Lawyer Down: 10 Signs You’re Burning Out

Summary: Job burnout can have seriously dangerous effects on your legal career, health, and life. It’s important to know what to watch out for before it causes problems that can’t be fixed.

• Knowing what to do when you’re burned out at work; how to deal with it could save your career, sanity, health, and your life.
• Not only can job burnout bring on a long list of health maladies, but it can impair productivity, cognitive abilities, and all the other skills and capabilities you need to succeed.
• The risk of burnout increases dramatically as your work hours increase. There are, however, things you can do to help strike a better, more healthy balance.

Burning up or burning out?

You want to climb the ladder fast and dazzle the partners. You want to pile those billable hours into tall stacks and blaze past your peers. To show the partners that you’re the golden one, there’s only been one way to do this—to put in the time. You’ve got to push through the intense, stressful hours, and the mind-numbingly tedious ones. You’ve got to put in lots and lots of hours.

For more than a decade, associate pay has risen steadily, far beyond other sectors of the economy. That money has to come from somewhere, right?

By decreasing partners’ profits?
By raising hourly rates?
Or, increasing billable hours?
Bingo.

In response, the billable hours requirements for associates has also been continuing to rise—1900, 2000, 2200, 2400… where will it end? Add to those long hours the constant hyper-pressure to perform with little time to decompress—this is the stuff from which diamonds and heart attacks are made.

On the institution of billable hours, the New York Times noted: “The billable-hour system…serves no one. Well, almost no one. It brings most equity partners…great wealth. Law firm leaders call it a leveraged pyramid. Most associates call it a living hell.”

So, why put up with it? Well of course, there’s the money—those law school loans aren’t going to pay for themselves—the prestige (“…my son/daughter the lawyer,” your parents beam…), and maybe you even love the idea of doing important work—and for all of this you sell your life on the installment plan.

This is the devil’s bargain one makes for a law career. This is how the industry runs and always has. Many have gone before you and made a life—why can’t you? Changes may be coming to the legal industry model. Many disrupters are trying, but what that will look like, and when changes occur, remains to be seen. Until that day, the old ways will stand and so will the potential for burnout.

Burnout: It’s a thing

Here’s what could be lying ahead for you:

• Working at least 11 hours a day causes a higher risk of depression than working a standard seven- or eight-hour day: relationships suffer, mental and physical health declines, and there’s a tendency to eat less healthily and exercise less
• Working more means sitting more. Multiple studies have linked sitting to a raging cornucopia of health problems—diabetes, obesity, cancer, heart attack and even death. Even an hour or two of exercise in the morning can’t undo the damage. And trying to pack all of your exercise in on the weekend increases your risk for injury.
• All that work usually means that people aren’t sleeping enough and have an increased likelihood of insomnia.
• Long work schedules increases the risk for a range of heart-health-related problems—heart disease, heart attack, and high blood pressure. Working 10 or more hours a day can result in a 60% jump in cardiovascular risk.
• Work more, drink more: In a study, people who worked more than 48 hours a week were more likely to engage in risky drinking than people working 35 to 40 hours a week.
• Stress prompts the body to pump out hormones that increase blood pressure, heart rate, and blood sugar. This can lead to mental health problems, obesity, heart disease, high blood pressure, skin problems and more.
• A typical work week for Americans is 47 hours. A study says that after 39 hours, mental health begins to suffer. Another study puts the number at 49. Symptoms of burnout can be depression, anxiety, and irritability leading to physical health problems, poor relationships, poor home life, and spending more time worrying about work—when not working.
• Long hours increase depression, anxiety, and insomnia as well as weight gain and higher divorce rates according to a Japanese study. Employees putting in more than 60 hours a week had 15 times the rate of depression 1 to 3 years later, compared to coworkers with more moderate schedules.
• Those working 11 hours or more a day double their risk for major depressive episodes.
• People working in excess of 60 hours a week, but fewer than 70, increased their risk of coronary heart disease by 63% compared to those who working less.
• Working long hours in middle age may increase later risk of Alzheimer’s and dementia.
• In summation: “…the greater the number of hours worked per year, the greater the likelihood of premature death and poor quality of life.”

To further drive home the point, law is the only profession with a cottage industry devoted exclusively to helping them transition out of law and into other careers. In the UK, this company provides mental health care tailored exclusively for the particular needs of attorneys.

So we know a lawyer’s life can be a hard one, but how does it compare to other careers?

