Ask most people in the profession what makes a good lawyer, and you’ll hear the same answers repeated back to you. A strong work ethic. An ability to thrive under pressure. Commitment to clients. Attention to detail.

But let’s reframe the picture: what does that tell us about legal culture? It means that lawyers work hard, under great pressure, don’t like letting people down, and can’t afford to get things wrong.

Add to that the stressors that come with the culture of the job itself – competitive and adversarial environments; billable hour requirements; expectations of constant availability – and you have a perfect recipe for burnout.

It is perhaps unsurprising, then, that a report in 2024 found that mental health challenges were reducing productivity in law firms by 19%, and costing large firms tens of millions every year.

Resilience in law isn’t a luxury: it’s a necessity.

Ticking the wellbeing box

Investment in wellbeing in law firms is increasing, with approximately three-quarters now having specific wellbeing initiatives in place, ranging from massages to weekend retreats. So why isn’t that translating to better mental health for lawyers?

The same 2024 report found that, increased wellbeing initiatives notwithstanding, 30% of lawyers still did not trust leaders at their firm to make decisions that prioritise employee mental health and wellbeing. The report is scathing about short-term strategies, concluding: “box-ticking approaches to wellbeing aren’t enough, and solely placing the responsibility on employees to manage their mental health is neither sustainable nor effective.”

Building resilience, then, is like training for a marathon: it’s not something you can do just once, it’s not something you can do at the last minute, and it’s better not done alone. It must be done consistently, over time, and ideally well in advance of the occasion when it is most likely to be relied upon. A well-being retreat, while certainly appealing, isn’t likely to do much lasting good for building resilience (and especially if, in between meditation sessions, participants are sneakily checking their emails).

How to build a sustainable, high-performance culture

We know that high-performance isn’t at odds with wellbeing: if the stats above show us anything, it’s that performance suffers when wellbeing does. Focus on high performance leads to burnout. Focus on resilience leads to high performance.

The first step, as our medical friends would have it, is to do no harm. There are certain parts of legal culture that make stress inevitable, but that’s not to say that firms themselves should add to it. It’s crucial to identify elements of culture within firms that are unnecessarily increasing stress, and address them: be that impossible billing targets, lack of internal support structures, or that senior partner rumoured to be the real-life inspiration for Malcolm Tucker.

As to positive action to foster a culture of resilience, the following have all been shown to significantly improve wellbeing:

• Normalising failure: senior lawyers who talk openly about setbacks as learning opportunities, rather than personal flaws, implicitly encourage that behaviour in others. Sharing stories about overcoming struggles helps to normalise the challenges, as well as providing practical insight into how to overcome them.
• Strong internal support networks: internal communities – whether that be mentorship programmes, neurodiversity networks, buddy systems or running clubs – are well known for increasing staff retention, but they have also been shown to have positive effects on individual wellbeing.
• Celebrating (wider) achievements: public recognition of achievements including persistence, innovation and positive coping strategies – rather than a focus simply on results – remind lawyers that their work makes a difference.
• Continuous feedback: build a culture where conversations about wellbeing are the norm, not something that happens in a seminar hall once a year. Surveys, one-to-one check-ins, and water-cooler chats all provide the opportunity for feedback on how a firm’s resilience strategies are working. And of course, taking action on the feedback is vital.
• Protect rest: a system that prioritises wellbeing shouldn’t just be about working hours; the fetishisation of ‘commitment culture’ needs to end. Enabling true rest away from work is vital: there should be clear systems in place to make sure that those on leave are only contacted in a genuine emergency.  Deviation from such systems should be extremely unusual.

Ultimately, while a basket of fruit in the breakout room might sound like a good way to tick a wellbeing box, without first addressing a firm’s internal culture, employing short-term wellbeing measures are like trying to dry your face while you’re underwater. Resilience needs to be a consistent practice to make a real difference; it needs to start long before crisis point; and it needs to be encouraged, supported, and modelled by senior leadership. Only then should we start browsing the spa brochures.