The wellbeing of academics in higher education has come under greater scrutiny in recent times as a matter of concern. Studies conducted in various countries around the world have established ‘evidence that academic staff in particular experience significant levels of stress from various aspects of their work’. In 2022, Wray and Kinman published an analysis of the psychosocial hazards that academic staff working in universities in the UK experienced using data from three waves of a national survey of academic staff from 2008, 2012 and 2014. The study employed a risk assessment framework developed by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) which was used to measure the following seven key psychosocial hazards: demands, control, support from managers and colleagues, relationships, role and change management. This chapter considers the results of studies conducted in 2020 in the UK and Australia exploring the quality of the working life of law teachers. Applying the lens of the psychosocial hazards discussed in Wray and Kinman’s article, we examine some of the key workplace challenges identified in our data concerning barriers to achieving a high quality of working life in the legal academy. Our recommendations highlight the significance of senior management who balance the needs of the institution with the psychological health of staff.

The legal profession in many countries is hampered by a stigma against emotions and mental health issues based on fear. Many lawyers fear showing emotion will harm their reputation, and so they repress their natural responses to clients’ distress. Instead, they ruminate, develop poor sleep, poor diet, lose fitness and self-medicate with alcohol to “relieve stress”. Stigma is the reason for high rates of inefficacy, dissatisfaction and attrition of good lawyers from the profession, especially those whose work exposes them to traumatised clients. Introducing trauma theory to legal education and workplace systems will reduce stigma and improve the wellbeing and performance of lawyers and students.

Vicarious or secondary trauma experience has always been part of legal practice although many do not acknowledge the risk it can have on the mental health, well-being and performance of legal professionals. The listening to, observing and then detailing of traumatic events for the purposes of legal process in some cases may harm lawyers who need to work closely with clients, victims and witnesses. This article reviews the research on trauma in many areas of professional human services that could inform and improve our understanding of legal practice. It examines the discursive history of trauma and recent studies on lawyer well-being, before discussing the controversies about recognising vicarious trauma and the stigma against mental health concerns in the legal profession. The article concludes by reviewing options to assist law firms in considering trauma-informed policy, practices and supervision strategies and to help individual lawyers recognise the value of self-care.

Vicarious or secondary trauma experience has always been part of legal practice although many do not acknowledge the risk it can have on the mental health, well-being and performance of legal professionals. The listening to, observing and then detailing of traumatic events for the purposes of legal process in some cases may harm lawyers who need to work closely with clients, victims and witnesses. This article reviews the research on trauma in many areas of professional human services that could inform and improve our understanding of legal practice. It examines the discursive history of trauma and recent studies on lawyer well-being, before discussing the controversies about recognising vicarious trauma and the stigma against mental health concerns in the legal profession. The article concludes by reviewing options to assist law firms in considering trauma-informed policy, practices and supervision strategies and to help individual lawyers recognise the value of self-care.

This Chapter presents the results of national surveys of UK and Australian legal academics conducted in 2017 and explores law teachers’ perceptions of their well-being and of their experience of stress at work. First, we consider the neo-liberal landscape of higher education in the 21st Century, a landscape that provides the context and framework for how law teachers experience law school as a work environment. Second, we explain the methodology and results of the studies conducted in the UK and Australia in 2017. Third, we discuss the themes presenting from the law teachers’ responses to the open question: please explain what you think your university could do to improve staff quality of working life? The Chapter concludes with a suggested to-do list for law school leaders to provide a work environment that better supports the well-being of their academics and in turn enhances their capacity to support law student well-being.

Research confirms law students and lawyers in the US, Australia and more recently in the UK are prone to symptoms related to stress and anxiety disproportionately to other professions. In response, the legal profession and legal academy in Australia and the UK have created Wellness Networks to encourage and facilitate research and disseminate ideas and strategies that might help law students and lawyers to thrive. This project builds on that research through a series of surveys of law teachers in the UK and Australia on the presumption that law teachers are in a strong position to influence their students not only about legal matters, but on developing attitudes and practices that will help them to survive and thrive as lawyers. The comparative analysis reveals several differences, but also many similarities with law teachers in both countries reporting negative effects from neoliberal pressures on legal education programs that impact their wellbeing, performance as teachers and ability to adequately respond to student concerns.

