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8 Ways In-House Legal Can Extinguish Burnout

This guide shares eight tips to combat burnout and the knock-on effects of exhaustion, cynicism, and sloppy work. While extinguishing burnout is a tall order, we believe the right tool, task, and culture shifts can reduce the perpetual overwhelm that legal teams endure.

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8 Ways In-House Legal Can Extinguish Burnout
New research confirms what in-house legal professionals already feel: burnout is looming. Nearly 80% of in-house lawyers feel stressed or burned out in their roles and 57% are open to finding new jobs, shows a study from legal talent provider Axiom. Behind the stress is growing work complexity and reduced department bandwidth, suggests Legal Dive. Further, fuzzy guidelines for what the legal department should be involved in heightens the fatigue. Regarding this mishmash of work, Law.com writes - “In-house counsel are regularly involved in a broad range of tasks that aren’t strictly legal, from PR, government relations and HR to compliance, ESG and diversity. Over the past two years, many legal departments also found themselves driving their companies’ COVID-19 response.”
IN THIS GUIDE This guide shares eight tips to combat burnout and the knock-on effects of exhaustion, cynicism, and sloppy work. While extinguishing burnout is a tall order, we believe the right tool, task, and culture shifts can reduce the perpetual overwhelm that legal teams endure.
ONE Learn from the past (or you’re doomed to repeat it). Long days come with the territory, and even the most capable GTD disciples can’t optimize these away entirely. But some days are particularly soul sucking. If your business has grueling work sprints, perform a quick post-mortem once you get through. For example, after the end of the quarter or year, ask: Could we have better anticipated needs or clarified processes? Did we provide information to stakeholders early enough to avoid logjams? One definition for insanity is “doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” Stop fast-tracking fatigue with outdated processes and opportunities for miscommunication.
TWO Say ‘no’ to non-essential meetings. According to one mid-pandemic estimate, managers and corporate professionals lose 30% of their workday in meetings. Further, meetings deemed “ineffective” burn 31 hours every month, or about 4 working days. Given their in-demand skills, we expect that legal teams are unusually susceptible to this. For this very reason, rethink clicking “accept” as your default reaction. As the management adage suggests, when you say ‘yes’ to something, you’re saying ‘no’ to something else. Make sure the trade-off is worthwhile. For staff who believe that shielding their calendar is selfish, Harvard Business Review offers a rebuttal – “When they sacrifice their own time and well-being for meetings, they assume they’re doing what’s best for the business—and they don’t see the costs to the organization.” Of course, picking and choosing what to be involved in assumes that the team knows what is most important. Hence, our next tip.
THREE Clearly define staff and team priorities. By definition, a priority list is short. To flee the busyness trap, legal must thoughtfully allocate time to support pre-defined goals. While priorities aren’t one-size-fits-all, they should be explicit. Managers, we’re looking at you here: Help your staff assign limited time and energy strategically. Also, prioritization is not just about defining where you should spend your time, but being explicit about where you shouldn’t. Clearly define staff and team priorities. Prioritization is not just about defining where you should spend your time, but being explicit about where you shouldn’t.
With respect to contract review–a notoriously timeconsuming area– LinkSquares’ Vice President of Legal Jonathan Greenblatt suggests legal departments establish a threshold for review. Not every contract is equally worrisome, so prioritize review for those that really matter. Establish criteria for what doesn’t warrant in-depth legal review and communicate this to teams who have regular contract review requests.
FOUR We weren’t joking. Cancel meetings that are redundant or unnecessary. Meetings give the impression of work getting done, but how often have you seen disengaged attendees? Meetings can be conduits for collaboration – when they’re held at the right time.
