A letter to the legal profession
Dear Legal Profession,
There has been much coverage surrounding the tragic death of Vanessa Ford. While this letter is written in that context, this is a far bigger issue than the loss of one life, and reaches across all corporate law firms around the world. This could have happened, and has been happening, in any number of firms, and other institutions.
Lawyers are twice as likely to experience suicidal thoughts than the general population. Even when we take into account factors such as known mental health issues, or substance abuse, lawyers who take their own lives are 91% more likely than those who don’t work in the sector to have problems at work that contribute to their suicide.
There will be few firms that have not experienced a suicide, or at the very least very serious mental illness, of one of their much loved and treasured colleagues. If you have managed to avoid it, especially in major transactional or litigation work, then you are probably very fortunate. That is the truth of it. And perhaps it is that very truth which has led so many people to feel, in equal measures, shock and connection with the loss of this treasured and loved lady. We know that we could be speaking about one of our own and our own firm. We know we could be speaking about ourselves.
The old adage that hard work never killed anyone is simply not true.
Stress causes burnout and stops us thinking clearly. A lack of sleep does the same. As does disconnection from the ones we love and the things we do to manage our wellbeing and find ourselves. As a result, we will often think in unhelpful and sometimes self-destructive ways. We will catastrophise and self-blame. We will struggle to see the hope that we might otherwise see or the availability of help, even assuming we are self-aware enough to recognise our need for it. We will often be consumed by irrational and uncontrollable thinking which we will struggle to be able to communicate or contain. All of this can be overwhelming.
Dr Rachel Gibbons, the UK’s leading expert on suicide, describes suicide as acting out, an unconscious defence mechanism where action takes the place of feeling and where the act is intended to rid the individual of the emotional pain. For many who make serious attempts on their life, the first sign (potentially even to themselves) that they are in such overwhelming distress is that they act.
Further, while some people will have contemplated and planned suicide for some time, for many it is an impulsive act with very little, if any, premeditation.
We can see how stressful long hours of work and increasing pressure can increase an individual’s chance of suicidal thoughts. While there will be, of course, many who do not become affected in this way, we can all accept that unreasonable levels of stress have negatively impacted each one of us at one point or another, be it in our relationships, our standard of work, or our ability to switch off and recharge. There is little we can do to predict at an individual level how someone will react. Are we content to run that risk for our colleagues and ourselves? How does that risk sit with our duty of care, whether legally or at a human level? Are we comfortable with allowing, with playing, that game of Russian roulette?
Sometimes events occur, sadly often tragic events, which open a window on something we have always known is there, but we have not seen or have chosen to ignore. They cast a light where we had previously left shade. And, in that moment we are forced inexorably to face up to the thing and acknowledge it. The death of Vanessa Ford is one such moment, but it is far from the first. In the face of such moments, we have a choice.
We can close the window again and silently be grateful it wasn’t us or our firm, this time. But there will be another time and the tsunami of change that is hitting the legal profession, not least through the impact of AI, runs the very real risk of making the situation worse. If past experience is anything to go by, and in a conservative profession bound by precedent that seems a good basis, change is likely to mean more pressure and demands on individuals.
Or we can act, and when we do these moments can be watersheds.
For this to be one such moment, it requires action, not in one firm but across the profession. We know that the legal profession suffers some of the highest levels of mental distress in society. That is partly because of what lawyers do and the culture in which they work, but is also partly because of the sorts of people attracted to law. We take conscientious, diligent, people who are predisposed to over working, to putting goals ahead of their own wellbeing and to subjugating their own needs in favour of those of others. These are not character weaknesses per se, but they are risk factors. We then put them in situations which play to those very personality characteristics, and we have ended up, by default rather than design, with reward structures which incentivise and champion them.
So what are we going to do?
As organisations and as leaders of our profession
First, we need to actively monitor the risk. What hours and over what periods are people working? How much sleep and other down time are they getting? How connected are they to their support mechanisms? We can do this fairly easily given the billable hour business model on which most law firms operate.
