The Report

High level thoughts/rough notes from Aaron’s Initial Review:

  1. Participants
    1. 7,305 participants, of which 2,806 were in Ontario
    2. Not everyone in the study was a lawyer - some QC notaries and some ON paralegals. But 6,364 of 7,305 were lawyers
  2. Timing
    1. The following sections portray the key indicators of mental health and wellness among Canadian legal professionals at the time of data collection in the autumn of 2021, following the third wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in Canada
  3. 59.4% of legal professionals experienced psychological distress
    1. Higher for women, people between the ages of 26-35, people with less than 10 years of experience, people with disabilities, LGBT
  4. Some powerful quotes on page 33 and 45 and 52 and 60 and 77 and 100 (etc. just ctrl f "the voice of legal professionals" for more quotes)
    1. "I really love the law and (mostly enjoy the practice of it). But the profession is broken. The pressure to meet billable hours and the expectation to be constantly available to senior lawyers have caused me serious mental health problems. I am exhausted all the time and feel like I can't get through a regular work day. Yet, my health insurance barely covers the medication I've had to go on just to be able to do this job (first time in my life I've ever been diagnosed with mental health problems and prescribed antidepressants). The insurance also covered about only two sessions of therapy. [...] I cannot afford proper therapy on my salary. The profession is all talk: firms do not actually care about the mental health of its employees. I am DESPERATE to get a job outside of law, or at least outside of the firm structure, but I feel like I'm trapped. My heart is also broken that I can't practice in the field I actually enjoy, because the legal profession demands so much of its lawyers and it is mentally and physically destroying me"
    2. If this survey had been taken about 3 years ago, my answers would have been very different. Suicide was becoming more and more of a possibility. I had been hospitalized a number of times due to substance use, and that almost killed me as well. Today everything is pretty much on the level but yeah, this profession almost literally killed me many times over."
    3. "[…] Having said all that, this job takes so much of your life and energy - the expectations for perfection and immediate responses are crushing - that I would not recommend it to others. Thanks for doing this survey."
    4. "Few things have been as deleterious to my mental health and wellness as the billable hour. Coupled with the rampant open discrimination and arrogance of members of the profession, being a lawyer, my childhood dream, turned out to be completely unappealing. At one point I was crying on my drive to work, and then crying again on my drive home from work, while contemplating just ramming my car into a tree just so I could have a break
    5. "If I am suffering from exhaustion due to understaffing and an increased workload, asking me to find better work-life balance or to "perform" more self-care is disingenuous when the workload is not being ameliorated in any way. All the massages in the world will not change the fact that the workload exceeds what is reasonable."
    6. "The most serious issue that I have with the profession is that we are constantly bombarded with resources for mental health, but absolutely zero effort is made to deal with what I view to be the number one causative factor of mental health issues, being that myself and my colleagues are completely overworked. If my workload was reduced by 10-20%, I would feel a significant reduction in stress. Instead of reducing workloads, my firm is constantly increasing it and increasing the salary or bonus to reflect this. Never once have I been asked if I would wanted a reduced workload. I would take a reduced salary for a reduced workload. The firm provides perverse incentives for us to work more, while at the same time spouting nonsense about how they are there to support our mental health. If the profession actually cared about mental health, the firms would be working relentlessly to reduce the workload, but absolutely no effort has been made in this regard. My firm has talked at length about how well it is doing financially, yet in my group all of the associates are working hours well in excess of our target hours. Instead of hiring enough people to make this manageable, my firm is throwing money at us. At a certain point, an increased salary is meaningless to me. What's the point of making more money if I have absolutely zero time or energy to enjoy it."
  5. Some ugly stats
    1. 43.6% of articling students had moderate to severe depression symptoms - that is nuts!
    2. 35.6% of lawyers had anxiety symptoms (and 49.8% of articling students)
    3. 24.4% of lawyers had suicidal thoughts since they began practicing law, rising to 61.9% of non-binary lawyers (small sample of 42 people, but still - that is terrible)
      1. In Canada, just over 11.8% of population has had suicidal thoughts over their lifetime. [so lawyers are more than 2x]
    4. 55.8% of lawyers felt burnout - that is NOT normal
    5. 67% for people my age (31-35) and for women under 40
    6. 55% of legal professionals have NOT sought help on dealing with stress (page 55)
      1. 47% of people said there were times they didnt ask for help even though they needed it
      2. Why not? [yikes]
        1. When we consider the reasons why these legal professionals did not seek help, more than half (55.8%) responded that it was only temporary and that it would pass. Furthermore, as illustrated in Graph 5, 37.6% did not have the energy to engage in such a process, 26.3% lacked the time and 23.2% lacked financial resources. In addition, 23.2% were unsure whether professional help was appropriate.
    7. Only 26% of people have used EAP
      1. Biggest fears (page 58) - stuff will be shared with law society/regulator; dont believe can help them; dont know enough about the program. BAD!
  6. Billable hour impact
    1. By examining the impact of billable hours on the health of professionals, it can also be observed that it is not so much the number of billable hours to be achieved that is problematic, but rather the pressure felt by the professional to satisfy the goals and expectations of their organization.
    2. Key stats on page 107
    3. Described as "corrosive" by the American Bar Association (2002), the billable hours system has indirect consequences for organizations. Indeed, a research report filed in Australia shows that in this type of system,"qualities such as customer service attitude, customer retention rates, creativity and innovation, willingness to delegate, mentoring and teaching skills, and practise development activities are all diminished in value because of the emphasis placed upon production of billable hours" (Kendall, 2011, p. 13).
  7. Parenting - starts on page 156
    1. Professionals whose fear of having a family was related to their work obligations were then surveyed on the reasons for this fear. Three main categories of apprehension emerged from the analysis of the responses provided by 1,399 participants: 1) apprehension regarding work–family conflict, 2) apprehension regarding the reaction in the workplace, and 3) apprehension regarding the potential consequences on the career
    2. "Being a mother is a stressor that just doesn't get addressed. The legal community expects everyone to work as if they are single young men - my career impacts my children's lives in ways that tear me up inside. I did this for them, but sometimes I feel like they would have been better off with a smaller home and less money, but more me."