Whose “wellbeing” are we talking about? Culture change and the politics of the legal profession’s wellness turn

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ABSTRACT Recent years have witnessed growing concern internationally in the topic of wellbeing and mental health across the legal community, an interest reflected in the emergence of a multitude of research studies, policy initiatives, guidelines, networks and reports (e.g. International Bar Association 2021; LawCare 2021). Within recent studies of lawyer wellbeing there has been a growing call to change the culture of law in order to create mentally healthy workplaces. Yet all too often it is unclear what culture change might involve within specific workplace contexts. This paper presents a socio-legal critique of the law's ‘wellbeing turn' and interrogates the underlying conceptualisation and politics of wellbeing in these debates. Following Soon et al. (2023) it suggests there has been insufficient nuanced consideration of the contextual influences that have shaped the wellbeing dynamic law within discrete workplace contexts. It explores how a distinctive kind of ‘wellbeing problem' has emerged across different areas of the law and, grounding the law's turn to wellbeing in a wider social, economic and political context, brings to light questions and concerns about wellbeing, professional identity and commitment relating to ‘life in the law’ in the social justice sector all too often side-stepped in debates about lawyer wellbeing.