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By Adam Carvalho – Career Coach at the Carvalho Consultancy and former partner at Farrer & Co

Our aim at the Carvalho Consultancy is to support lawyers in enjoying and thriving in their careers and lives. This can involve helping clients to re-think how they view and relate to their work.

Lawyers are often ambitious people who enjoy achieving – we want to be challenged and part of something meaningful. It can be immensely satisfying to feel productive and capable, and that you are learning each day. However, the volume, complexity and nature of working as a Lawyer can start to feel toxic and ultimately affect our enjoyment of life.

Many of our clients come to us saying that they are exhausted, worried about burnout, stuck and their lives outside law are being negatively affected. At heart they know that “something has to change”, but how? I wanted to share some of the frequent challenges we see around toxic productivity along with some of the solutions that we have seen working.

So, what are the issues we encounter?

Here are 5 things that crop up frequently when talking to lawyers about what makes “productive” work life feel toxic.

1. The Six Minute Mentality. This is a mentality that lawyers develop. The feeling of having to make use of every minute. We have to meet chargeable and BD targets, show value to the client and then make as much use of our free time as possible.

    

2. Lack of internal support. Juniors dealing with issues without the guidance and support they feel they need. Senior associates and partners lacking junior support or feeling isolated. Both things that can cause people to end up feeling ground down by the job.

    

3. Lack of autonomy. We want to learn and grow in our jobs, and to be given meaningful tasks which we can complete. Many lawyers feel disempowered by micro-management. Clearly there is a need for supervision, quality control or coordination, but this needs to be provided within a framework of “supported autonomy”

    

4. Lack of clarity. Professional firms are often managed in a slightly ambiguous and opaque way. Even more so since people have been working from home and we can’t see one another’s body language as regularly. Insecurities and struggles can go unnoticed much easier. Juniors need honest and constructive feedback and more senior colleagues need to feel plugged into a community and the decision making within a firm.

    

5. Power and powerlessness. Lawyers can often feel stuck in dynamics and patterns, wanting to see change but feeling unable to make that change happen. It can feel like a paradox, sometimes, that lawyers who are so assertive and proactive in their work for clients feel powerlessness about asserting their own needs.

The Solutions

There has historically been a sense that wellbeing was a bonus, an “add-on”, and that individual lawyers were responsible for managing their own wellbeing. Today there is an increasing sense of recognition that the profession as a whole, firms and lawyers need to take joint responsibility. There’s an acknowledgment of the systemic issues at play.

While there is a great deal that firms can do (and that many are doing), our focus in this article is on what individuals can do themselves if they feel that productivity has become toxic. If you are craving a change, the following questions may provide some initial food for thought:

1. Clarity. The starting point in making changes is to be clear about the issue. This is easier to figure out when in conversation with another, if possible. Try to think back and look at when work started to feel too much, and how consistently it has felt that way since then. What have the effects been on your physical and mental health, relationships, interests?

    

2. Power. Part of the process of taking back some control is recognising that we all make choices every day. If you simply let things continue as they currently are, then the likelihood is that things will remain the same. On a scale of 1 to 10, how motivated are you to make changes this year?

    

3. What do you want, really? A key part of the coaching process is exploring and clarifying what each client really wants. An interesting thing to do is to ask yourself: If I could snap my fingers and have the perfect life and work in (say) two years’ time, how would it look – and how would it feel? Then work backwards and think about what small changes you could make to try to work towards achieving that life and work situation.

    

4. Unconscious drivers / insecurities. Often, we have internal ‘drivers’ such as a felt need to ‘be strong’, ‘be perfect’, or ‘try harder’. There could be a central fear – about money or losing ‘territory’ or ending up without any work. It can be challenging but very rewarding to unearth these and to see that, with clarity, we can choose whether we are driven by them or not.

    

5. Structural changes. As you clarify where you really want to go, the question then arises about how it is going to work in the reality of the workplace. It can be helpful to step back and look objectively at issues such as your case load, whether you have the support you need, the options you have for making changes to these. Are there issues festering and causing stress – if so, again, what are the options for addressing these?

    

6. Support. Finally, we all need support to make changes, especially now that we spend more time in our home offices. What support do you need to make changes? This can be as simple as someone to talk to and to hold you accountable for moving in your chosen direction, or it can be broader. If you need additional support, what are your options for getting it?

The issue of toxic productivity is a difficult one and I’m not suggesting for a second that there is a silver bullet, but my experience from working with clients is that within a relatively short period of time you can make far reaching changes to your approach to work.

As a starting point, take some time working out where you want to go and how you will get there – and how you can be a part of the move to more sustainable working practices. Take your career strategy in hand and it could pay dividends.

Further reading

For more information on this topic, I recorded a podcast with LawCare during which we had a wide-ranging discussion of issues related to toxic productivity:

Lexis Webinars are also partnering with The Carvalho Consultancy to provide webinars on therapy, coaching and training, click for the webinars.

About us

The Carvalho Consultancy is an award-winning therapy, coaching and training agency. We support lawyers with the ups and downs of life and the job, providing practical, insightful support. And we should know – we’re lawyers ourselves!  Website:

Connect with us on LinkedIn: search for Adam Carvalho / Annmarie Carvalho