I have practised law for 56 years, and I still love what I do. Much of that satisfaction comes from being an adviser to clients whose trust has developed over decades. Helping them think through a difficult decision remains work I find worthwhile.
My circumstances differ from those of a younger lawyer carrying debt and supporting a family. Nevertheless, I reject the assumption that misery is the unavoidable price of a legal career. If your working life is harming you, you owe yourself a serious examination of what you can change.
When work is making us unhappy or unwell, we need to ask a difficult question: what part of the way we are living and practising are we prepared to change?
Understanding the problem and changing it are different tasks. Your employer may be responsible for unreasonable conditions. You still have decisions to make about your response. Identifying who caused the problem does not relieve you of responsibility for considering your alternatives and acting on them.
What the research tells us
A recent ABA Journal article reported troubling findings from an Illinois survey about lawyer stress, workloads, substance use and gambling. It also described fear of professional repercussions as a barrier to seeking help.[1]
The Canadian evidence is equally sobering. A national project surveyed 7,305 legal professionals in 2021. Its 2024 consolidated report recalls a finding of burnout among 55.9% of participating legal practitioners and draws on 78 subsequent interviews.[2] These findings concern participants; the researchers caution that their survey cannot establish cause and effect.
The report identifies oppressive workloads, long hours, emotional demands and conflict between work and personal life as important risks. The ABA’s well-being toolkit likewise emphasizes workplace conditions, while encouraging lawyers to assess their own needs, values and goals.[3]
The research establishes the seriousness of the problem. My argument concerns our response: whatever the external pressures, we must examine the decisions still within our power. We should expect employers to change harmful practices while taking responsibility for the changes we can implement ourselves.
What are you accepting at work
Consider the firm that speaks warmly about balance but rewards those who are always available, never refuse an assignment and continue working through every holiday. Its actual expectations deserve more attention than its slogans.
If that describes your workplace, what evidence do you have that it will change? Have you raised a specific concern and asked for a specific adjustment? What happened when you did? If the answer has repeatedly been no, how long will you continue to plan your life around a different answer?
Leaving may involve reduced income, lost advancement or disruption to family life. Those costs must be weighed against the costs of staying. Have you actually investigated other employment, or simply assumed that nothing else would work? “I cannot leave” and “I am unwilling to accept the consequences of leaving” require different responses. Be precise about which describes your position.
A difficult answer is sometimes: I dislike these conditions, but I want the compensation and status attached to them. Acknowledge that bargain. Then decide whether you still wish to make it, and for how long. Money and prestige have value, but what are you prepared to sacrifice for them?
You may decide to stay temporarily while paying down debt or finding another position. Give that plan a timetable and begin carrying it out. A deliberate period of preparation is different from postponing the decision indefinitely.
If you leave because the firm’s demands are unsustainable, consider telling it why, clearly and professionally. Use judgment about timing and circumstances. Management should understand when its expectations cost it a lawyer. You need not secure its agreement before deciding that those expectations no longer suit your life.
If you lead a firm, apply the same scrutiny to yourself. What happens to the lawyer who declines another file because the existing workload is already excessive? Your response reveals more about your commitment to well-being than a wellness presentation does.
What does your lifestyle require
Money matters. Housing, debt repayment, dependants and future security are substantial responsibilities. They require a realistic plan, including an honest distinction between what you must support and what you have become accustomed to enjoying.
Still, financial necessity deserves to be tested against actual numbers. How much income supports genuine obligations? How much supports a standard of living that has grown to absorb every increase in earnings?
A larger mortgage, more expensive holidays and the expectation of appearing successful can make a high income feel indispensable. If maintaining those commitments requires work you find intolerable, the commitments themselves belong in the discussion.
Take out the figures. Identify what is fixed, what can change now and what could change over a year. Calculate what a less demanding role would actually mean after taxes, benefits and expenses. You may discover that the financial obstacle is substantial. You may also discover that you have been treating an untested assumption as a permanent prohibition.
What would you willingly give up to recover time, health or enjoyment? If the answer is nothing, confront the inconsistency between wanting a different life and refusing to change the commitments that sustain the present one.
Whose expectations are you meeting
Financial pressure can also arise within a relationship. Perhaps you and your partner have built a life around an income that is becoming too costly to sustain. Perhaps expectations have never been discussed because each assumes the other would reject a change.
Have you described what your working life is costing you, clearly enough for your partner to understand? Have you asked what both of you would be willing to change?
That conversation must run both ways. Your partner may be carrying responsibilities and anxieties you have overlooked. You may be attributing demands to your family that actually come from your own need to succeed. An honest discussion can expose either possibility.
