Surviving the summer

Earlier this year, ChronicleLaw ran an article on the leading causes of burnout within the legal profession and how this differs from other high-stress professions. Amongst the key considerations in Dr Sykes’ piece were: the long working hours required; the mindset of lawyers themselves; and a lack of proper work-life balance.

With the summer fast approaching, many legal professionals would be forgiven for proceeding with a little apprehension. Team absences over the summer months often exacerbate problems for legal teams, meaning that far too often lawyers find themselves eating into their already fragile work-life balance. However, it doesn’t have to be this way. Below are three things that General Counsels can do to help their legal teams survive the summer without succumbing to burnout.

1. Consultants for cover

One of the most important ways of addressing burnout is to prioritise rest and promote a healthy work-life balance. Being able to enjoy a break over the summer is a really good way of doing this, whether it’s going overseas to somewhere sunny, or just enjoying time at home with friends and family.

If one member of the team is out on holiday at a time, this can usually be easier to manage, certainly for bigger in-house teams. However, if several members are off at the same time, for example during school holidays, these absences can put increased strain on those who remain at work.

Bringing interim consultants into your team is a good way of managing holiday absences without your stakeholders or your colleagues bearing the brunt of this. Our Flexible Services bench has a wide variety of experienced lawyers from a broad range of sectors that can be deployed quickly in to busy in-house legal teams, so we’re well equipped to support you in this way. You don’t have to limit the use of consultants to short-term cover though. Having continuity in your legal team is also important and so what might start as holiday cover often leads to an ongoing arrangement. This provides you and your team with access to additional resource when its most needed, and without the need to take on permanent additional headcount.

2. Additional paralegal support

Even without bringing annual leave into the equation, business doesn’t stop over the summer months, and neither does the role of in-house teams in supporting the business and strategic objectives of their organisation. The temptation might be to try and squeeze more from less, but this will inevitably lead to inefficient working and a lack of capacity as already stretched senior members of the team get sucked into lower value tasks.

One way of combatting this is to support senior members of the legal team with one or more high quality paralegals. Drafting agreements, reviewing documents and liaising with stakeholders are all important tasks, but they don’t necessarily all need to be done by lawyers. Where workloads peak within the legal team (for example upon taking on a new project or juggling a new piece of regulatory change), supplementing your in-house counsel with paralegals can allow you to get the most out of your resources and allocate legal work to the right level of professional.

3. Embrace new working practices

Finally, it’s worth looking at your working practices across the summer and beyond to help your legal team avoid burnout. Employees today are placing a high premium on work-life balance, with 82% considering it a critical factor in choosing a workplace. We have noticed this trend amongst our community of flexible lawyers with many choosing to become consultants because they wanted more autonomy over the way in which they work. This trend is emphasised within younger segments of the workforce: 43% of  employees under the age of 35 said that they would quit their job if they were required to return to fully in-person work.

Meeting these employee expectations can help legal teams prevent talented in-house lawyers from moving into consultancy. Remote and hybrid working models can go a long way towards promoting positive working practices and will be a key part of keeping your legal team happy over the summer months and beyond.

To find out more about how our Flexible Services offering can help your legal team to survive the summer, get in touch and see how we can support.