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Legal overwork culture ‘will deter talent’

A senior London partner has warned that lawyers should not try to be ‘superhuman’.

Sarah Wallace, a partner at Irwin Mitchell, has written that too few managing partners at elite law firms explicitly speak about the importance of caring for physical and mental health.

Wallace’s article in the London Times follows the suicide of Gabe MacConaill, a high-flying US law firm partner who shot himself in his firm’s car park.

His wife Joanna said that MacConaill’s hereditary mental health disorder and poor coping mechanisms combined with a high-pressure job and a culture where he felt it was shameful to ask for help made it easier for him to kill himself than admit he was struggling.

Boast

Wallace decries the senior partners who boast about not sleeping much and points out that most people need time off and a decent night’s sleep. 

“Lawyers, with their pressurised work environments, perfectionism and desires to exceed clients’ expectations, are more susceptible to anxiety, stress and depression even before you take into account non-work-related issues such as mental health disorders, other illnesses, bereavement, addiction and relationship problems,” Wallace writes.

Wellbeing

The profession’s leaders should speak about the importance of wellbeing and providing psychologically healthy workplaces, she says, echoing the theme of the 2017-18 Law Society of Ireland presidency of Michael Quinlan.

Michael Quinlan spoke repeatedly during his presidency about legal professionals’ tendency to overwork and urged the value of self-care on Law Society members.

Wallace writes that the legal profession will fail to attract the best people in the future if it fails to alter the culture of overwork.

“Just because partners today were made to work obscene hours in the 1990s and 2000s does not mean the next generation is going to put up with that sort of insanity in 2018,” she writes.