The Cost of Burnout to Law Firms

On the surface, burnout is a seen as a personal issue, the kind that is managed behind closed doors, in the therapist’s office, during self-care rituals. Perhaps that’s why it’s been allowed to grow into the problem it is today, attacking the legal profession and driving good, hardworking lawyers away.

In fact, burnout is not the sole responsibility of professionals suffering from terrible sleep, obsessively re-checking emails, and suddenly lacking empathy for client cases. It’s also the responsibility of employers: legal firms and organisations where the seeds of burnout are first sewn. Firms need to pay attention, beyond the wellbeing of their staff, because burnout is directly costing them. Today we’re going to explain how.

Why Burnout Is a Legal Business Threat

The European Agency for Safety and Health at Work (2014) notes that stress at the workplace and professional burnout generate annual costs amounting to approximately €620 billion for the European economy. Burnout can no longer be treated as a personal wellbeing issue. It is a material business risk with direct implications for performance, profitability, and client service. Chronic stress erodes the fundamentals of legal practice: accuracy, judgement, responsiveness, and the ability to sustain billable output.

The data reinforces just how impactful burnout of workers can be on companies. A large-scale analysis on the health and economic burden of burnout on US employers revealed that they lose between $3,999 and $20,683 per employee each year to burnout, with a 1,000-person organisation facing losses of around $5 million annually.

The commercial impact extends beyond productivity. Burnout increases the likelihood of drafting errors, missed deadlines, and impaired decision-making, creating clear professional and indemnity risks. Insurers have begun to examine mental health as a contributing factor in claims, indicating a shift in how risk is assessed across the sector. Burnout is not limited to junior lawyers; it affects associates, partners, and in-house counsel alike, all of whom tend to mask burnout well as high-functioning individuals. When those with supervisory or strategic responsibilities are depleted, there is a significant trickle-down impact on teams, culture, and client relationships.

Firms can be encouraged to reduce burnout by framing it as an operational and financial threat that requires the same level of oversight as any other risk category. This is shifting wellbeing away from being an HR initiative and towards a core component of business resilience, compliance and long-term commercial sustainability.

Core Drivers of Burnout and Declining Mental Health

Here’s a snapshot of how burnout shows up in legal firms:

These drivers undermine productivity, increase errors, weaken engagement, and accelerate staff turnover. They damage team cohesion, reduce innovation, harm client service, and widen inclusion gaps. Organisational resilience is eroded, having a significant impact on the security and longevity of the business, not to mention reputation.

Taking an engaged stance on burnout can be highly beneficial to both employees and the company as a whole. It may simply take some minor adjustments to make a significant impact. A study on burnout among lawyers and the effects of workload, latitude, and mediation examined how the structure of legal work contributes directly to exhaustion. It found that high workloads (a consistent feature of legal practice) predict higher levels of burnout. It also showed that low decision latitude (i.e., limited autonomy or control over one’s work) intensifies this effect. Lawyers who have heavy caseloads but little influence over deadlines, client expectations, or task prioritisation experience significantly higher emotional exhaustion.

The study also identified that engagement and over-engagement act as mediators. Lawyers who remain highly committed and overextend themselves in response to pressure may initially perform well, but this pattern ultimately accelerates burnout.

Let’s break down the ways occupational burnout impacts the functionality, reputation, and potential of legal firms.

#1 The Productivity and Performance Impact of Burnout

First and perhaps most obviously, burnout has a direct impact on productivity. Burned-out employees are 37% more likely to be hospitalised for mental disorders, leading to decreased performance and higher absenteeism. Emotional exhaustion reduces cognitive capacity, resulting in slower thinking, poorer memory, and an increased likelihood of errors.

As burnout deepens, disengagement becomes a secondary effect, limiting participation in mentoring, culture, and wider firm initiatives. These shifts weaken collective performance and restrict the development of junior talent. Over time, chronic burnout leads to talent stagnation, reduced innovation, and weakened organisational capability.

