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When I was in my first year of university, my political science professor, a kind man who knew of my singular focus and career ambition in The Law, gave me a present. It was a book titled “The Destruction of Young Lawyers”; its cover had a photo of a suited man in a corpse-like pose on the ground. Indignant and offended, I glanced briefly at the book before boxing it away, along with any momentary trepidations it gave me about the journey I was embarking on.

I found myself thinking of that book these many years later, ten years into my career, most of it spent in Big Law. I found the book on Amazon; the first lines of the book’s description read, “Young lawyers are morosely unhappy by every conceivable standard. They arrive at our law schools brimming with enthusiasm, but a decade later they are reporting staggering levels of anxiety, drug addiction and depression.”

The book was published in 2005. We are now nearly 20 years on and I believe the book was either ahead of its time and/or things have only gotten worse.

I was speaking to a lawyer recently a few years into her career. She studied law at university and consequently has many lawyer friends. She told me that nearly every lawyer she knows wants to leave the law – not only leave law firms (though that is a large percentage), but leave the law entirely; many dream of moving in-house in order to move to a non-legal role.

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She and I pondered the reasons for why they want to leave. Things that came to mind were things like how for many years it is a career of little true ownership or independence given the entrenched hierarchy of partners (or general counsels) providing ultimate sign off or judgment, yet at the same time being one of high stakes consequences for making mistakes. Another idea was how during the pandemic many young lawyers who live with non-lawyer housemates saw, due to working from home, the extent to which non-lawyers are able to enjoy their lives outside of work, rather than always be working. Another was the idea that “being a good lawyer” seems to translate, among everything else, to constant availability and connectedness and, therefore, constant stress.

The conversation reminded me of another I’d recently had with a lawyer who is a senior in-house counsel. She felt her company’s culture was intense, often seemingly requiring urgent delivery. She reflected on it by saying, “But, everyone is a high performer so I guess it makes sense.” It made me wonder: must high performance be at odds with a relaxed (or more relaxed) work culture?

In light of all of this, the question I pose to our profession is: Do we simply accept that this is the way it is and the way it always will be, that this is what it means to be a lawyer?

No, I argue. I argue we don’t accept it. I argue we all agree to change it, for ourselves and for everyone who comes after us.

I focus here on two shifts that I believe could help our profession.

One, It is okay not to know. I believe there is tremendous, unjustified pressure on lawyers to always know the “right answer” as based on law. I remember a few years ago being at a deal team meeting attended by other capital markets lawyers, investment bankers and our respective client, senior executives at a multinational corporation. A question about the transaction was raised (as I recall about how to present something within regulatory restrictions) and directed at one of the partners. He paused before saying, “I am not up to date on that; I’ll look into it.” I believe there was a noticeable discomfort in the room: how could he not know? I remember feeling shocked, though in a positive way. Perhaps if he, a well-respected and experienced partner, does not know all the answers, it was okay for me not to always know either. It was an encouraging thought, but I suspected an incorrect one.

Flash forward to a few months ago; I was reading a book called Let it Be Easy by author Susie Moore. She tells a story about how she casually walked into a Miami beach bar while out walking her dog and ordered a drink; as the bartender put the drink down on the counter, he asked for her membership card. Membership card? She had no idea it was a members-only establishment. In response to her mortified face, the bartender told her, “That’s okay, you didn’t know.” As I read these words, tears immediately began streaming down my face. I believe it was the release of so many years of anxiety and self-imposed pressure to always know. As Moore writes, sometimes you just don’t freaking know. And what’s more, it’s not your job to always know; you’re not Google! I believe embracing this perspective and understanding is a way to release all of us from so much of the stress of being a lawyer. It’s okay not to always know, and we back ourselves to have the resourcefulness, engenuity and commitment to try to find out. I also believe that feeling freer to “not know” has the added benefit of opening up more space for creativity, innovation and ideation, enabling lawyers to make even greater contributions than they already do.

Two, Never, ever mistake rest for weakness. Looking back, I find it unfathomable now some of the consecutive hours, and then consecutive days, I and my peers worked, without question or consideration. It feels like it was superhuman, and not in a good way -- as in, we were expected not to be human. We were, instead, expected to be work machines. I think this dynamic is about more than the output being produced for clients. I think it reflects a greater cultural or industry mindset around intense, lengthy work being a proxy for strength. I challenge this narrative. No longer should we believe the model of strength is the lawyer who works 12 hours straight without stopping; rather, our model of strength is the lawyer who takes breaks, spends time doing things outside of work that they enjoy, and can switch off and simply be still. There is strength in that stillness.

Dr. Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, an author and expert on working better, smarter and less, wrote an article for Psyche entitled, “How to rest well.” In it, he teaches us that rest is in fact a skill and we should take it seriously. As studied and evidenced in neuroscience and psychology, rest gives us the mental space to cultivate new insights and stimulate our creativity. Without rest, we cannot think, and thinking is, of course, a lawyer’s main skill. Rest, therefore, also makes us better lawyers. It also enables us to cope with challenges. For all of these reasons, rest for lawyers is a foundational part of every week, ideally every day, and definitely should also be practised by taking holidays during which we are completely and utterly out of contact. Let’s give ourselves and each other permission to occasionally shed our identities and responsibilities as lawyers and run free. Let’s find other parts of ourselves we didn’t know existed, allow them to flourish, and bring our whole, authentic selves back with us into work.

With these and other shifts, I believe together we can create a new legal profession, a healthier and happier one. It is one in which we as lawyers need not be superheros but rather, simply, humans.

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