General counsel should rethink legal resourcing to relieve pressure on hard working legal teams that risk losing talent amidst the ongoing ‘great resignation’.
The great resignation is a term coined in the immediate aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic to describe the mass of professionals leaving their roles. Exhaustion and the need to step back from stress, the desire to spend time with family, devote time to passion projects or even to retire earlier than planned, are among the common reasons cited for doing so. There has also been a sense that many people are looking for new roles which give them a greater sense of purpose.
Whilst most employers showed great resilience and support for their staff members during the tremendously difficult and stressful period of lockdowns and uncertainty, some workplaces failed to adapt and show their human side. Some places of work have pushed people back into the office too quickly or not listened to their staff about how they’d like to work going forward – which can feel especially galling when workers have proven in many sectors that working from home can be a success and, in some cases, even more productive.
It is perhaps not a surprise in this context that there are signs the great resignation’ is not slowing down.
According to figures published recently by the CIPD Good Work Index, 6.5 million British workers, or a fifth of the country’s total workforce, will be looking for new opportunities in the next year, citing pay and quality of employment – including better benefits and work-life balance – as the main drivers. The great resignation appears likely to continue to be driven by the younger generation in particular – a survey of ‘Generation Z’ adults around the world found that 40% of respondents intend to quit their jobs in the next two years.
It’s been said that the pandemic hasn’t necessarily created new trends, but merely accelerated existing ones. This is certainly true in the legal sector.
In-house legal teams are feeling this trend particularly keenly. Recent statistics show that 70% of in-house lawyers are “inclined to leave”. According to the Future Ready Lawyer Survey 2022 from Wolters Kluwer, 86% of in-house lawyers also said that the great resignation has had a significant impact on their legal department.
Many in-house lawyers are looking for an employer which supports hybrid working, a better work life balance and a culture which recognises and places value on mental health and wellbeing. The vast majority of lawyers were busy, and the sector was generally buoyant during the pandemic, but now those lawyers are feeling burnt-out. For in-house lawyers, their workload was often even heavier than normal, as businesses had to adjust to remote working en masse, in addition to dealing with disrupted supply chains and the many issues related to Covid-19 restrictions. Now those lawyers are drained, stressed, and after a period where their home and work life boundaries were blurred, many want a new start.
Salaries have been rocketing in the City in an attempt to retain talent and we continue to see a variety of initiatives from businesses to either tempt staff back into the office and/or help improve wellbeing, such as free breakfasts and yoga lessons.
However, it’s been said that the pandemic hasn’t necessarily created new trends, but merely accelerated existing ones. This is certainly true in the legal sector, which has increasingly seen a shift in recent years related to the evolving and growing role of the GC in a business and the level of intense workload in-house legal teams are subjected to.
The impact of the great resignation will be felt for a long time and the workload isn’t likely to lessen for in-house teams in the meantime, especially with an expected recession on the horizon. Recruitment continues to be a challenge. We instead expect to see a rise in different delivery models and outsourcing for legal teams.
Managed legal services is one solution that, for example, can support the overhaul of day-to-day processes to improve efficiencies and crucially, free up in-house time to concentrate on the most pressing issues of the day. We expect it will continue to grow in popularity.
Likewise, the use of freelance lawyers to plug gaps left by departing staff is also likely to continue to grow as a solution to this problem. Even if an in-house team has sufficient budget and time to recruit new lawyers there will inevitably be periods of under-resource. Contract lawyers are often used to help provide support – either on a specific project such as a merger or acquisition, or to work on the day-to-day functioning of the businesses’ legal department. This flexible resource provides a panacea, especially when the contract lawyer in question can be specifically matched to the type of work and doesn’t need as much of a settling in period.
It’s unlikely we will know the true impact of the great resignation for a few more years. In the meantime, we’re likely to see more change in the legal sector as lawyers continue to consider their options and law firms and businesses evolve their models and working days to match the expectations, wants and needs of a shifting workforce.
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