Fit for Life

Working in the law can be difficult. Long hours, a heavy workload and demanding clients can all take their toll on mental health and wellbeing. Many lawyers contact LawCare at breaking point, feeling stressed, anxious and depressed. We want to start to change the culture in the law. As part of that this year we launched a new interactive online resource Fit for Law to promote psychologically and emotionally healthier ways of working within law. This free resource was developed based on evidence from focus groups with legal professionals across the UK and Ireland, which identified a number of causes for some of the problems we have seen develop in the profession. Many said they felt education and training had not equipped them to deal with the realities of practice, for example, the first day in court, looking at traumatic material and working in an environment with difficult managers or colleagues. These issues, when combined with a feeling that to show emotion would be seen as a sign of weakness, often led to stress.

Fit for Law (fitforlaw. org.uk) is aimed at all legal professionals. It helps to build skills in managing and understanding yourself, identifying and regulating your emotions, selfreflection and how to deal with stress. It takes between two and four hours to complete, but it is broken down into smaller sections and includes videos from legal professionals discussing wellbeing issues. It also offers a range of interactive activities. We hope it helps to build the profession’s emotional competence and professional resilience so that lawyers can better deal with some of the difficult experiences they’re likely to go through at some point in their career. Later this year, we also intend to run a survey looking at wellbeing across solicitors and barristers, chartered legal executives, paralegals and legal apprentices. We know that a number of professional bodies in the UK have been running their own surveys focusing on wellbeing and mental health. We want to run a profession-wide survey looking at wellbeing across the whole legal profession, so that we can understand the impact both the culture and practice of law has on mental health and wellbeing.

A research committee has been established, made up of academics and individuals who are passionate about promoting healthier ways of working in the law, who will put together the survey. We are intending on using a standardised research measure so that we are able to compare the legal profession to other professions. We will shortly be reaching out to the professional bodies in the UK seeking their support on this piece of research. LawCare is dedicated to supporting a legal profession that values good mental health and wellbeing and where people thrive. In 2020, we want to inspire the legal community to work together to create a better culture in the law, driving positive change in education, training and practice, as well as continuing our work in providing emotional support, prevention and education. Last year, we appointed 18 LawCare champions.

These are our army of wellbeing advocates who are helping us to reach more people and we’ll be adding more names to the list throughout 2020. We want to see senior leaders in the law and regulation continue to speak up about the importance of good mental health in the workplace; and to take action by implementing policies on areas such as emails outside of working hours, behaviour and respect in the workplace; and long working hours. However, changing the culture in the law doesn’t just have to come from the top. One way we can all help to remove some of the stigma surrounding mental health in the law is to talk about it. This year, Time to Talk Day falls on Thursday 6 February and encourages us to speak up and talk about mental health. Whether you drop a text to a friend you haven’t seen in a while, chat to a colleague while making tea or organise an event in your workplace, it is a great opportunity to reach out – and get talking.