‘We’re not putting enough value on prioritising people,’ says LawCare CEO Elizabeth Rimmer as she discusses the state of mental health support in the legal profession.
‘It’s absolutely true that people are the greatest asset in any organisation because it’s the people that do the work. So safeguarding that and nurturing those people is really important,’ she tells Legal Business.
Nearly 60% of legal professionals experienced poor mental health last year, according to LawCare research that also found more than half could see themselves leaving their workplace within the next five years. These findings suggest that, despite law firms’ efforts to improve work life balance and mental health support in recent years, much more needs to be done to address structural pressures within the profession.
Rimmer wants to see firms taking greater responsibility for staff wellbeing.
‘The push for profit is the overriding impetus in the business case in law. And people are the drivers of that profit. So supporting and nurturing them to do their best work is actually in your interest, but we tend to sacrifice people sometimes in the pursuit of increased profitability in law firms,’ she argues.
This need for greater support is why Rimmer is grateful for the help the City of London Law Society (CLLS) and the City of London Solicitors Company (CLSC) are giving her charity, which operates a volunteer-led helpline providing confidential support to anyone in the industry who’s struggling.
The three-year partnership will see the CLLS and CLSC provide £45,000 in additional funding to the charity over the next three years, with the organisations joining LawCare’s 25 Club, which calls on firms and leading individuals to commit funding to the charity.
CLLS chief executive, Patrick McCann, says he hopes the partnership will encourage contributions from law firms.
‘I’m a big believer in collaboration amongst competitive organisations, and this is something we should all be doing together. It is very much in City law firms’ interests to have healthy, engaged, high-performing people, and that doesn’t come without support. So there’s a real bottom line benefit to making sure your people are looked after.’
‘That’s partly why we want to support LawCare, it’s very much that we wanted to support the people who work in our law firms, but also we want this to be a beacon to other organisations to do something similar,’ he concludes.
Peter King, who chairs the CLSC’s charity committee, highlights the personal connections with the new partnership. ‘Most of our members have some sort of lived experience, either personally, or they’ve got friends who’ve had that lived experience, and that’s why we’re very keen to support it.’
With a reputation for high-pressure environments and long working hours, Rimmer says law firms have a responsibility – as well as a vested interest – in ensuring all their employees are looked after.
‘We should all be doing our best to mitigate the known risks to people’s mental health in the workplace so that we can try to ensure that people don’t become ill and that they stay in the sector,’ she stresses.
Rimmer continues: ‘It’s about the sustainability of the profession. People work incredibly hard to get in here, we don’t want them leaving. We want people to feel that this is worthwhile. They made big decisions to come into the sector and we want them to stay.’
With long hours and high pressure the norm for many, comparatively large numbers of lawyers have experienced stress, burnout or anxiety at various points in their career. Work-related pressure has also seen the role linked with suicide, in a small number of instances.
A large part of the problem, King notes, is the stigma that remains around mental health: ‘There was a feeling that if you showed a sign of weakness then that was going to affect your career prospects in a material way.’
He continues: ‘The turnaround has come, thanks to people like Elizabeth and others over the past 15 years or so and now it is okay to talk about it. There are high profile role models of people who talk about their mental health struggles, and who have made significant contributions to their firm.’
McCann agrees that the industry has made progress, but believes there is still a long way to go.
‘I suspect that nearly every senior leader has perspectives on this, and experiences this. I’d love people to talk more about this, to allow all of us to go: okay, this is a normal part of the job and it needs to be dealt with,’ he says.
‘I think some changes have happened and we do seem to be moving in a better direction. But I’m not sure we are there yet. I’m not sure we are in a world where people can properly ask for what they need and that what they need is necessarily being provided for.’
LawCare’s confidential helpline is available for support Monday-Friday, 9am-5pm for anyone in the legal industry.
Michaela Berryman (pictured), head of legal for finance and strategic projects at insurer Howden Group Holdings, explains: ‘It’s the weight of being the person who is expected to have the answer, often on things that are just judgement calls, and there isn’t actually a clean answer. It’s a really distinct kind of isolation.’
Sleepless nights
On why this is an all-too-common experience for in-house counsel, Ardley-Price (pictured) explains: ‘I love being part of the client, rather than a service provider. But that can mean that at times it can be challenging to separate yourself from what’s happening internally, and it can be harder to say no.’
‘It’s gone from being small, one-to-one conversations, to being bigger, more open conversations – among teams, organisations and the industry, which I think has led to more supportive environments,’ says Wilson (pictured).
Competition intensified
In Iberia too, Fernando Vives, executive chairman of Garrigues (pictured), characterises the market as ‘very active and dynamic’, with ‘movement across a wide range of practice areas’.
‘There has been a huge change in the market over the last eight years because of the private equity impact,’ says Uría Menéndez managing partner Antonio Herrera (pictured). ‘The flows in the market, in terms of M&A deals, and the pricing of services have been very much influenced by the activity of private equity funds.’
Troisi (pictured) notes: ‘The UK firms that invested heavily in our market many years ago have now, in most cases, significantly downsized their presence in Italy.’
Stephen Keogh, managing partner of Irish firm William Fry (pictured), suggests the ongoing situation in the Middle East may lead to parties ‘slowing the pace of active deals’. He adds that ‘oil price volatility, wider market impacts and ongoing supply chain disruption are making it unusually difficult to value companies across many sectors’.
Horeman (pictured) cites the firm’s work alongside Hengeler on mandates for European grid operator TenneT, including securing €9.5bn in equity funding last September and advising on the €3.3bn sale of a 25.1% stake in its German business to KfW, acting for the German state.
As BonelliErede chairman Massimiliano Danusso (pictured) puts it, local knowledge remains a valuable commodity: ‘There is a strong belief that we understand the Italian market, inevitably, much better than any foreign firm coming into Italy.’
‘Our clients have gone from having a small number of people on the ground in the mid-2000s (when we established a dedicated PE M&A team in Asia) to now having hundreds,’ says Ian Ho (pictured right), co-head of Simpson Thacher’s Asia offices and its Asia private equity group, who is relocating from Hong Kong to Singapore to launch the office.
‘So you see Singapore operating as a financial services hub,’ she concludes.
Milbank corporate partner Maurice Conway (pictured right), who recently relocated from Hong Kong to Singapore, says: ‘The centre of gravity for Southeast Asia, the gateway for Southeast Asia, in a way, is Singapore now, and for India as well. Hong Kong is more seen as the gateway to the China-mainland work.’