‘Law is a marathon, not a sprint. Do not wear yourself out’: Top tips from senior practitioners on staying sane in a fast-paced and high-stakes profession

Mahvash Ikram

Last month, a team of legal researchers at the Auckland University of Technology (AUT) lifted the lid on how lawyers really feel about their jobs.

Law in Distress was a difficult read. Alongside the heavy caseloads and relentless pressure were tales of at-risk drinking, cancer diagnoses, industrial-scale anxiety and suicidal thoughts.

Of those surveyed, almost a quarter of lawyers – 22.5% – intend to leave the profession within four years. Two-thirds described their workloads as heavy or extremely heavy.

But the picture isn’t completely bleak. Yes, the workload can be next-level, exhaustion will wear you down and the adversarial nature of the law itself can add yet another dimension of distress.

But  several senior practitioners have told LawNews that lawyers can fight back by developing specific strategies for coping  – and sticking to them.

We asked these practitioners for their top tips to help those struggling in a profession not known for its forgiveness towards those who get it wrong.

 

Managing the day

Creating a gap between appointments is something lawyers rarely allow themselves, says Holly Hedley, a sole practitioner at Dawn Legal. It gives you time to reset before taking on the weight of whatever the next person brings.

“Lawyers, as far as I have seen in my career, just switch back-to-back [between appointments], high pace… without that kind of cognitive awareness of gear changing.”

Clearing small things quickly is what keeps Mingze Sun on top of his day.

Sun – a barrister at FortyEight Shortland, the co-convenor of The Law Association’s NextGen Committee and a member of The Law Association’s Council – prioritises tasks according to how long each one will take to complete, rather than by urgency. Doing them on the spot, he says, leaves him less stressed about how the day has gone.

Factoring “undemanding time” into her daily routine helps Deborah Manning, senior counsel at Landmark Chambers, process the day.

She sets aside at least 20 minutes for tasks that do not require much attention – tidying, walking, washing dishes. And before signing off from work, she plans the next day. “Before you finish work, make a simple plan for the next morning and put the day away – no matter how bad it was.”

The most productive time for getting work done for Lady Deborah Chambers KC is the morning, which is why she prefers to see clients in the afternoon. “It doesn’t require as much energy listening to a client and talking to a client,” she says.

A fixed cut-off time from work is how criminal barrister Samira Taghavi, practice manager at Active Legal Solutions and vice president of The Law Association (TLANZ), switches off at the end of the day. She stops answering calls, messages and email, she says.

“Clients need to understand that they do not own your time simply because you are their lawyer… If you establish from the beginning that you will respond during reasonable working hours, clients generally learn to work within that.”

Exercising early every day is how barrister and best-selling author Dr Mai Chen KC copes – weights, speed cycling, stretching, yoga, long walks and gardening.

Exercise is also important to Sun. He sticks to his gym session, no matter what the day ahead might hold.

“I remember once we had a trial where we would stay up working late into the early hours of the morning. I still went to the gym at the normal time and then got on with the rest of the day.”

 

Go easy on the alcohol

About four years ago, Chambers says she decided she would not consume more than seven glasses of wine a week, the recommended limit for women. A clear rule is easier to follow, she says.

“You are constantly being plied with alcohol. You go to a function, and there they are with the champagne.”

But Chambers says she asks for a non-alcoholic option at functions and sleeps better for it.

Reaching for a glass of wine when you are tense or miserable is an easy habit to fall into, she says, and she can understand why some lawyers end up drinking too much, especially after a long day. But it’s a risk. “You need to find other ways of dealing with that.”

According to the AUT report, slightly more than half the male lawyers surveyed and two-thirds of the female lawyers scored in the at-risk range for alcohol use.

Some participants had cut back or quit, and they described the same turning point – recognising what the after-work drink was doing before it became a problem. One reduced his intake after watching colleagues develop alcohol issues. Another, who had used a work drinking culture to normalise his own consumption, gave it up completely.

 

Learn to say no

“My biggest problem as a young lawyer was that I agreed to do everything,” The Law Association’s chief executive Clayton Kimpton says. He sat on three boards while also working long hours as a lawyer with young children at home, and the balance went wrong more than once. “I had to learn how to say no.”

But that is easier for some than others, says Frana Divich, a partner at Heaney and Partners. She can choose how she works because she is a partner with support and an infrastructure

around her. It’s not the same for a barrister or a young lawyer with targets and no support because they are relying on themselves alone. That can be difficult, Divich says.

The Law in Distress researchers found the same pressure playing out when dealing with clients. One participant said refusing to engage felt impossible when a client rang in distress, changing her behaviour only  after realising she had missed multiple medical appointments by putting her clients first.

“Be disciplined about saying ‘no’ to what does not matter,” Chen says.

It’s also about choosing your battles, Manning says, and not every battle must be fought. Her advice is to ask what you are trying to change and who has the ability to change it, rather than losing energy on people who cannot or will not listen. Agency does not always mean fighting harder, Manning says.

