Advocating a culture of collaboration rather than competition – News

Working 70 hours a week, in an atmosphere of competition and a race for billable hours, with a constant mental load that cannot be shared, often characterizes the career chosen by lawyers, particularly lawyers. After 5 years of scrutinizing their world, consulting them, informing them and training them, human resources management professor Nathalie Cadieux is determined to change this harmful culture throughout Canada.

At the end of its vast pan-Canadian research project carried out in collaboration with the Federation of Law Societies of Canada, the Canadian Bar Association and the bars of each province and territory, what seemed 5 years ago to be a an arid environment that is not conducive to health has become a motivation to build a healthier profession that respects the limits of lawyers.

It was about time since 54.2% of lawyers would change jobs if they were offered another with the same level of remuneration. This means that more than half would prefer to be elsewhere…

A culture to reform

However, many of the problems that undermine morale are not so much linked to the practice of law, but rather to the culture of this hyper-competitive environment.

In private practice, for example, billable hours are in the dock.
“People told us they work 2,500 billable hours per year, which represents approximately 67.9% of their working time. In total, these people work around 70 hours per week! There is no human who can sustain this for long. And, after a certain number of hours, there are important ethical and mental health issues,” judges Professor Cadieux.

The performance, particularly in the private sector, making a lot of money, in a large firm, is really attractive. Unfortunately, this is to the detriment of reconciling work and family life.

And when stress reaches a peak, many people wait before seeking help, either due to lack of time in 26.3% of cases or because they no longer have the energy to do so in a proportion of 37.6%, according to data from the Survey published in 2022.

This is because, in this culture of performance, a demonstration of weakness could look bad within the firm. Nathalie Cadieux wants to destigmatize mental health issues and ensure that people are evaluated and consulted.

More than a hundred initiatives already in place

Confident, the professor already notes a very clear improvement in the measures in place to prevent wellness issues in the legal community. Moreover, in recent years, there have been more than a hundred initiatives from Canadian bars in this direction.

Following phase 1 of our project, almost a majority of bars put wellness at the top of their priorities in their strategic planning. It was quite a turnaround because a few years ago, it was difficult for lawyers to talk about mental health.

Changing the culture from university

What if we put this culture on trial from university? This is what law schools are starting to do in the wake of Professor Cadieux’s recommendations.

“Culture change also depends on how we prepare lawyers for the future. There are very simple structural elements that help to strengthen this culture of performance,” she believes.

One of the best examples is the “Race for internships” in all law faculties.

In a race, there is always a winner and then a loser. Imagine, you are losing and this is your first experience on the job market in your field!

“Young people are at a stage in life where they are building their professional identity and need success to build their confidence. We put them in competition against each other, we evaluate them in relation to each other… If we want to make them work as a team in their professional life, it starts in our universities,” argues Professor Cadieux.

At the Faculty of Law of the University of Sherbrooke, there is now a course spread over 3 years to develop skills, such as the ability to set one’s limits and to detach oneself psychologically. We also value different types of practices, other than careers in large private firms.

Due to the scarcity of manpower, the tendency among young lawyers is already to set their limits.

We must change the modalities, promote collaboration, interdisciplinarity, peer support because afterwards, this is what will percolate into the workplace.

Different environments, same observations

Despite a great socio-demographic diversity, in all bars in Canada, the same three themes are considered priorities: working conditions and mental load, conflicts between work and personal life, strategies to deal with stress and habits of communication. life.

These themes resonate as far as Australia, where Professor Cadieux was received as an expert on the mental health of lawyers.

A mental load that could be shared

Professor Cadieux explains that there is a common point between all professions where the person defines themselves with their professional title.

There is a strong identity linked to regulated professions. I am a doctor, lawyer. It’s part of me. This explains many of the stressors that we have identified: mental load, responsibility.

But how can we then explain that, for example, in the engineering world, stress is not linked to billable hours, which is also the traditional model.

“Because engineers work in teams, by project; they share the risks. In law, when a case is more difficult, it would be advantageous to work as a team to share the risks, have peer support, not be alone in supporting the emotional demands of certain cases or not be repeatedly exposed to trauma. , as with crown prosecutors who deal with abused children. »

A noble cause that continues

These stressors linked to the profession led Professor Cadieux and her team to take a broader interest in the psychological health of members of professional orders with a research chair project on mental health in regulated professions.

In addition to this project, Professor Cadieux continues her work by working with young people entering the profession with the Young Bar of Montreal and more recently with judges, a position among the most respected within the profession.

It’s a demanding job, but I really believe in the theory of small steps in life.

Numbers and people
Phase 1 of the research from 2019 to 2022, funded by the Federation of Law Societies of Canada and the Canadian Bar Association and in which 7,305 legal professionals participated, identified 10 key recommendations and 35 subsections. -recommendations on the main mental health issues of the profession. From 2022 to 2024, the second phase of research, funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, made it possible to contextualize the main challenges arising from phase 1 and to produce 24 reports on the most important themes, highlighting value 121 initiatives implemented by the various Canadian bars in recent years.

The research team of Professor Nathalie Cadieux is continuing this work thanks to the commitment of researchers Marie-Michèle Gouin, Jean Cadieux, Rémi Labelle-Deraspe, Geneviève Robert-Huot, Jacqueline Dahan, Florence Guiliani and the research professional Marc-André Bélanger, in addition to graduate students.