Lawyers must face ‘cold, hard reality’ of their limits
A discussion on changing the culture of the legal profession has heard that passion and conviction in lawyers can also lead to burnout.
At the Law Society Psychological Services’ Well Within the Law Festival (3 September), Stephen Collins of the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission (IHREC) spoke about the challenges for lawyers working with vulnerable people in the human-rights area, where motivation was high.
He warned that that passion and conviction could also lead to a risk of burnout and frustration, as lawyers came up against the “cold, hard reality” that they were not going to be able to change things overnight.
Collins said that IHREC had been thinking about how younger solicitors could pursue a career in human-rights work “in a supportive and realistic way”.
“It is very much about trying to aim for the culture you want in your office,” he stated, adding that drawing on community was also important, citing many “meaningful” conversations with other lawyers involved in the same area.
‘This is absurd’
The theme of the festival, ‘This is absurd’, was aimed at providing an opportunity to reflect on what has been normalised and imagine what a more sustainable legal culture might look like.
Almost 500 people attended the event – including trainees and solicitors from a wide range of small and large firms.
The first step in any such change in legal culture involved creating psychological safety, said Assistant Chief State Solicitor Ciara Murphy, speaking on one the same panel discussions.
‘Take action’ on ideas
Murphy told the audience that steps towards reforming any culture needed to take place well before any actual change.
Creating psychological safety, she said, would give solicitors the courage and motivation to speak up, knowing that their ideas and concerns would be listened to.
“Get the environment right, so you get the ideas for change in the first place,” she stated.
The second step, Murphy added, was to act on these ideas and concerns.
“If someone comes up with an idea that isn't fully formed, you can either spend months talking about it and trying to see around every corner, or you can trial it in one small area of the office, maybe in one team, or for a short, defined period of time,” she stated.
Tangible results
Tom Noonan (chief operations officer, RDJ) spoke about his firm’s journey towards changing its culture, which included a pilot partnership with Law Society Psychological Services.
“The best thing to do is find a framework to guide you,” he said, adding that it was beneficial to get advice from external parties.
“Getting tangible results helps, because people will buy in more if they think they are being listened to, and that their voice means something,” Noonan stated.
He told the event that wellness was an agenda item at all the firm’s management, partner, and team meetings, as well as being a key factor of RDJ’s people policies and procedures.
‘Dig where you stand’
Jane O’Sullivan (Community Law and Mediation) quoted Bernadette Devlin McAliskey’s words at her organisation’s 50th anniversary, where she told the organisation to “dig where you stand”.
She told the audience that lawyers had a duty to defend the rule of law in the small ways that they could.
She agreed with Collins that the profession needed to be able to kind of make sure that there were “people coming behind us” to do that work, adding that it was importance to “create a space to be open with each other”.
Aligning values
Asked by moderator Dr Dale Whelehan about how they found satisfaction in their professional lives, Murphy rejected the negative idea of work “eating away at the self”.
“If your own values align with where you're working, and you really feel like there is something worthwhile in your in your endeavour, then you get way more out of it than you put in,” she told the event.