The AUT report found practitioners had a number of strategies for saying ‘no’: avoiding back-to-back trials; limiting the number of difficult cases or clients they took on; referring work to other lawyers; keeping weekends and evenings clear; and building breaks into their schedule when a heavy stretch of work was looming.

Juniors have it the hardest. One survey participant said new lawyers “work obscenely long hours for less than the minimum wage and don’t know how to say no”.

 

‘You are not the client’

Bringing every case home is what makes the work unmanageable, says defence counsel Marie Dyhrberg KC – a former President of ADLS (now known as The Law Association) who has practised criminal law for more than four decades.

This, she says, has exposed her to some of the best and worst of human behaviour. Family, friends, exercise and interests outside the law are her reminder that there is a bigger world out there than the next brief or court appearance.

“We have to be careful to understand that we didn’t create the situation that [the client] is in,” says criminal defence barrister Julie-Anne Kincade KC.

Kincade, the convenor of The Law Association’s Criminal Law Committee and a former TLANZ vice-president,  says many of her clients are at the most difficult and painful point of their lives. Her role is to help them navigate a process, not to take responsibility for everything that led them there.

Clients arrive in a pickle of their own making and the lawyer’s job is to help them out of it – not to take it on, Chambers says. Some lawyers become a support

mechanism for their clients, and while she rather admires that, Chambers says it is “absolutely exhausting”. Distance is also produces better lawyering, she says. “You get better judgment if you just have an arm’s length relationship with them.”

According to Taghavi, learning to separate yourself from your clients is what will give your career longevity. “Remember that you are not the client. You can care deeply about your client and their case without carrying all of their emotions as your own.”

Chen is more blunt: the client has the problem, and she is helping as best she can. The client decides whether to take her advice. “There will always be another client on fire, another meeting or hearing you must attend and the list goes on,” she says. “Law is a marathon, not a sprint. Do not wear yourself out.”

Lawyers are competitive by definition, says Stuart Cummings, a senior counsel at Surrey Chambers and co-convener of The Law Association’s Family Law Committee.

Cummings says he has had to unlearn the belief that he should win every time. “Whichever way you look at a court hearing, even in the Family Court, even though we’re never supposed to talk about winning, of course it’s about winning. What’s the guy paying you for? The client is paying you to achieve an outcome for them which they will define as winning.”

Dyhrberg says she has made her peace with the same thing. “Excellence is achievable, perfection is not.” She believes in preparation, judgment and professionalism but the rest, she says, is often beyond her control.

“Accepting this has been enormously liberating, as it means I am answerable only to my own beliefs, not to others’ expectations.”

The AUT report records that same strategy among some of its participants. One lawyer described learning to think about what was within her control and what was her responsibility, particularly when dealing with clients. Previously, she had blamed herself when something went wrong.

Another described compartmentalising as having a box under the bed. “You put your stuff into one box, put the lid on and make sure it’s in a really dark place, and then you deal with the other box.”

Don’t wait for a crisis

The profession has been slow to admit that being a lawyer comes at a cost, Hedley says. “Neither the community nor lawyers themselves have, until quite recently, started to accept that actually, it’s bloody hard to stare at photos of a murder scene day after day after day.”

She did not consider her own practice of medical, coronial and employment law as trauma-heavy, she says, until she walked past a place connected to a file she had worked on and had a flashback to the crime scene photographs. “I thought, ‘gosh, it’s my work that’s coming back to me’.”

She now works with a supervisor whom she meets with monthly to reflect and talk things out. “It’s about the idea that [supervision] is a part of your practice rather than [happening only] when you’re in a really bad place, seeking it out.”

Manning concurs. Nothing ranks higher than professional supervision, she says. “Have regular, planned and structured sessions in which you can talk with someone appropriately qualified about your work, not merely the law or the next procedural step, but what the work is doing to you, the decisions you are making and the pressures you are carrying.”

Taghavi says she has been seeing a psychiatrist every four weeks without fail since 2018. “I have always spoken about this publicly and candidly because I do not think lawyers should feel embarrassed about seeking professional support.”

According to the Law in Distress report, participants said introducing compulsory professional supervision would remove any stigma associated with it.  No one has to admit something is wrong if everyone has to do it, she says, and optional support gets pushed to the bottom of a busy lawyer’s to-do list.

Most agreed the cost should not fall on individual lawyers and pointed to firms, government departments or the New Zealand Law Society as possible funding sources. They suggested monthly to quarterly standing appointments rather than ad hoc bookings.

 

Protect your time off

Chambers rarely gives her mobile number to clients, and if she does, she makes sure they call only when necessary. “I can’t believe lawyers that put up with that,” she says. “You’re not paying me enough to come intruding into my personal life when I’ve stopped work for the day.”

It is a matter of training the client, she says – and if they do not like it, they can find another lawyer.

