Lawyers are burning out but managers are not alive to the issue, according to your recent article (see [2005] Gazette, 30 June, 4). Yet the director of Hudson Legal, who urges firms to provide support, does so in the context that: 'Working long hours and being available 24/7 goes with the territory.'

There is the rub and this is the culture that needs to change if the issue of pressure at work is really to be addressed by the legal profession.


We have adapted to and are using technology to work smarter not harder. But instead of harvesting the time benefits so yielded and ploughing them back into the work/life balance, or further improved management skills and strategies, too often we plug them straight into increased workloads. Similarly, because we can correspond with clients in seconds as opposed to days, we have engendered 'speed of response' expectations that cancel out the benefits of faster communications.


In the same way that working smarter may motivate a move to project rather than time billing, so as a profession we need to focus not only on getting work done faster but on the consequences of this. If we have more time at our disposal, how can we use it creatively to improve the client service? Reinvesting it in the chargeable hour is unlikely to be the answer.


Jo Riddick, risk and compliance partner, Pitmans, Reading