Life in the Law 2025: A Wake-Up Call for The Legal Profession

Last week, LawCare released its "Life in the Law 2025 "report and, to be honest, it makes for sobering reading.

From January to March this year, LawCare surveyed legal professionals and organisations across the sector to understand how working in law is affecting mental health and wellbeing. The findings paint a worrying picture of a profession under pressure.

🔗 Read the full report: https://lawcare.org.uk/life-in-the-law/ Life in the Law 2025 (PDF)

What the report reveals

• 59% of respondents reported "poor mental wellbeing".

• 78.7% are working beyond their contracted hours, with almost 1 in 10 working 21+ extra hours each week.

• 50% have experienced anxiety often or very often in the past year.

• 19.5% reported experiencing bullying, harassment, or discrimination in the past 12 months.

• Alarmingly, over half (56.2%) could see themselves leaving their current workplace within five years and almost a third are considering leaving the profession entirely.

For anyone who cares deeply about the legal sector, these statistics are difficult to digest. They highlight not just individual struggles but a systemic issue rooted in culture, expectations, and long-standing working patterns.

What LawCare recommends

LawCare’s report doesn’t just diagnose the problem it offers a roadmap towards a healthier future.

Key recommendations include:

• Actively manage workloads – tackle root causes of overwork, rethink incentives and targets, and challenge the long-hours culture.

• Prioritise people management – recognise management as a critical professional skill, with time, training and support to match.

• Embed hybrid and flexible working – design these thoughtfully and collaboratively to balance benefits with risks like isolation.

• Evaluate wellbeing programmes – measure what’s working, learn from the data and iterate.

• Equip future lawyers – ensure education and training provide the skills needed for a sustainable legal career.

  
  

These steps may sound simple, but implementing them requires strong leadership, consistent commitment, and cultural change across firms, chambers, in-house teams and regulators alike.

A personal reflection

Having worked with hundreds if not thousands of lawyers over the past twenty-five years, I can honestly say it’s a profession I love being part of (even if I’m not a lawyer myself). I’ve met and worked alongside so many fantastic, passionate and driven people. That’s why it’s so disheartening to see how many are struggling.

The legal sector has always been demanding, but the idea that nearly a third of professionals can now see themselves leaving the profession altogether is heart breaking and should be a wake-up call for us all.

If we don’t take collective action, this will put enormous strain on the Scottish legal sector in particular: loss of talent, higher burnout, and reduced capacity to serve clients effectively.

As an industry, we must drive change. It won’t happen overnight, these are learned behaviours built over decades but small, consistent steps will make a real difference. We can start by listening more, leading with empathy, valuing people management, and challenging the “always on” culture that too often defines a solicitor’s work.

A call to action

LawCare has issued a call to every part of the profession, from law firms to regulators, from educators to insurers to step up and take action.

We owe it to the people who make this profession what it is: talented, hardworking individuals who genuinely care about the clients and communities they serve. Let’s not allow this report to gather dust. Let’s use it as a catalyst for change and build a more sustainable, humane and inclusive future for law.

I’d love to hear your thoughts: how can we, as a profession, start making these changes in a meaningful way?