Stress for Success?

Picture this. You are a lawyer that works in a small but very busy law office. As you just walk into the office from a stressful day at court, you hear your assistant say, “Michael called for you three times today, he wants you to call him back.” As you consider the request, another associate says “how are we coming along on the Evans case? Court date’s tomorrow.” You begin to feel overwhelmed and find it hard to catch your breath before responding. You smile and say “thanks for taking the message, and John, we are going to kill it tomorrow!” Then you rush to your office, searching for a moment of silence but you immediately see the piles of paperwork on your desk. A state of anxiety begins to envelop you; it’s just another day at the office.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, lawyers have the second most stressful job in America. There are typical stressors in a legal practice like meeting client expectations and deadlines. Some lawyers and legal staff, however, experience stress due to their firm’s organizational structure. The workplace environment can alleviate stress for some workers while heightening it for others. Workers in smaller law firms can develop stronger bonds with their colleagues but are often required to take on more responsibility.

To better understand this issue, I decided to study how stress manifests itself in a legal office setting. Through participant observation and interviews, I explore the interpersonal relationship within a small office setting and consider its impact on perceived stressors.

In a small office setting, there is typically little room for collaborative work and individuals take on different responsibilities. Because of their limited resources, lawyers and legal staff in smaller work settings experience strain due to time constraints and heavier individual workloads. Staff in smaller firms must take on multiple roles. Consider the support staff who are the front-end of a workplace. They face the burden of interacting with clients and addressing their inquiries, while lawyers can choose to speak with clients over the phone or meet them by appointment. For support staff, if a client calls, it is their responsibility to take the call regardless of their workload. The day-to-day responsibilities and client relations fall on the support staff.

Participant observation also showed how lawyers have their own share of stress that comes from meeting client expectations. When handling legal matters, lawyers suffer great pressure. For instance, a minor setback on a lawyer’s part can have dire consequences on a clients’ lives. When a law firm is small in scale, the lawyers are not only legal practitioners, they can also be office managers. The burden of overseeing that the office’s workload is delegated properly falls on them. Having dual-roles are important stressors that can take a toll on an individual’s well-being.

It is clear that smaller law offices impact the overall mental well-being of its staff members. As expressed during the interviews, there are several ways that the lawyers and staff deal with work-related stressors. One lawyer mentioned that her coping mechanism is to over-prepare for the workday, which entails working longer hours. She said,

 Honestly, the only way to deal with the workload is [to] over research, over prepare, over analyze [everything] because you don’t have somebody to help you. So you basically have to research everything [surrounding a case], and that obviously adds more work hours and more stress. But the only way to handle that stress is an abundance of information, the more you know, the better it is.

Working longer hours to over prepare is beneficial as it is important to have the necessary background knowledge. However such coping mechanism can perpetuate stress as it leads to taking on heavier workloads. This is a downside of working in a small law office setting because individuals have to take it upon themselves to deal with the lack of knowledge and resources that they would otherwise have access to if they worked in a larger office setting. Working with a larger staff that practices the same areas of law is beneficial because important ideas or strategies might emerge from a conversation among associates. Whereas, in a small office setting such information is acquired through one’s own legal research.

 Another lawyer, who is also an owner of a law office, stated that his coping mechanism stems from experience. He emphasized that the longer you do a job, the easier it gets because you have a wealth of knowledge to support you.

I deal with these challenges through my knowledge, experience, and education. There are so many ways. Experience is the best teacher. I have been working in the legal sector for 15 years. I previously worked in four different law firms before starting my own. The exposure I gained from my previous work experience has prepared me to deal with the challenges around the office.

By having a lot of work experience, a lawyer can deal with the various challenges that arise from operating in a small law office. Being the owner, there are certain pressures of managing staff, dealing with client concerns, which fall on the individual’s shoulders. With years of experience working in the legal profession, an individual can pick up work habits that help them with the workload, while meeting client expectations. An individual learns how to be organized and manage their time well out of necessity, which is beneficial for the job but places a lot of strain on their psyche.

A part-time legal worker mentioned that she copes with the negative interactions with clients and colleagues by blocking out all negativity and remaining positive. A law clerk told her she needs to put in the extra hours to manage the heavy workload while knowing how this can impact personal relations outside the workplace.

I have to deal with it. I just come early. If I know I have deadlines, then I am at the office at 5am. There are times I have been at the office at 4am, or I stayed up all night and came straight to work. Just to make sure that the work was complete. That’s what I have to do to deal with it, there is no other way.

Support staff members experience stress as they work long hours, and have to take on the heavy workload outside of the office by dedicating their personal time to their work life. By doing so, it takes away from the individual’s personal life. However, individuals simply do not perceive it as a choice. They find themselves helpless and make it their own responsibility to meet the deadlines by working at home because they don’t have any other option.

The strategies mentioned do not get at the root of the problem. They are simply mechanisms to deal with the stressors of the day. Since these mechanisms require a lot of individual effort, workers have the added pressure to deal with workplace stressors themselves. This is problematic because the individual’s source of stress emerges out of their workplace structure, and the techniques to cope with the stress operate on a personal level.  These coping strategies are temporary solutions and can over time lead to burnout. For that reason, it is important that this issue must be addressed at the organizational level because the employer should take the initiative towards improving the mental health of their workers. The legal profession is stressful in nature due to the field’s competitiveness, long work hours, and managing client expectations. On top of this,  small workplaces add to this stress by placing an immense burden on workers to meet high demands while not having enough support staff. Therefore, it is important to implement a policy in the office that recognizes the overall mental well-being of its staff members in dealing with workplace pressures.

This can be accomplished by offering lawyers and legal staff training on how to improve their organization and time management skills, as well as incorporating some technical support to help with this. Firms should also encourage staff to participate in physical activities such as yoga that helps to reduce stress. Adopting such techniques helps to re-train the mind, which allows individuals to work well under pressure. Implementing such changes within law offices could have multiple benefits like building a social support system amongst workers, which can act as a form of stress reliever. Stress is a normal aspect of the legal profession, as it is experienced by most associates and staff members. However, we need to go beyond simply recognizing its existence, but also try to find long-term solutions for associates and staff to deal with the pressure.

Arshdeep Saroey is an undergraduate student at the University of Toronto pursuing a double major in Sociology and Criminology. Arshdeep has a passion for law and aspires to be a lawyer. She hopes that through her research she can bring more attention to the issue of work-related stress, which will implement coping strategies, leading to a positive and productive work environment.