Stressed Legal Professionals Increasingly Seeking Support

Legal professionals are increasingly turning to support frameworks because of the stresses in their work lives.

The number of legal professionals asking LawCare for help and advice in 2019 increased by 8%.

In total, the charity received over 900 contacts and dealt with 6,777 people asking for help in 2019.

A quarter (26%) of all calls related to work-induced stress with a further 12% feeling depressed because of issues concerning them in the legal sector.

Worryingly, 66% of those stressed or depressed felt as though they were the victims of bullying by a manager of superior.

When broken down into demographics, 67% of all enquiries were made by women with 54% of all calls for help made by trainees, students or legal professionals with less than five years qualified experience.

Elizabeth Rimmer, CEO of LawCare, said:

“We spent 304 hours providing support on the phone last year, answering a call every 2 ½ hours.

“Last year also saw the launch of our new webchat service enabling us to provide support to more people.

“The biggest trend we’ve noticed is the number of people contacting us about bullying and harassment which is now one of the top three issues people contact us about, possibly because of a lot more attention on this issue in the media over the past couple of years.

“We will be undertaking more detailed research later this year to discover exactly how the culture of law is impacting on wellbeing and mental health, and we hope to use this to drive change in legal workplaces.”

LawCare have teamed up with the University of Sheffield to produce and launch the ‘Fit For Law’ course.

‘Fit For Law’ is a free online resource which is aimed at promoting a psychologically and emotionally healthier way of working within the legal sector. The resource looks at emotional competency and professional resilience for those who work in the legal sector and is hoping to combat stress in the sector.