#2 Cultural and Structural Weaknesses of Firms

Despite wellbeing programmes growing in prevalence, 71% of lawyers report anxiety and LawCare contacts are up 24%. There is a clear gap between policy and lived experience. Common issues include:

• Wellbeing efforts being perceived as “tick-box”
• Workload pressures unchanged despite formal support
• Responsibility shifted onto individuals rather than systems

These are the kinds of contradictions that erode trust and limit engagement with initiatives. Lawyers receive mixed messages: supportive language paired with persistent cultural norms of long hours and constant availability. More needs to be done by employers to effect change in the workplace culture of burnout.

#3 Inequality and Psychological Safety Gaps

Burnout disproportionately affects those with the least influence. Multiple studies indicate that women in the legal profession are more prone to burnout than men. This is attributed to additional emotional and physical burdens, such as greater family responsibilities, higher emotional sensitivity, and anxiety. For example, one study of over 500 lawyers found that women are more susceptible to burnout due to these compounded pressures.

Studies from complex socio-political environments (e.g., Palestinian lawyers) show that gender and socio-economic responsibilities significantly influence burnout and career continuity. Women lawyers in these settings are more likely to remain in their roles, possibly due to financial obligations to their families, despite high emotional exhaustion.

These inequities impact confidence, retention, and progression. When particular groups feel less safe in raising issues, burnout goes unaddressed, and trust deteriorates. The result is a two-tier culture where risk and pressure are unevenly distributed, undermining inclusion and cohesion.

#4 Ethical and Professional Consequences of Burnout

Burnout increases the likelihood of ethical lapses and professional mistakes, weakening standards of diligence and client care. The consequences are twofold: direct financial loss and significant reputational harm. Clients interpret errors as signs of poor governance, while regulators view them as potential breaches of duty. Sustained burnout also erodes judgment and moral clarity, making it harder for lawyers to meet ethical standards under pressure.

#5 Financial and Commercial Impact

The financial and commercial impact is a significant one for employers. For a 10,000-employee company with a 15% burnout rate, burnout-related turnover can cost over $26 million annually.

Burnout generates substantial commercial risk. Presenteeism, absenteeism, and reduced capacity directly diminish billable hours and weaken financial performance. Burnout slows workflows and reduces team performance. These effects accumulate into significant financial exposure, and when unaddressed, can develop into commercial liability, reducing profitability and increasing operational and indemnity risk.

#6 The Reputational and Employer Brand Risk

The effects of burnout have an indirect impact on company reputation, where employee turnover, errors in cases, and hearsay about internal working culture all shine a light on the quality of operations. These affect employees, clients, and partners. For example, burnout leads to high absenteeism and turnover, which can damage employer reputation and brand through decreased organisational commitment and satisfaction.

The wellbeing-focused work environment of today amplifies these risks. A firm’s approach to wellbeing now directly shapes its reputation. Perceived indifference to burnout results in:

• Loss of talent to healthier competitors
• Reduced public trust
• Damaged inclusion credentials

Clients increasingly assess firms on their cultural resilience and ethical leadership, as well as technical capability. Weak wellbeing cultures therefore harm both employer brand and client relationships.

#7 The Insurer and Risk Management Perspective

Insurers now recognise mental health as a material factor in risk assessment. Recent reporting indicates insurers are increasingly viewing burnout and stress as material risk factors for professional firms. A 2025 industry alert warned of a sharp rise in complex stress-related claims, putting employers firmly on notice. In response, some insurers have reportedly withdrawn salary-continuance cover from legal firms after high volumes of mental-health claims and lengthy claim durations. Analysis by professional-services insurance specialists links stress and overload to elevated risk of errors, omissions and claims.

In the UK, employers already have a statutory duty of care under the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 (and related regulations) to assess and mitigate work-related stress and other psychosocial hazards. As insurers tighten underwriting and clients become more sensitive to risk, unmanaged burnout is now a clear liability, affecting premiums and firm risk profiles.

Strategic Recommendations for Firms

Firms must be proactive in tackling burnout at the source. Wellbeing drivers need to be genuine, not a simple box-ticking or virtue-signalling exercise. Leaders should tackle burnout as a team effort, rather than deferring to HR or assuming employees will handle it behind closed doors.

