The role of employer/educator collaboration in improving the wellbeing of lawyers

Abstract

ABSTRACT Well before Covid struck, wellbeing was already being taken seriously by organisations involved in both the education and employment of lawyers. Both groups were looking for ways to help lawyers keep themselves well, build their personal resilience and help them thrive in the profession. The crisis has added further impetus to those endeavours, and made wellbeing an even higher priority. This paper considers whether the chances of achieving those objectives would be increased if the two stakeholder groups collaborated more effectively, and what that collaboration might look like. Its focus is on the UK profession. It is written from the employer perspective, in particular that of large law firms based in the City of London. And it is primarily based on the first-hand experience of the author. It also considers the approach of other employers and the broader stakeholder community (including in the third sector), based on personal communications and published literature. It explains why those employers are taking lawyer wellbeing more seriously, what steps they have taken and which they believe are having a positive impact, and how the training of their future employees might be changed in order to help maintain their health. Its objective is to promote debate between educators and employees about what better collaboration might look like.