It is broken. Let’s fix it.

A Research Report on “A National Study on the Health and Wellness Determinants of Legal Professionals in Canada” was published in December 2022. Its findings paint a very grim picture of the work life of Canadian lawyers:

• 59.4% of a sample of 6626 legal professionals suffer from psychological distress
• 20.6% suffer a very high level of psychological distress
• 24.1% have had suicidal thoughts
• The most affected age groups are 25 year-olds and 30 year-olds, with 74% and 68% respectively, reporting pychological distress
  

One of the reasons for this is the nature of the work itself. Lawyers often deal with high-stakes cases and have to manage competing priorities, strict deadlines, and long working hours. Furthermore, the adversarial nature of the legal system can contribute to a confrontational and contentious work environment which can be emotionally taxing for lawyers.

“…what I view to be the number one causative factor of mental health issues, being that myself and my colleagues are completely overworked. If my workload was reduced by 10-20%, I would feel a significant reduction in stress…If the profession actually cared about mental health, the firms would be working relentlessly to reduce the workload, but absolutely no effort has been made in this regard.”

“ If I am suffering from exhaustion due to understaffing and an increased workload, asking me to find better work-life balance or to “perform” more self-care is disingenuous when the workload is not being ameliorated in any way. All the massages in the world will not change the fact that the workload exceeds what is reasonable.”

“… The expectations of clients and of myself have been physically, mentally, and emotionally draining […] I doubt my health can take much more of this profession.”

‍Sadly, none of these reflections are new. They are common experiences of lawyers in most jurisdictions since I entered the profession in the 90s and long before then. The system is broken and we need to fix it.

With more attention (hopefully) now being paid to mental wellness of lawyers, an important step law firms can take is to support their lawyers by automating some of the more routine and administrative tasks that their lawyers have to do. Not only does this reduce lawyers’ workload, it also free up their time to focus on more complex and high-value work.

Technology can be used to automate the drafting of routine contracts as well as documents required for specific purposes. Information can be obtained from clients by using technology to replace the involvement of a lawyer. He can step in later at the advisory stage. 

Routine advice on legal requirements relating to certain topics can be done by a bot. Explanation will be provided step-by-step from the bot’s database compiled by the lawyers. The bot will provide this information to clients on a 24/7 basis with accuracy and patience even when it is answering an enquiry at 2’o clock in the morning.

AI-powered drafting tools can analyze documents and generate output as required by the lawyers. This can be adapted to a vast variety of uses in a lawyer’s workload. 

The time has come for law firms to take action to fix what isn’t working in their business model. LexIT is dedicated to help improve lawyers’ efficiency and mental wellness with the use of technological tools.