‘The overall culture in law is damaging many junior lawyers’, JLD chair warns

Well they want £100k plus NQ salaries, which has added 200-300 billable hours each year. Cake and eat it stuff.

mental health stuff is complete nonsense, it ceases to matter once client demands step in. The way that most law firms present it is as a “resilience” issue in terms of how lawyers can “cope” with the demands placed on them, often accompanied by insufficient support and resources, not a question of whether firms need to review their resourcing models and start saying no to clients’ demands.

and then they wonder why people leave….

(Apologies for long comment: in true Blue Peter style, it was prepared earlier, and is merely copied and pasted here in the hope of offering an alternative view. I respect that many will disagree – and I look forward to seeing how many downvotes I can accumulate!)

3 PQE US litigator here. I absolutely support people who decide that private practice isn’t for them, and decide to go in house, or leave law altogether. Several people with whom I qualified went in-house almost immediately, and I wish them luck. Many more senior colleagues made a similar move once they had children and their priorities changed: again, good luck to them. In this comment however, I focus on what I consider to be an unrealistic attitude by many trainees and junior lawyers who complain that the profession is too stressful for them, and/or are vexed by the need to be constantly available.

We do people a disservice by suggesting that anyone can and should succeed in high-pressure careers such as law or consulting. Just as we might suggest that a ‘compassionate but not academic’ sixth former should perhaps look towards a ‘people-focused’ job rather than a Maths or Physics PhD, we do people a disservice if we pretend that anyone can handle stressful jobs.

Chris Hargreaves, an experienced lawyer who produces a podcast for junior lawyers starting their careers (https://tipsforlawyers.com), makes the point bluntly that legal careers aren’t for everyone:

“Law is Hard: Deal with It. If you’re not up for some of the realities of legal practice, then perhaps a career in law isn’t necessarily the way to go? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGn6qp2GfY8 and https://tipsforlawyers.com/legal-careers-are-awesome”

At the high end (high value corporate and Commercial Court/Chancery Division disputes), the profession is also characterised by the demand for ‘996’ availability (9am to 9pm, 6 days/week. This isn’t driven by partners’ perverse fetishes for burning out associates (which isn’t in their commercial self-interest), rather this is what clients pay for, as David Maister warned almost 30 years ago:

“There is an old saw in the medical profession that the three most important keys to success are availability, affability, and ability-in that order. The same profound insight can be equally well applied to other professions. In all professions, clients gripe that “they do great work, but you can never get hold of them. They don’t return my phone calls!” Another common complaint is “I wish they would keep me informed of progress. This may be just another engagement to them, but to me it’s critical. I want to know what’s going on.”” – Maister, David H.. Managing The Professional Service Firm. Russia: Simon & Schuster UK, 2012 (first edition: 1993).

I was speaking to a magic circle departmental head several years ago, who made similar points. He complained that he had two trainees solicitors on long-term mental health leave, neither of whom in his view ought ever to have been considered for a training contract at the outset: they were very well-qualified (Oxford), but self-evidently not robust, and they both failed within months of starting work. There are many jobs in the world, and lawyer is one of the more stressful. If you have mental health issues (as both fashionable and over-diagnosed as that term is now), you should consider a different career. As a profession we have an obsession on solely selecting on academic performance, to the detriment of anything else. We are doing a disservice both to clients, and to prospective junior lawyers, some of whom we break. We wouldn’t advise people with claustrophobia to consider careers as submariners – this is the same.

Expanding on that military analogy: the Royal Navy, British Army, and Royal Air Force operate the Admiralty Interview Board, Army Officer Selection Board, and Officer and Aircrew Selection Centre, respectively, to select their officer candidates. All three selection centres deliberately put candidates under physical and mental pressure, to see how they cope. The weak are weeded out. This isn’t for some brutal, sadistic whim – it is simply because some people will not handle the pressure. No one is helped if those people are allowed in. This is common sense. Just as we cannot have ugly models, asthmatic athletes, blind lollipop ladies, or deaf air traffic controllers, we can’t have military personnel who, under pressure, ‘go wibble’. Ability to handle stress is a bona fide occupational requirement. The original Army Officer Selection Board, the so-called Regular Commissions Board, was created because of this very problem: lot of bright upper-class young men were drafted into the Army in the First World War, then went ‘wibble’ and broke under the pressure. It transpired that merely an Oxbridge education and “good breeding” wasn’t enough to lead soldiers and engage the enemy in dismounted close combat. There are parallels with highly-paid, highly-stressful legal jobs which we ignore at our peril. Perhaps we are doomed to suffer from polite, politically correct fantasies in the West. After all, they are cathartic, and we do feel morally virtuous asserting them. But, as Orwell warned:

“…we are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield.”

Fortunately, no one is stupid enough to suggest that the armed forces must ignore people’s resilience, or lack thereof, when selecting candidates. Perhaps that is because, ultimately, we know that such delusions will bump up against Orwell’s solid battlefield reality. Should we, perhaps, be a little more honest when selecting future lawyers and consultants, and put applicants under a lot more pressure, to see how they cope. Then weed out the weak.

Also, remember the commercial imperative (“commercial awareness” – remember that?): partner profits rely on a constant turnover of hard working, high billing ‘grinders’, fewer senior associate ‘minders’, and a select few partner ‘finders’. Consequently, the firm doesn’t care if you burn out: it’s a pyramid anyway, so they need to eliminate you as you approach 5-6 PQE and start to get very expensive to both the firm (your salary) and clients (your charge out rate). It’s a little like the Hunger Games, but with nicer offices.

I’m not being rude when I advise: If you don’t like it, don’t become a lawyer – no one will miss you. As long as law firms have (a) enough associates; of (b) adequate calibre to staff their clients’ needs, the system works fine. That will forever be the case, as many of us are happy to make the sacrifices necessary for the £££ (and we’re resilient). That’s simply the blunt reality.

I look forward to being crucified in the replies 🙂