The Law Institute of Victoria (LIV) has published ‘Mental Health and the Legal Profession: A Preventative Strategy’ which includes findings of another report that more than 50% of lawyers had experienced depression. That report also found that a quarter of barristers, a third of solicitors and half of law students were at a high or very high risk of suffering a diagnosable mental illness.

Intolerable hourly billing rates

Geoff Bowyer, head of LIV, said: ‘[There is a] changing perception in the community that it [should no longer be]… standard practice for lawyers to work 80 hours a week or to have intolerable hourly billing rates or to have caseloads that young lawyers just have to suck up because that’s just part of the folklaw of becoming a lawyer.’ Source: Lawyers Weekly