¿Are Lawyers Happy?

I was recently reading a very good book about motivation (“Drive, The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us”, Daniel H. Pink) and came across this intriguing and rather disturbing question: “Ever wonder why lawyers, as a group, are so miserable?”

Over the years, in countless conversations and discussions with colleagues and friends, the issue of insatisfaction about life in law firms came up as something inevitable if you wanted to practice the legal profession in big or even medium-size firms. Interestingly, insatisfaction could be found in all professional levels within the firms, from young associates to experienced and powerful partners. The nature of these recurrent complaints were different depending on the individual and law firm, but a couple of common features can be highlighted: (1) lack of control over his/her own time, with negative impact on a desired way to practice law and life balance; and (2) this lack of control generating high levels of tension within the firm, causing negative competition, lack of collaboration and an unhealthy environment.

Daniel Pink suggests that probably the main reason for insatisfaction is that “lawyers often face intense demands but have relatively little “decision latitude”. Studies of professional service firms indicate that autonomy is one of the main characteristics of professionals and a highly desirable condition for a rewarding work environment. Pink goes on to explain that at the heart of the matter lies the most autonomy-crushing mechanism: the billable hour. This system makes lawyers shift attention from output of their work (solving client´s problems) to its input (piling up as many hours as possible). So amount of time becomes the focus of interest, rather than quality service, and rewards -and, indirectly, culture- are therefore alligned in that direction.

If you add to the “time-prison” structure of law firms the “low-trust environment” described by David Maister as connatural to lawyers, you get a pretty poor basis for a motivating and energizing workplace. Many will say that is not true, since you could find strongly driven and motivated lawyers in all successful law firms. That is obviously so, but the problem is when motivation comes from adjustment to these rather negative variables: lawyers working like maniacs to achieve hour-records and use the existing tension to compete in negative ways.
But this has been the case for the last 30 years and it has worked nicely for law firms and partners. So why bother?

Modern and -in my view- more healthy trends are indicating that changes may be required to this situation. The hourly billing system is increasingly contested, if it can´t be related more closely to a value proposition. Unless we are talking about an almost purely mechanical and standarized work -which law firms will perform less and less in the future-, billing just based on hours worked do not make much sense. And the same goes for law firm management. Managing Partners knows all too well that trying to control the professional team through the amount of hours output is a lost battle, let alone motivate them.

Also, modern neuroscience studies indicate that collaborative and non-agressive work environments enhance high performance, since people can concentrate better on their work and client needs and are not forced to develop complex defense mechanisms as survival tools.
Not only clients are requiring more sophisticated and value-added law firms, resulting from creative and collaborative organizations, but new generations of professionals are more reluctant to accept professional projects based on long-term and rather unclear objectives -career to partner- and a short-term unatractive professional experience too much tied to hour-accumulation and an excessive competitive and individualistic environment.

Law firms and partners need to think harder about what is going to be their motivational proposition in the years to come. The answer to that question might be the key to achieving or maintaining high performance -and hopefully less miserable- organizations.I was recently reading a very good book about motivation (“Drive, The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us”, Daniel H. Pink) and came across this intriguing and rather disturbing question: “Ever wonder why lawyers, as a group, are so miserable?”

Over the years, in countless conversations and discussions with colleagues and friends, the issue of insatisfaction about life in law firms came up as something inevitable if you wanted to practice the legal profession in big or even medium-size firms. Interestingly, insatisfaction could be found in all professional levels within the firms, from young associates to experienced and powerful partners. The nature of these recurrent complaints were different depending on the individual and law firm, but a couple of common features can be highlighted: (1) lack of control over his/her own time, with negative impact on a desired way to practice law and life balance; and (2) this lack of control generating high levels of tension within the firm, causing negative competition, lack of collaboration and an unhealthy environment.

Daniel Pink suggests that probably the main reason for insatisfaction is that “lawyers often face intense demands but have relatively little “decision latitude”. Studies of professional service firms indicate that autonomy is one of the main characteristics of professionals and a highly desirable condition for a rewarding work environment. Pink goes on to explain that at the heart of the matter lies the most autonomy-crushing mechanism: the billable hour. This system makes lawyers shift attention from output of their work (solving client´s problems) to its input (piling up as many hours as possible). So amount of time becomes the focus of interest, rather than quality service, and rewards -and, indirectly, culture- are therefore alligned in that direction.