Family law in Australia has been governed by the Family Law Act (FLA) since 1976. The statute was significant in changing the law from fault-based to a no-fault regime of divorce and its consequences for child custody and property disputes. Since then the FLA has endured many amendments with legislators trying to keep the law aligned with their perception of community values. One important aspect of the FLA is that it requires judges deciding parenting disputes to make certain ‘considerations’ in line with articulated principles. In 2006 the Australian government amended the FLA by introducing two ‘objects and principles’ (then s.60B), which seemed innocuous: that children have ‘the benefit of both of their parents’ and that they be ‘protected from physical or psychological harm’. Arguably both principles responded to community concerns, although from opposing sources. The ‘men’s movement’ had complained for years that the Family Court was biased because it awarded child custody more often to mothers than to fathers in parenting disputes. On the other hand, the ‘women’s movement’ argued that children would be at risk if the Family Court favoured fathers over mothers because of the high incidence of domestic violence and child abuse at the hands of men.The two principles in s.60B were a political compromise and became known as the ‘twin pillars’ in Australian family law. The legislators had attempted to appease both lobby groups by requiring judges on the one hand to keep fathers involved in children’s lives and on the other hand to ensure children would be safe from violence. In a sense it was a marriage-of-opposites that was doomed to fail, and fail it did. The reason was that in many cases, judges seemed to interpret the amended Act to emphasise ‘shared parenting’, and without good evidence that the father posed a risk to the child, judges very often made orders in line with the first pillar, keeping the father involved in the life of the child. Ironically, in some of those cases the orders effectively exposed the child to violence through the father’s subsequent abuse and assaults on the mother, eg. at child handover or at negotiations about arrangements for the child.Legislators were forced to intercede again, to amend the statute further and this time to mandate judges to privilege the second pillar (no violence) over the first pillar (both parents to be involved). It is ironic that since 1976 the ‘paramount consideration’ has been the ‘best interests of the child’ – to which almost everyone agrees - while the challenge for legislators and judges has been how to interpret and apply that principle in the context of historically changing and culturally diverse social values about the meaning of family, parenting, and ideal child development arrangements. In attempting to shift the focus in disputes about children from ‘legal custody’ to ‘shared parenting’, legislators in Australia so far at least, have failed to reflect contemporary community attitudes, or provide leadership in accepting research-based, best practice policy in resolving parenting disputes.

Back in the late 1990s senior public servants worried at Institute of Policy Studies (IPS) roundtables that ‘siloisation’ of the state sector was hampering effectiveness. Also at that time an IPS roundtable of chief and deputy chief executives backed posting advice on agency websites when decisions were made or at some specific time after delivery.

This paper examines the emergence of vicarious trauma and our reluctance to accept it as a known risk in legal practice. Lawyers who work especially in criminal law, family law, and personal injury areas are exposed to images and recordings of traumatic events, and may also work with survivors of trauma who are required to relate their experience in detail. Others, such as defence lawyers, work with clients who confess to violent crimes, and they may need to ‘put aside’ feelings of shock or revulsion in order to represent the perpetrator. While the medical professions and ‘first responders’ take care of members’ wellbeing by acknowledging risks of the vicarious trauma and providing support, an apparent stigma stops law firms, prosecuting authorities, and the legal professional associations especially in Australia from acknowledging the risk or to train and protect lawyers from the effects of vicarious trauma. Research on trauma and the condition of PTSD shows contending theories including many symptoms related to experiences from workplace bullying, to secondary trauma stress, to vicarious trauma. This paper summarises research on the history, likely causes, treatments for and best defences against vicarious trauma in legal practice.

Many law firms use time billing for client work with the ‘six-minute unit’ as the standard measure combined with billing ‘targets’ for employed lawyers, sometimes set at more than three times their salary. Time billing is designed to maximize the productivity of lawyers and provide a quantifiable rationale for billing clients, but is often used to control staff and identify ‘non-performers’. This paper critiques time billing and draws on its history and recent research to argue the practice not only motivates inefficiency, it increases the risk of ethical breaches, enables bullying by supervisors, may cause anxiety and mental health issues among employed lawyers, and contributes to the loss of good lawyers especially of women from the profession. The paper presents alternatives to time billing and suggests leading firms will recognise the advantages of adopting them ahead of professional regulators mandating change.