Where we identify risk, we need to actively step in, even against the wishes of individual lawyers concerned, to manage that risk. We will, on occasion, need to protect people from themselves. This is done quite easily in other industries such as truck driving or aviation. Managing the risk might mean taking people off a project for a period, or adding additional resource to staff the project or slowing it down because the project is never going to be more important than the lives of the people involved. At a lower level it might mean checking in more regularly with people and/or requiring them to access professional support to help them manage the situation and also to help monitor the risk.
The project is never going to be more important than the lives of the people involved.
Second, we need to do what we can to reduce the stress that surrounds them. The Mindful Business Charter provides a framework, permission and language for this, but it needs to be truly lived for it to be effective. To use a sporting metaphor, taking part in car racing is intrinsically high risk. Formula 1 goes to great lengths to put in place as much safety as possible around it and to eliminate as far as possible the distractions and unnecessary stress on its drivers in order to ensure their best possible performance. Just as we can talk about these risks and driver safety in an honest and straightforward way so we must about the risks inherent in our work and professional world, of which suicide is an intrinsic risk.
Third, partners in our law firms need to have an honest discussion with each other as to their values and shared purpose and to the balance they are prepared to make between the profitability of the firm and the lives of the people who work in it, including their own. They need to understand that wellbeing is intrinsic to high performance and to build wellbeing into every aspect of their business strategy. They need to be realistic about the level of profitability they can achieve and imaginative enough to find ways of doing so that do not depend on individual lawyers working excessively long hours.
We are the grown ups in the room. It is not a system that is at fault because to say that implies it is the responsibility of someone else, someone faceless, anyone but us, to act. If there is a fundamental problem to address, then as senior leaders we are the people to address it — if not us then who? As Barack Obama says, change does not happen, won’t happen, while we sit around waiting for the right person or the right time — we are (or at the very least can be) the people we have been waiting for. We really can be the change.
As individual lawyers
To paraphrase Paul Gilbert of LBC Wise Counsel, you have one go at a career and a life. Please cherish it. No-one is more responsible for it than you. There will be mentors and managers and others who play a part but at the end of the day, at the end of each day, it is your life and your career. Nothing, no deal or case, however big and career defining, is more important than you and your health.
Ultimately, the organisations we work for, however benign they may be, have their interests primarily at heart and not yours. We are all passing through. The organisation will generally have been there before we joined and will be there after we leave. All that we can be expected to do is to give the best of ourselves to the people in that organisation while we are there, and to take advantage of the opportunities it provides to us to learn and grow.
Work is not more important than your health, your family or, for that matter, your integrity. It just isn’t.
Be prepared to speak up and ask for what you need. Practice speaking up on the small things so that it is easier when the big things come along. Do so kindly and respectfully to others, but most of all to yourself.
And as a colleague, when we see someone who may be in distress, or when we see someone who is manifestly overworking and not getting the rest they need, be brave, walk towards that person and be the kind human being you are. Please don’t walk away or hope for the best or assume someone else will do something.
At a regulatory level
In the UK the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 imposes obligations on employers to create a safe working environment. This expressly includes psychological health and safety but the overwhelming focus has been on physical health and safety. There are specific regulations that cover any number of aspects of that but none that relate to psychosocial health and safety. We want to address that and are in discussion with various like-minded organisations. If you have something you’d like to offer to that initiative, then we’d love to hear from you.
So…
What are we, what are you, going to do? Seize this moment to act or quietly close the window? If we close the window, we need to understand that we will be having the same discussion in a week, or a month, or a year, and it may be us, our colleague, our firm, maybe even our child, that is the catalyst for the conversation. At Mindful Business Charter we will create the space for interested folk to discuss and share ideas about how to act and respond. If you’d like to be part of that conversation, then please get in touch.
Over the next few months, online and at in person events in the UK and the US, with MBC signatories and the wider legal community, we are holding a number of events where we will further discuss the issues we have outlined here, and work towards solutions. We would love for you to join us. For more information contact richard@mindfulbusinesscharter.com or charlotte@mindfulbusinesscharter.com