• Doctors’ schedules are famously known to be brutal—especially for young residents. Most work up to 60 hour work weeks; a quarter of them work up to 80 hours. You could say that’s kids’ stuff next to Investment bankers; they’re reported to put in 90-100 hour work weeks.
• And then there are long haul truck drivers, video game developers, power plant workers—they all log in with their overlong drudges. Who could possibly work more than that?

Top attorneys will spend almost their entire day working and only going home to sleep. According to this well-known analysis from Yale Law School, an attorney billing 2,200 hours will have put in 3,058 hours. If you don’t work your weekends, that converts to 12 hour workdays—with no time off for the entire year.

Attorneys talk about rising billable hour requirements of 2,500-2,800 hours. Is this even sustainable? (To work 3,500 hours, no weekends, that would be almost 14 hour days. Or, make it 5 days at 12 hours and 10 more on Saturday.)

What burnout looks like

Signs you’re burned out at work—A list of 10 red flags you should be looking for:

1. Emotional Exhaustion: This kind of exhaustion just doesn’t feel psychological, but physical and cognitive. You might feel chronic nausea and find yourself getting sick often. You may also have trouble sleeping. When you’re burned out at work, this kind of exhaustion could be called “bone deep.”
2. Detachment or Depersonalization: When you feel exhausted, you can also feel alienated from your coworkers or cynical about your job. You feel disconnected from your work and the people you work with.
3. A Lack of Accomplishment: You don’t feel you’re at your best and are underachieving. What’s particularly pernicious about this one is that to others it looks like you’re just a low performer when actually you’re in a crisis.
4. Unmotivated: You don’t feel enthusiastic about anything anymore. You no longer have internal motivation for your work and you may also not feel inspired to do the things that you always loved doing before, even the things that have nothing to do with work. You may find it harder to get going in the morning and to drag yourself into work every day. Overall, you may feel less happy and satisfied with both your career and home life.
5. Negative Emotions: This may include pessimism, cynicism, general frustration, and a bouquet of other negative emotions. It can also make you quicker to anger. As a team member, you go from can-do to can’t-deal. You can feel like what you’re doing doesn’t matter that much anymore and you can get disillusioned with everything. While negative emotions from time to time are normal, take note of what may be unusually high levels for you.
6. Difficulty in Concentrating: Stress drains off mental resources, affects our ability to concentrate and pay attention, and a variety of other cognitive issues. Your brain and body was only designed to handle stress in short bursts before returning to normal functioning. You’re not meant to carry stress in extended marathons. Stress narrows our focus and makes it difficult to pay attention to other things like problem solving and decision making. It can also make it harder to remember things.
7. Interpersonal Issues: You find you’re having more conflicts and arguments, or you withdraw, interacting less with others. This can happen both at home and at work. Even when you’re physically present you feel like you’re not there. Problems at home tend to go unaddressed and you feel stuck and moribund. It can also affect your other social activities and your relationships, including those with family members. Feeling burned out at work can become a virus that infects your whole life.
8. A Lack of Self-Care: Burnout can lead to unhealthy coping strategies. Among these, drinking too much, smoking, being too sedentary, eating too much junk food, not eating enough, or not getting enough sleep. Also, self-medication: this can include relying on sleeping pills, increased alcohol consumption as an excuse to de-stress, or even drinking more coffee to try to find that energy that you can’t seem to produce on your own.
9. Thinking About Work All the Time: When you’re not at work you’re still expending mental energy over your job. To recover from your day, you need time to yourself to not think about work. Yet, you can’t seem to manage that.
10.  Effects to Your Health: Serious chronic stress over an extended period of time can create real health problems as mentioned above. This is one of the worst symptoms of being burned out at work because it can literally kill you.

How to avoid getting burned out at work

The steps seem easy and obvious. Taking the responsibility to do them is another matter. To avoid burnout requires strategy. A major problem is that we often struggle with taking care of ourselves. It may not serve your employer to have you slow down, but it does serve you. It’s a decision you have to make for and about yourself.

