The death of the young Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer lawyer Matthew Courtney has sparked an intense debate, not least in a succession of postings on legalweek.com, about the levels of stress business lawyers are experiencing.
It is a debate that goes far beyond a mere restatement of the need for more part-time and flexi-time packages, those traditional work-life balance stalwarts. And it is one that has been flaring up at intervals for many years; another recent flashpoint being SJ Berwin’s controversial bonus package.
In this week’s Big Question poll (see page 10), a third of respondents say they know of lawyers in their firms who have been off work due to stress-related illnesses. Each year the charity LawCare, which offers confidential counselling to lawyers with stress and alcohol-related problems, records steep increases in the number of enquiries it receives.
Some argue that the long hours young lawyers are expected to put in are a price worth paying for the financial rewards and future career prospects on offer. Indeed, many people positively thrive in such an environment. But others do not. One legalweek.com contributor counsels against the notion that young lawyers walk into these pressurised jobs with their eyes open. The contributor points out that it is easy to be seduced by the attention firms lavish on potential recruits, be it drinks at ‘funky venues’ or party cruises down the Thames. Tellingly, a contributor to legalweek.com’s law firm wiki complained that the resources lavished on the summer placement scheme at his firm rankled its hard-pressed associates. Nor is it easy for young lawyers to walk away from their jobs, given the debts most are forced to incur on the road to qualification.
As Slaughter and May partner Andrew Balfour points out on page 10, law firms have a responsibility to ensure that young lawyers are given the skills to deal with the pressure they are under. More often than not, this will be down to individual partners, no matter how good the intentions of the human resources department.
In the Big Question survey, a majority of the partners say they do not believe that too much is being expected of young lawyers. And yet an even larger majority concede that it is more stressful to be a lawyer now than it was when they were on the way up. This mismatch between partners’ own experiences and the expectations they load on their assistants may help explain why firms are finding it so hard to grapple with this problem.