This article is taken from the Winter 2024/25 issue of

Think Global People magazine

Click on the cover to access the digital edition.View your copy of the Winter 2024/25 issue of Think Global People magazine.

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Guests and panellists participating in the MAD World Legal Industry Summit Synergy Hub – part of the MAD World Festival in London on 17 October after World Mental Health Day – discussed how they can accelerate the shift from stigma to solutions around mental wellbeing for every employer. The one-day event and its four streams – Legal, Construction, Leadership and DEI – offered insights that leaders can turn into action in the legal profession.

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Stress and anxiety reporting rises

As delegates heard, the case for more employer action to support mental wellness in the legal industry is clear. A 2021 report from the International Bar Association (IBA), Mental Wellbeing in the Legal Profession: A global study, showed the average level of wellbeing reported by lawyers participating is below that at which the World Health Organisation would recommend psychiatric assessment.Recent UK surveys further show 71% of 3,000 lawyers studied reported having anxiety and that calls to the legal profession's mental health charity's helpline LawCare have increased by a quarter. The IBA’s survey noted three-quarters of practices and firms have initiatives already in place.The figure compares well to those CIPD CEO Peter Cheese referred to in an earlier debate in the MAD World Leadership Summit about balancing individual and institutional responsibilities around mental wellbeing, where about 50% of UK employers have a wellbeing strategy.

The importance of psychological safety

There to share their approaches and thinking on the issues in this fast-evolving arena so others can turn action into insight were representatives from employers including Capsticks Solicitors LLP, Simmons & Simmons LLP, Citi, Osborne Clarke, DLA Piper LLP and Pinsent Masons.The panel on creating psychological safety across the legal profession saw Sharon Blackman OBE of Citi, Annmarie Carvalho of TCC, Jude Cragg of Capsticks LLP and Paul Davison of PPWD join moderator Richard Martin, CEO of MAD World summit supporter, The Mindful Business Charter.They started out discussing how to define psychological safety and the risks when people feel unable or unsafe to speak out. The issue is highly relevant to all sectors, particularly the legal sector and those others that are highly regulated.Significant pressure from long, unpredictable and unsociable hours, exposure to extremely challenging and high-stakes scenarios, not to mention the overarching competitive ethos, characterise the role and working life of a lawyer.Creating a culture of psychological safety in teams and organisations is therefore necessary if people are to do their best work and perform, as well as stay in the role. Leaders with emotional intelligence, who are able to show humility, empathy and vulnerability in a team or organisation where this is supported, and who are trusted to understand what is going on where there is conflict and allow everyone to be heard, are key.Describing the features of a mature psychologically safe team, panellist Paul Davison, CEO and founder of PPWD, said it is somewhere everyone – including junior members of the team – have an equal voice, feel and are able to ask questions and challenge the status quo, irrespective of their experience. Collaboration, rather than competition, is also evident where people draw on each other’s ideas to solve problems together. “I think it’s about allowing colleagues and the managers trained to say if something isn’t right and feeling supported,” added Jude Cragg, director of human resources at Capsticks LLP. “It’s about having that dialogue.”“When you don’t have psychological safety, you see the negative impact of that and it hits the bottom line,” said Sharon Blackman, managing director and head of services legal at Citi.

Balancing the individual and the institutional

Annmarie Carvalho, a former City lawyer and now award-winning therapist, noted how the profession’s pressures are “baked in” to the workplace structures and again through the people the role attracts.“The way most of us work is very highly geared,” she said. “That sort of difficult situation when you don’t want to have too many people in your team because if you have a lull, you are too exposed, then when you get busy you’ve got too few people. So we all know about that stuff. The bit we don’t talk about is psychological attributes.”Citing research, she described how legal professionals by nature are high achievers. In a precarious and unpredictable working environment, this can impact how people value themselves – especially when their locus of evaluation has been external, through exam grades for example.“What that means is that a lot of interactions in the office are heightened,” she explained. “You’ve got this combination of managers, supervisors who’ve never been trained in management skills, who have got their own pressures, caseloads and targets, and then a load of younger people who go into things like appraisals wishing ‘please tell me I’m great’, so the atmosphere is very heightened.”To be effective, performance reviews and appraisals will have constructive advice. But what often happens is that people often focus on the negative feedback rather than all the good points because of this external focus.“It’s not just about seniors being terrible at feedback,” continued Annmarie Carvalho. “If you can look at that intersection between those two dynamics, then you’re in with a chance.”“My assessment of lawyers is that they’ve all excelled,” said Sharon Blackman. “You cannot qualify unless there are circumstances where you have done incredibly well. Quite often they’ve been top of the class – 100%, A stars – all the way through. Then that’s the benchmark and it’s how do you distinguish yourself in that benchmark where everyone is really impressive, but with different attributes.”

Changing traditions: career paths and culture

The traditional legal world is hierarchical and structured around seniority. The “up or out” mentality around career progression, performance and routes to partnership adds extra pressure and competitiveness. The reported stress rate among lawyers is therefore not surprising when you consider how these factors might impact the interactions between individuals and teams and behaviours.Some companies are changing the conversation around this and looking at wellbeing through a modernising and more flexible lens. This includes creating alternative career pathways to partner that maximise people’s skills and experience while also acknowledging that partnership roles are limited.These alternatives accommodate the fact that people are highly and often uniquely skilled, used to being top of their game and now today might want to balance that with a more flexible career in a supportive environment.What’s really apparent at Capsticks is the generational differences,” said Jude Cragg. “We have a lot of people, paralegals and early-career, who are a lot more alive to the challenges of mental health and happy to speak up about that and challenge it.“A lot of our progress has come about this way; trainees and people in their early careers are coming in are saying ‘I’m asked to be dealing with these cases. Where is my support? Where do I go for that?’ This has driven lots of what we’ve done. Partners have been very receptive and we’ve made sure all levels are involved in training.”Being upfront about the support for wellbeing and careers are important aspects of psychological safety and build trust, especially when it is seen and experienced in action. Some legal firms are evolving job titles and creating respected alternative roles to the limited number of partnerships available. These reflect seniority, offer a reassuring shorthand to clients and helping to keep talented people engaged, satisfied, happy and high performing in their roles.Looking from the in-house talent development perspective, transparency around opportunities for promotion and development and what these might look like are also increasing. “It’s about conversation and being honest with each other,” said Paul Davison.Progress on improving working life for lawyers and legal professionals – and the outcomes for society and individuals involves recognising that, just as lawyers advocate for people and be assertive, employers need to help create cultures, workplace structures and behaviours to support them in advocating for their own wellbeing and that of their colleagues too. It’s about educating people about what this looks like in a spirit of collaboration and the context of competition.

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