• Relaxation is recovery; take it seriously: Make time for it. It doesn’t have to be anything involved or complicated: listen to music, meditate, read a book, take a walk, connect with friends and family. Make it conscious and intentional.
• Make your non-work life better: Find things to do that don’t have anything to do with work. Find a hobby or fitness activity, discover or re-engage with a passion, volunteer—doing these things will help you “turn off” your stressful work mode. It’ll enrich you in many ways; trust this.
• No-Phone Zone: Communication technology has elevated productivity. We’re more productive now than ever and it takes a toll. Being accessible or making your work accessible at all hours only keeps the stress running. To de-stress you need to set boundaries with your phone and other devices when it comes to email, texts, etc. If you must check-in, relegate it to certain times only.
• Time for Lights Out: The current research on sleep suggests we’re not getting enough. It can be tempting at times to burn the candle at both ends, play hard to make up for a tough workday, or stay up too late when we have to get up early. Getting fewer than six hours of sleep per night is a major risk factor for burnout as well as performance and productivity; also fatigue decreases motivation, increases sensitivity to stress and mental impairment, makes you less thorough and more error-prone and unable to multi-task. Bodies need to replenish their resources and sleep helps. With proper amounts of sleep, you can actually improve your memory.
• Organize Yourself: Another of the signs that you are burned out at work is spending a lot of time worrying that you will forget to do something. Clearing your head and then getting organized by putting together a to-do list (or an electronic task list) and prioritizing tasks allows you to get things out of your head. Think of it as a mental de-platforming. You’ll be able to relax knowing that you’ve got what you need to know written down. It’ll also help reduce feeling overwhelmed.
• Check Yourself Before You Wreck Yourself: Pay attention to your body and its signs and symptoms. Watch for physical manifestations of too much stress: more headaches, tight shoulders, a stiff neck, or gastrointestinal issues. Burnout affects depression and depression increases burnout. It’s a feedback loop. If the issues you’re struggling with are getting to be serious, seek professional help. Sometimes, family and friends aren’t enough.
• Is It You or Is It Them?: Sometimes it’s you, more often it’s them but you need to understand which before you can seriously attempt to address the problem. If it’s them then you can formulate a plan and act accordingly. If you’re sabotaging yourself then you need to know. This’ll help you maintain internal resources, motivation, and functionality.

  When it’s not you: Many complain that working conditions worsen in times of economic stress—hiring freezes, layoffs, increased or reduced work hours, changes in benefits, unpaid days off, etc. Demands on you will go up. This speaks to two major sources of burnout and job stress—more demands and fewer resources.

• Know When to Advocate for Yourself: Is it possible for you to discuss with a supervisor or HR about EAP services, mental health benefits, etc.? Attorneys can see job-related stress as a weakness, and nobody wants that. For attorneys, job burnout is a given—it’s up on the individual to find ways to deal. Is there a way for your work culture to be improved? It could be seen as a way to enable staff to better serve the firm and become even more productive. Very often, though, the organization will be unable or unwilling to make changes. If so, it may be time to seek other opportunities.

  How to get over being burnt out at work? Sometimes the best answer is to get out.

Stress and burnout

When on-the-job demands overwhelm an individual’s resources and abilities to meet them, burnout is inevitable.

The potential becomes even worse in law firms with the high demands of billable hours, a competitive environment, partner scrutiny and expectations—and even more difficult when the expectations aren’t clear. If you feel you’re on the precipice of burnout, don’t ignore the symptoms. This is not a problem that fixes itself.

Your health must be a priority and non-negotiable. Get sleep. Eat well. Make time for exercise, walks outside, sitting in the sun. Fitness is good in itself but exercise also has meditative qualities. It can be a mental vacation, however brief.

Get back to your well-being and then take stock of your work-life balance. There’ll be things you can and can’t control. Start with those you can. Be more disciplined about when you leave for the day. Unplug when you get home: De-pressurize.

After you get a handle on the things that are in your control, then start on those that aren’t. Seek professional help if you can. Be your own advocate. No job—not even a well-paying and prestigious one—is worth your mental and physical health.

And don’t wait.

About Harrison Barnes

Harrison Barnes is the founder of BCG Attorney Search and a successful legal recruiter. Harrison is extremely committed to and passionate about the profession of legal placement. His firm BCG Attorney Search has placed thousands of attorneys. BCG Attorney Search works with attorneys to dramatically improve their careers by leaving no stone unturned in job searches and bringing out the very best in them. Harrison has placed the leaders of the nation’s top law firms, and countless associates who have gone on to lead the nation’s top law firms. There are very few firms Harrison has not made placements with. Harrison’s writings about attorney careers and placements attract millions of reads each year. He coaches and consults with law firms about how to dramatically improve their recruiting and retention efforts. His company, LawCrossing, has been ranked on the Inc. 500 twice. For more information, please visit Harrison Barnes’ bio.

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