Where a partner does insist on an income or lifestyle that is harming your health, that conflict needs to be addressed, with assistance where appropriate. Avoiding the conversation is itself a decision. Working harder indefinitely leaves the underlying expectations intact.
Does this work suit you
Legal ability does not mean every kind of legal work will suit your temperament. An able lawyer may find continuous confrontation draining, dislike managing employees or struggle with a practice built around urgent interruptions. Another may thrive in those circumstances.
Ask which parts of your work give you satisfaction and which consistently exhaust you. Could a different practice area, employer, role or working arrangement improve the fit? Before concluding that you must abandon law, investigate whether you need to change how you practise it.
Also examine the expectations you impose on yourself. Does every task receive the same level of attention regardless of its significance? Have you become indispensable by refusing to delegate? Do you accept an unreasonable request because disappointing someone feels worse than sacrificing another evening?
Those habits may have helped you advance. That does not oblige you to retain them unchanged. If your own expectations are making the work unsustainable, changing employers may leave that part of the problem untouched. Take responsibility for examining how you work as well as where you work.
What are you doing to get through the day
Your methods of coping deserve the same candour. If drinking, drug use or gambling has become something you conceal, defend or rely on to get through the week, bring that concern to someone qualified to help assess it.
Depression, addiction and other illness require appropriate assessment and treatment; they are not evidence of weak character. The ABA toolkit recognizes shame, fear of career consequences and a strong preference for self-reliance among barriers to seeking help.[3] Acknowledging those barriers should lead us to address them, rather than assume we must continue without assistance.
Ask whether your insistence on handling everything privately is helping you. A first conversation with a clinician or lawyer assistance program may be the most practical decision available. Accepting help is an exercise of responsibility. If someone you trust has already expressed concern, listen before preparing your defence.
Choose a first step
Our choices can accumulate. We accept one more demand, increase one more expense, postpone one more conversation. Eventually the arrangement feels permanent. Revisiting those choices can help us recover options, even when change must be gradual.
Try treating your circumstances as carefully as you would a client’s difficult problem. Put the relevant facts on paper. Identify the constraints, distinguish them from assumptions and compare the realistic alternatives. Ask a trusted person to challenge the analysis.
Then choose one action and give it a date: arrange an appointment, review the household finances, ask about a workload adjustment or investigate a different role. Identify the obstacle most likely to stop you and who could help you address it. Write down what you will do this week and when you will review your progress. “Someday” is not a timetable.
Employers and professional institutions retain responsibilities of their own. People experiencing mistreatment are entitled to support and protection. You can insist on those responsibilities while taking action yourself. You do not have to solve everything alone, and you do not have to wait for the profession to reform before beginning.
After 56 years, I still believe that law can offer a deeply satisfying working life. I would like more of my colleagues to experience that satisfaction. The place to begin is an honest assessment of the life your practice is helping you build.
If the present arrangement is harming you, what are you willing to change? What will you do first? And on what date will you do it?
Sources and research notes
1. Kevin Davis, “Stress, drinking, gambling among problems lawyers report in new mental health study,” ABA Journal, October 14, 2026. The supplied Lawyer Wellness document reproduces the article. It reports an Illinois Lawyers Assistance Program survey; this draft uses it as reporting of that survey, without treating the news story as the underlying study.
https://www.abajournal.com/news/article/stress-drinking-and-gambling-among-problems-lawyers-report-in-new-mental-health-study
2. Nathalie Cadieux et al. (2024), Research report: Towards a healthy and sustainable practice of law in Canada. Consolidated report. National study on the health and wellness determinants of legal professionals in Canada, Phase II (2022–2024). Université de Sherbrooke, Business School. Printed pp. 3 and 15 describe the 7,305 survey participants and 78 interviews; p. 18 reports the Phase I burnout finding; p. 14 explains the limits on causal inference; pp. 61–63 discuss work organization and stressors. The survey data were collected June–September 2021, rather than in 2024. The sample includes several categories of legal professionals.
https://flsc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Omnibus_Final-Rapport_EN_Final.pdf
3. Anne M. Brafford (2018), Well-Being Toolkit for Lawyers and Legal Employers, created for use by the American Bar Association, August 2018. Printed pp. 4–5 address individual and organizational conditions; pp. 18–19 discuss barriers to help-seeking; p. 24 addresses individual self-assessment. This is a practical guidance resource drawing on research, rather than a new prevalence study. The uploaded copy was consulted.
https://www.americanbar.org/content/aba-cms-dotorg/en/groups/lawyer_assistance/well-being-in-the-legal-profession/
The questions about spending, prestige, relationships and practice fit are the author’s proposed framework for reflection. The cited materials do not establish that these factors explain most lawyer distress, or that distress is a voluntary condition.