For lawyers, work-life balance can mean many things. For example, some understand “work-life balance” to describe spending time with their family or raising children. For others, work-life balance may apply to spending time on any activity outside of the office.
Some experts suggest an alternate term: work-life conflict. It’s not about achieving parity between your career and the rest of your life, these experts say. Instead, it’s about recognizing the tension between the two.
For attorneys, this new term may resonate because lawyers know conflict. They know its costs and the value of a good resolution. And they know it’s better to prevent conflict than clean up its aftermath.
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Are Law Firms Stressful?
To a certain extent, law firms are stressful because the practice of law is stressful. Law is adversarial by design. From criminal convictions to custody battles to corporate takeovers, the stakes often are high. And clients expect a win every time. So a baseline of stress is expected. But beyond that, it’s up to firms’ leadership whether firms encourage stress or well-being.
For decades, most firms chose stress as Big Law transformed into Big Business. In 1985, the top 100 American law firms had a combined gross revenue of $7 billion, according to The American Lawyer. By 2022, the top firms’ revenue had skyrocketed to $131 billion. And they did so by pushing attorneys to generate more revenue than ever before.
Many firms now expect attorneys to bill more than 2,000 hours a year. To bill 2,200 billable hours, an attorney will likely work 3,058 hours, according to a Yale Law School analysis. That’s about 58 hours a week, 52 weeks a year.
While work-life conflict is often highest at large, elite firms, throughout the industry, lawyers are more stressed, anxious and depressed than other professionals. Attorneys are more likely to abuse alcohol. They are more likely to die by suicide, and, when they do so, it’s almost twice as likely related to problems at work.
Recognizing that if firms don’t invest in attorneys’ well-being, they pay for their ill-being, in 2018 the American Bar Association began asking firms to pledge that they would create “a healthy and sustainable work environment.” While only 223 firms and organizations have signed on, each signatory represents a sea change in the profession, says Patrick Krill, an attorney who worked on developing the program.
Firms should consider themselves on notice, says Krill, who is the principal and founder of Krill Strategies, a company dedicated to attorney well-being. If firms aren’t investing in lawyers’ mental health, they’re now the exception, not the rule.
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How Does the Work-Life Balance of Lawyers Compare to Other Professions?
When thinking about how lawyers fare on work-life balance, “I think it is 100% worse than many other professions,” Krill says.
When it comes to attorneys’ work-life conflict, two cultural phenomena play a huge role.
First, since the law is a service industry, firms sometimes errantly believe attorneys must be available to clients 24/7. Second, the billable hour rewards someone for how long they work on a task, rather than how well they did it.
The combination of these two constructs results in an incentive for lawyers to spend more time at work while being less efficient when there.
What’s the Best Law Field for Work-Life Balance?
Considering which law fields might be better for work-life balance, “I wouldn’t call any as models of well-being,” says Jarrod Reich, a Boston University School of Law senior lecturer.
But research does suggest attorneys with more autonomy — those in academia and the judiciary or in fields such as estate law — have better work-life balance.
Similarly, those in some government and public sector positions have less work-life conflict, with more of a traditional 40-hour workweek, job security and a comparatively predictable career path.
Are Law Firms With Work-Life Balance More Successful?
There is a strong business case for well-being, Reich says. Firms are more successful when attorneys have less work-life conflict. They have better performance, retention and recruitment, according to Reich.
As an example, Reich says, when one firm implemented a meditation program, its lawyers saw a 45% increase in focus and a 35% drop in stress while they were 35% more effective.
Happier employees are less likely to quit or burn out, and firms can reduce turnover by improving lawyers’ wellness. When it comes to recruitment, 92% of Gen Z associates and law students rate work-life balance as important in their careers, according to a survey from Major, Lindsey and Africa, a legal search firm. Most Gen-Z respondents would trade compensation for a better work-life balance.
Are There Work-Life Balance Laws?
The Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), and the American Disabilities Act (ADA) are the main federal laws relating to work-life balance. However, they do little to resolve work-life conflict.
FMLA can provide new parents and others with unpaid leave, but it doesn’t help with daily caregiving demands. And while FLSA has wage and overtime requirements for employees, professionals are exempt from its mandates.
When attorneys suffer from mental health conditions such as depression, they can request ADA accommodations including a limited schedule. But there’s a Catch-22 here, too: Ethics rules may compel attorneys to disclose their conditions and require managers to limit their work.
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How Can Law Firms Promote Work-Life Balance for Their Lawyers?
Firms may begin with conversations encouraging lawyers to take care of themselves and to help attorneys already in distress. Large and small changes can improve well-being.
Law firms can reward effectiveness over stamina. They may also replace billable hours with alternative fee arrangements while reducing demands for attorneys to be constantly available. For instance, firms could follow medical practices’ lead by having attorneys take turns being “on call,” monitoring a cell phone and email reserved for after-hours emergencies.
Other efforts to promote work-life balance at law firms include:
— Tracking when associates work excessive hours.
— Requiring lawyers to take a minimum amount of vacation each year.
— Counting time spent during well-being events and vacations as billable hours.
— Discouraging after-hours communications by including work schedules in email signatures.
Those are according to a June 2023 essay by Cecilia A. Silver, a Yale Law senior research scholar. While law firms can never remove all stress from attorneys’ lives, even small steps to reduce work-life conflict can have a positive impact on attorneys’ well-being and firms’ successes.
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How to Navigate Work-Life Balance at a Law Firm originally appeared on usnews.com