Legal must fiercely protect work hours during busy seasons; sometimes this should include outright non-attendance. If opting out feels uncomfortable, consider a few of these response or attendance alternatives: Ask the organizer for the purpose of the meeting and an agenda in advance. Assess whether your participation is essential, and accept or decline accordingly. Wait on-call. Offer to be available to dial-in should your expertise be required. Often, legal may only need to contribute for a small portion of a long meeting. Tackle other project work while you wait. Offer to contribute asynchronously after you review meeting notes. If the meeting content is right for you, but the length is too long, propose a compromise: “Hey [Name], I am unavailable for an hour on Friday, but can do 20 minutes in the afternoon. Can we tackle [Topic] then? I’ll be on top of it!” Of course, lead by example and shift your own meeting setting habits. Some ideas: distribute pre-reading in advance, stick to predetermined topics, and honor start and end times.
FIVE In everything, people > work. A sobering mental health study finds that almost half of lawyers are experiencing symptoms of depression and anxiety. Assigned Counsel points out that while the legal industry is a demanding one, “normalized stress and mental health problems, […] diminish the executive functions or capabilities of your team.”
Legal professionals must grasp the uniquely stressful nature of their work and rely on one another for support. A bit of camaraderie goes a long way, while genuine social connections can boost overwhelmed staff. Don’t underestimate signals of r“Gift cards, shout-outs, and impromptu lunches can go a long way,” points out LinkSquares’ Greenblatt. “Just remember that everyone is uniquely wired. Some employees feel appreciated with words of affirmation, while others come alive with quality conversation or tangible gifts. Finally, make sure that your department doesn’t exist as a team in name only. When possible, pitch in when a colleague is overwhelmed–even if it adds to your plate. Evidence shows that good deeds actually reduce stress, boost self-esteem, and improve moods.
SIX Make time off the norm, not an exception. Statistics on the amount of vacation days that go unused in America are both sad and startling. When it comes to neglecting rest and recovery, lawyers may be the worst offenders. Keeping burnout at bay requires more than just a couple scattered days off in a year. For sustained personal and professional health, legal departments should cultivate real rhythms of rest and recovery. Managers and staff must encourage one another to power down after busy seasons, make use of remote work, take personal vacations, plan team-wide breaks, or carve out time for hobbies. For everyone, it’s time to make vacation guilt a thing of the past. While this will ruffle some feathers, teams should fight for true downtime and resist the notion that good lawyers plug-in on vacation. Not only does this reinforce unhealthy boundaries, but without genuine rest, legal teams work from a position of weakness, depleted of creativity, energy, and ambition.
SEVEN Turn to technology for tedious tasks. You know those lawyers who seem unnaturally at ease? They lean on technology to stay ahead. Consider some of the big legal time sucks; for example, getting up to speed on where a contract is stuck or who needs to do what. Whether you’re swapping between contract project work, or helping a colleague who is out sick, process visibility is vital. Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) technology expedites this, while helping enterprises organize agreements, reduce contract chaos, and support business partners. For example, LinkSquares enables contract creation in minutes, not hours, with stored clause and template capabilities. The complete contract management solution helps in-house counsel create, save, and use templates to quickly draft new agreements using pre-approved language. Modern CLM platforms also reduce burnout by leveraging AI to shift human involvement to the most critical phases. To illustrate, some AI-powered contract review tools are capable enough to now handle a first review pass, cutting down manual work cycles.
EIGHT Change your perspective, not just your behavior. At LinkSquares, we’ve built technology with productivity and efficiency in mind—not just so that lawyers and legal ops can take on more—but so that organizations can execute the right work, while empowering the people that make it all possible. Exhaustion and stress are not deficiencies to overcome, but risk signals to mind. From a P&L perspective, fried employees are unproductive and attrition risks. And from a human perspective, the cost is much greater.
LINKSQUARES CAN HELP LinkSquares offers best-of-breed software tools to support resource and reputation-saving operations. We’ve helped hundreds of corporate legal department leaders drive innovation, lower costs, increase revenue, and minimize loss. If you’re ready to adopt the most effective solutions for Legal Ops—and harness cuttingedge artificial intelligence to improve every aspect of your legal department—then contact LinkSquares today.
8 Ways In-House Legal Can Extinguish Burnout: End Card