Lawyers are experiencing burnout and a decline in well-being.
A March 2022 Bloomberg Law analysis of its quarterly Attorney Workload and Hours survey found that respondents experienced burnout 52% of the time—the first result above 50% since the survey began in 2020. In Q4 of 2021, 46% of the 614 respondents had said their well-being slightly or significantly worsened.
The way work is designed is part of a firm’s performance system. Client outcomes will always matter, and the conditions that help employees do their best work also support better service and stronger results. To strengthen employee experience, firms need to shift their mindset to this. Client outcomes will always matter, but those client-related goals cannot be achieved without employee experience at the forefront of importance.
The conditions that help employees do their best work will always directly affect service experience for clients.
how to strengthen the employee experience.
Law firms can unintentionally optimize for output and availability without fully considering the impact those expectations have on employees. Sustainable performance requires more than asking people to work harder; it requires creating an environment where expectations, processes, priorities, and communication are clear. High expectations and a strong employee experience can coexist when people have the clarity, tools, support, and accountability to deliver their best work
Prioritizing employee-company relationships means creating an environment where employees feel valued, supported, and trusted. For legal teams, that can mean setting realistic expectations, communicating priorities clearly, recognizing strong work, creating opportunities for growth, and giving employees the support they need to manage demanding workloads.
When employees understand what’s expected of them and trust that leaders have visibility into the work they’re carrying, unnecessary stress decreases. That clarity also makes it easier for teams to focus their time and attention on producing high-quality work for clients.
Firms that create clearer, more sustainable ways of working give their teams a stronger foundation for delivering consistent client service.
establishing processes and tools that support well-being.
When work is clear, supported, and well designed, legal teams can sustain high performance without avoidable burnout. Leaders play an important role in creating those conditions.
One way to reduce burnout is to identify the things creating unnecessary stress before it becomes a larger problem. Employee experience isn’t about making work “easy” or removing healthy demands of the job. Your goal is to remove unnecessary friction—unclear ownership, competing priorities, avoidable manual work, poor handoffs—so people can perform at their best.
Flexibility is part of the solution, alongside workload visibility, clear expectations, and better processes. Flexibility includes not only where employees work, but how work is assigned, prioritized, handed off, and adjusted as capacity changes. Processes should help employees complete their work efficiently rather than forcing them to rely on unnecessary workarounds or repetitive tasks.
Technology can help leaders create that visibility. Workload management dashboards give managers a clearer view of assignments, deadlines, and team bandwidth, making it easier to spot over-allocation and rebalance work before it affects employee well-being or client service.
Likewise, the right case management processes and tools can give clearer visibility into ownership, deadlines, tasks, and workflows. When teams spend less time tracking down information or navigating inefficient processes, they can spend more time on the work that requires their expertise.
Clear priorities matter just as much as the tools supporting them. Leaders should be realistic about goals, communicate changing priorities, and make expectations clear. In a profession where deadlines and demands can shift quickly, reducing ambiguity can help alleviate unnecessary stress and help employees focus on the quality of their work rather than simply the quantity.
employee experience is operational, not just an HR initiative.
Employee experience is shaped in day-to–day operating choices—workload allocation, process design, technology, prioritization, manager behavior, communications, and accountability—not only in HR programs.
Law will always be a demanding profession, but firms have significant control over the environment in which that work happens.
When leaders improve workload visibility, reduce operational friction, set clearer expectations, and design processes around the people using them, they support employee well-being and create the conditions for strong teams, more consistent client service, and sustainable business performance.
