The University of Queensland’s Dr Rebecca Michalak has added to a growing pool of research that suggests that lawyers face unique and troubling mental health challenges compared to their peers in other professions. According to the latest study, lawyers in private practice are twice as likely as other professionals to experience problem consumption of alcohol and other drugs. They were also, on average, more likely to suffer from poor psychological and psychosomatic wellbeing than any other professional group included in the study.

Dr Michalak’s study looks at types of psychological risks lawyers are exposed to in their workplaces and the various coping mechanisms they employ to navigate them. According to her study, at least 1 in 20 lawyers has experienced workplace bullying, though a vast majority do not report the abuse.

More telling still was that a clear perpetrator ‘profile’ emerged for law firm aggressors that did not emerge for mistreatment behaviour in other professions. Of all the individuals who said they had experienced mistreatment in the workplace, 63.3 per cent reported that the perpetrator was male, while 74.4 per cent said that the perpetrator was older than them. By comparison, only 45.6 per cent of professionals in other sectors said that their perpetrator of mistreatment was older than them, and only 59.6 per cent said that they were male.

Equity and salaried partners were identified as the most likely perpetrators of mistreatment in law firms, accounting for 65.77 per cent of all incidents recorded by the study. Male employees were most likely to be targeted by other men (42 of 62 cases) while female employees were also more likely to experience mistreatment by a male perpetrator (113 of 183 cases).

‘For lawyers, a ‘typical’ perpetrator of mistreatment is male, holds a Partnership position (if in private practice), is older than their target and is more likely to target a female employee than a male employee,’ Dr Michalak concludes. ‘In contrast to lawyer targets, the professional sample target data did not present a clear ‘typical’ perpetrator of mistreatment profile.’

According to Dr Michalak, the study’s findings support the need to shift the focus of wellbeing research and management strategies in law firms away from individuals and towards organizational-level factors, such as workplace culture. Extensive prevention and ‘psychological risk management’ strategies must also be in place at law firms to ensure that employees are psychologically safe and job performance is optimized, she suggests. Sources: The Lawyer