Here’s a breakdown of the most effective strategies to fight burnout and model healthy work in the legal profession, as told by mental health professionals with legal world experience.

Redesign Workloads and Resourcing

• Conduct regular workload audits to identify chronic overextension and uneven distribution across teams.
• Cap the number of concurrent complex matters per lawyer, particularly for junior staff.
• Implement “protected time” blocks to allow uninterrupted work and recovery without client intrusion.
• Develop escalation protocols that enable lawyers to flag unmanageable workloads without incurring negative repercussions.
• Build contingency resourcing (e.g., float teams, interim support, shared resource pools) to prevent crisis-level spikes.

Embed Mental Health into Leadership Development

• Require partners and supervisors to complete accredited training on psychological safety, stress risk, and supportive management.
• Introduce clear behavioural expectations for leaders, including email boundaries and modelling healthy work habits.
• Incorporate wellbeing competence into promotion and appraisal criteria for partners and senior associates.
• Provide managers with practical conversation frameworks for addressing early signs of distress.
• Run annual refreshers to ensure leaders stay up to date with best practice and legal obligations.

Expand Access to Individualised Support

• Offer confidential 1:1 therapeutic support delivered by specialists who understand legal-sector pressures.
• Provide coaching programmes for high-stress roles, new leaders, and lawyers navigating career transitions.
• Establish peer-support or mentoring schemes to provide junior lawyers with safe and accessible outlets.
• Ensure support pathways are easy to access, clearly communicated, and available during peak pressure periods.
• Tailor interventions for groups disproportionately affected by burnout, including junior lawyers, women, and underrepresented communities.

Adopt Data-Driven Wellbeing Measurement

• Track stress levels, utilisation rates, and overtime patterns at team and practice-group level.
• Analyse correlations between burnout and errors, complaints, or indemnity claims.
• Conduct quarterly pulse surveys to identify emerging cultural or workload issues promptly.
• Incorporate wellbeing metrics into board reports and risk committee agendas.
• Publish high-level wellbeing trends internally to promote transparency and accountability.

Use Technology and Automation

• Deploy AI tools to streamline admin tasks such as document review, bundling, time recording, and file management.
• Conduct impact assessments to ensure technology reduces pressure rather than accelerating pace expectations.
• Train teams to use automation effectively to avoid recreating manual processes digitally.
• Use workflow systems to smooth peaks in demand and avoid last-minute surges.
• Prioritise tools that enhance autonomy, reduce unnecessary tasks, and free cognitive bandwidth for complex work.

Build Visible Leadership Engagement

• Require senior partners to attend wellbeing training, reflective practice, or supervision sessions.
• Ensure leaders regularly join wellbeing events, check-ins, or awareness sessions, rather than delegating attendance.
• Encourage partners to communicate openly about their own boundaries, downtime, and wellbeing habits.
• Make leadership responsible for monitoring team workload patterns and intervening early.
• Publicise leadership involvement to demonstrate authenticity and reinforce cultural expectations.

Leadership, Trust, and Accountability

Leadership culture is now a defining factor in law-firm wellbeing. Evidence suggests that supportive managers increase the likelihood of lawyers reporting positive wellbeing. Yet many firms still struggle with leadership inconsistencies, and trust in senior leaders is declining. Meaningful reform requires visible leadership buy-in, accountability, and the skills to recognise and respond to distress early.

Professional leadership coaching, specialist training, and business-support programmes accelerate this change for firms that receive structured guidance to build psychologically safe, high-trust cultures. Therapeutic supervision helps leaders reflect on pressures influencing their behaviour, while individual therapy supports those carrying the emotional burden of casework or management.

TCC provides support to strengthen this foundation, explicitly tailored to organisations: their leadership teams, HR, and appointed mental health officers. We work extensively with organisations, not only individuals, designing targeted, sector-specific interventions that help leadership teams model healthy work and drive sustainable cultural change. Get in touch with us today if you want to start making positive change and reversing the impact of burnout.