group of domestic law enforcement agencies.
“Burn is a crisis in the legal industry, both in the U.S. and abroad,” said Amanda Rubio, attorney and director of Axiom’s Enterprise Technology Practice. Rubio moderated Jan. 16. Panel discussion With three at-home tips on practical strategies to avoid and identify stress and burnout.
97% of in-house lawyers experience stress and burnout, with 39% rating it as severe, according to Axiom’s July 2024 survey of 300 in-house counsel. Beyond the human toll of this kind of stress, general counsel and their teams must struggle with ineffectiveness and staff turnover if they don’t address the issues, the panel suggested.
In the year Since the global pandemic in 2020, one of the biggest job stressors will be the spread of remote working and professionals will learn how to “understand where you are on the line between your time and your availability for work,” he said. Chief Legal & Risk Officer at Module, a London-based electronic payments company.
“Sometimes you choose to take a call at 7:30 when it’s your practice time. Do you really have to take that call?” said Nicole Olsman, chief legal officer and head of sustainability at Lincoln, a global construction and energy company.
Lawyers also feel a sense of duty to be conscientious of their work and to help their firms and colleagues, leading to increased workloads. “You get to the end of the day or the end of the week and there’s always more to do,” he said.
Many lawyers bring to their work “a desire to maintain a sense of ownership over the things we’re given” because they need to see a task or project completed properly, Olsman said. As a result, she said, many lawyers are not adept at structuring work.
Having workplace flexibility within a given workday and week is an important part of combating lawyer stress, the panel suggested. Most people know what to do and their time. Managers should note that for most businesses there are cycles, when the company has legitimate calls for heavy work and other times when it is less busy.