Is a 40-hour workweek possible?
Remote and hybrid work environments are now commonplace, as are new expectations for more balance between our personal and professional lives. This is true almost universally, including in the legal industry.
Corporate legal departments, law firms and the technology and service providers that support them are all assessing their cultures, pay scales, benefits and more to ensure both current and prospective new employees remain confident they will enjoy the work-life balance they seek. The focus on mental health as part of overall employee wellness is of particular interest to eDiscovery providers, who are seeing unprecedented burnout – and worse.
Practitioners in eDiscovery in firms or in-house environments deal with pressures every day, but project managers and others working for service providers face stress on another level, in large part due to client expectations. Market norms and pricing pressures dictate that service providers deliver as much as possible, as quickly as possible and with as few resources as possible. For the people doing this work, this means long hours and high expectations, the stress of which is leading to increasing burnout.
As recruiters, we’re seeing evidence of this more and more. Providers, law firms, consulting firms and legal technology companies are still seeking new talent to fill eDiscovery positions that are open due to retirements, internal promotions and normal attrition as well as organic growth. But they also must fill openings that have come about due to employees leaving the industry entirely, often due to burnout and a lack of the life balance they seek.
In response to this decline in mental health, efforts are now underway to better align employee wellness in eDiscovery. A group of industry leaders, volunteer attorneys and researchers are working to address these concerns in a new initiative called The Mind-Budget Connection™. The group aims not just to raise awareness about the alarming trend of worsening mental health in the industry, but also to start a serious conversation about how to address it. The MBC “seeks to combat burnout in the industry by addressing a root cause – contract structures.”
The MBC has said the goal is to explore this mind-budget connection though both quantitative and qualitative research and begin a collaborative discussion that will lead to change. The initiative began earlier this year with a survey, the results of which will be shared in an upcoming white paper along with other research and the group’s proposed solutions. From there, the MBC expects to present its findings and proposed solutions at industry conferences to promote meaningful discussions.
When asked about the genesis of the MBC, participant Amy Sellars told Ari Kaplan, “There has been a lot of discussion about wellness, but there has not been much talk about the impact on e-discovery professionals, particularly as a result of the pandemic and cost controls, which have produced a race to the bottom.” In his recap of their interview, Kaplan adds, “She emphasized that stress and burnout come when you can’t provide quality at the cost at which you are selling your services, or you cannot make enough to survive. This is especially true for contract reviewers, the quality of their work and what we are asking them to do under these circumstances. COVID added extra pressure, isolation, higher costs and increased work, so we want to provide some tools to mitigate these challenges.”
It will be interesting to follow the findings of the MBC and learn whether the initiative is able to bring about some improvement. Many project managers are no longer chasing the highest salaries; in fact, some are willing to trade increased compensation for something more resembling a traditional 40-hour workweek. But many question whether that will ever be possible.
This remains a time of change for employers and their employees alike, as well as for those hiring or seeking new positions. Firms and service providers must be clear on their expectations at the outset of the hiring process. And candidates should know what their needs are not just in terms of compensation, but also in production expectations, culture and work environments, and how best to achieve the balance they seek.
I look forward to addressing this important topic at next month’s Relativity Fest. There I will join a panel of experts for the breakout session, “Feeling Crispy? You May be Burnt Out” on October 28 as part of the Community & Culture track.
By Chris Egan