If you add to the “time-prison” structure of law firms the “low-trust environment” described by David Maister as connatural to lawyers, you get a pretty poor basis for a motivating and energizing workplace. Many will say that is not true, since you could find strongly driven and motivated lawyers in all successful law firms. That is obviously so, but the problem is when motivation comes from adjustment to these rather negative variables: lawyers working like maniacs to achieve hour-records and use the existing tension to compete in negative ways.
But this has been the case for the last 30 years and it has worked nicely for law firms and partners. So why bother?

Modern and -in my view- more healthy trends are indicating that changes may be required to this situation. The hourly billing system is increasingly contested, if it can´t be related more closely to a value proposition. Unless we are talking about an almost purely mechanical and standarized work -which law firms will perform less and less in the future-, billing just based on hours worked do not make much sense. And the same goes for law firm management. Managing Partners knows all too well that trying to control the professional team through the amount of hours output is a lost battle, let alone motivate them.

Also, modern neuroscience studies indicate that collaborative and non-agressive work environments enhance high performance, since people can concentrate better on their work and client needs and are not forced to develop complex defense mechanisms as survival tools.
Not only clients are requiring more sophisticated and value-added law firms, resulting from creative and collaborative organizations, but new generations of professionals are more reluctant to accept professional projects based on long-term and rather unclear objectives -career to partner- and a short-term unatractive professional experience too much tied to hour-accumulation and an excessive competitive and individualistic environment.

Law firms and partners need to think harder about what is going to be their motivational proposition in the years to come. The answer to that question might be the key to achieving or maintaining high performance -and hopefully less miserable- organizations.I was recently reading a very good book about motivation (“Drive, The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us”, Daniel H. Pink) and came across this intriguing and rather disturbing question: “Ever wonder why lawyers, as a group, are so miserable?”

Over the years, in countless conversations and discussions with colleagues and friends, the issue of insatisfaction about life in law firms came up as something inevitable if you wanted to practice the legal profession in big or even medium-size firms. Interestingly, insatisfaction could be found in all professional levels within the firms, from young associates to experienced and powerful partners. The nature of these recurrent complaints were different depending on the individual and law firm, but a couple of common features can be highlighted: (1) lack of control over his/her own time, with negative impact on a desired way to practice law and life balance; and (2) this lack of control generating high levels of tension within the firm, causing negative competition, lack of collaboration and an unhealthy environment.

Daniel Pink suggests that probably the main reason for insatisfaction is that “lawyers often face intense demands but have relatively little “decision latitude”. Studies of professional service firms indicate that autonomy is one of the main characteristics of professionals and a highly desirable condition for a rewarding work environment. Pink goes on to explain that at the heart of the matter lies the most autonomy-crushing mechanism: the billable hour. This system makes lawyers shift attention from output of their work (solving client´s problems) to its input (piling up as many hours as possible). So amount of time becomes the focus of interest, rather than quality service, and rewards -and, indirectly, culture- are therefore alligned in that direction.

If you add to the “time-prison” structure of law firms the “low-trust environment” described by David Maister as connatural to lawyers, you get a pretty poor basis for a motivating and energizing workplace. Many will say that is not true, since you could find strongly driven and motivated lawyers in all successful law firms. That is obviously so, but the problem is when motivation comes from adjustment to these rather negative variables: lawyers working like maniacs to achieve hour-records and use the existing tension to compete in negative ways.
But this has been the case for the last 30 years and it has worked nicely for law firms and partners. So why bother?

Modern and -in my view- more healthy trends are indicating that changes may be required to this situation. The hourly billing system is increasingly contested, if it can´t be related more closely to a value proposition. Unless we are talking about an almost purely mechanical and standarized work -which law firms will perform less and less in the future-, billing just based on hours worked do not make much sense. And the same goes for law firm management. Managing Partners knows all too well that trying to control the professional team through the amount of hours output is a lost battle, let alone motivate them.

Also, modern neuroscience studies indicate that collaborative and non-agressive work environments enhance high performance, since people can concentrate better on their work and client needs and are not forced to develop complex defense mechanisms as survival tools.
Not only clients are requiring more sophisticated and value-added law firms, resulting from creative and collaborative organizations, but new generations of professionals are more reluctant to accept professional projects based on long-term and rather unclear objectives -career to partner- and a short-term unatractive professional experience too much tied to hour-accumulation and an excessive competitive and individualistic environment.

Law firms and partners need to think harder about what is going to be their motivational proposition in the years to come. The answer to that question might be the key to achieving or maintaining high performance -and hopefully less miserable- organizations.