Being available around the clock is a pressure that Kimpton never faced as a young lawyer. He worked long hours but the lack of technology back then meant he was unreachable once he got home.

His advice is to book time off well in advance. “You need to put your holiday in the diary well in advance as a fixture… otherwise it won’t happen… You can then plan the rest of your world around that… Taking one day off here [and] there is not a holiday. You probably need to take two weeks at some stage.”

That discipline can work on a smaller scale too.

Switching off from the job once a week is non-negotiable for Kincade, who says she completely disconnects from work on Saturdays and avoids work calls.

“Don’t work and don’t feel guilty about not working… It’s absolutely acceptable to have one day when you are watching sport, playing sport… with your kids, shopping, getting your toenails done, whatever it is that floats your boat. Do something away from your work and that’ll make you a better lawyer.”

The break does not have to wait for a weekend, says retired Court of Appeal judge Raynor Asher KC – a former President of The Law Association back in the days when it was known as ADLS.

Asher likes to pause during the working day – having lunch with a non-lawyer friend, a jog or a swim. “It doesn’t mean you wouldn’t necessarily think about work when you were having those quiet times… but your brain would run free and you would often find it a constructive thing to do.”

Not every break works the same way. Sailing a dinghy and surfing take Cummings fully out of work mode. “Your conscious being is 100% focused on what you’re doing… if not, you’re going to capsize the boat,” he says.

“My coping mechanism is to maintain curiosity,” Dyhrberg says. “One way I stay sane is to deliberately step outside my professional world. I love finding edgy, quirky little cafés, underground bars with blues and rock bands and hidden places in a city.”

She strikes up conversations with strangers and collects their stories. “These encounters keep me grounded, reminding me that there is a world beyond courtrooms and client files.”

The AUT report found lawyers protecting their time in similar ways:  two mobile phones, an answerphone message setting out when they were available, and no contact outside working hours.

 

Find your people

How lawyers treat each other matters, Cummings says. More than two decades on, he still remembers being forced to turn up to court the day after his three-week-old son suffered a major skull fracture because the opposing counsel had refused to have the hearing postponed. But the judge was more understanding.

“Within probably a minute the judge said, ‘Mr Cummings, you can’t do this hearing, go home’.”

His advice is to respect colleagues because they are part of the system you might one day need on your side. “You’ve got to be respectful to expect respect.”

Junior lawyers should identify go-to people while everything is still fine – not once trouble arrives, Divich says. It might be a senior associate, a practice manager or someone in HR. Her own firm pairs every new lawyer with a partner as a mentor, and they meet regularly.

“We don’t necessarily talk about files. We talk about what their aspirations are and where they want to go in their career.”

Lawyers must seek mentors at every stage of their career and listen more than they speak in the early years, Dyhrberg says. “Remember that every senior lawyer they respect and admire once felt out of their depth.”

Asher did the same early in his career. He attached himself to a senior lawyer he looked up to and copied him. “If someone’s there who cares about you and you admire, and has the skills that you want, that is a tremendous start.”

Taghavi says she speaks to colleagues and friends in the profession almost every day and tells new lawyers to build the network from the beginning and approach senior practitioners directly – who, she says, are more generous with their time than juniors expect.

But peer support has limits, the AUT research warns. It depends on both participants being self-aware and supported themselves. Without that, it can spread distress rather than relieve it, which is why the report recommends formal supervision alongside peer support rather than instead of it.

The obligation runs both ways, Manning says. Find the people who care about you and be willing to go towards them when you need them. “It means being ready when another lawyer reaches out…Sometimes the most useful thing we can say is simply ‘tell me what happened, I have time’.”

 

When to change course

“Is everybody cut out to be a high-performing lawyer? I’m not sure,” Kimpton says. What carried him through was loving the work. “For me, being a lawyer was more than a job. It became part of who I was.”

Asher’s advice to those who are unhappy is to change something. His first job was in conveyancing but he did not enjoy it, so he moved into court work and was much happier. Lawyers often find their footing when they switch – transactional to litigation, or into a specialised area that holds their interest, he says.

The AUT study backs him up. Of the lawyers surveyed who had switched practice areas, almost a third felt they were better suited elsewhere and 12.9% had left an area because of stress.

“It’s not the end of the world if you start in the law and want to change,” Asher says. He has known bright young lawyers who left and made good lives elsewhere. “If you’re not happy, move on.”

Rethinking resilience

Every generation is accused by the previous generation of being too soft, Dyhrberg says. But younger lawyers are learning resilience in a different environment – faster, and in some ways less forgiving than the profession she entered as one of the few female criminal defence lawyers of her era.

“I see plenty of resilience in younger lawyers. What they sometimes lack is not toughness, but experience and experience only comes with time.”

Resilience is not about pretending things are easy, she says. “It is about going home, sometimes in tears, thinking you cannot ever go back into that courtroom again, that you are a complete failure – but the next day, you are back there, fearless, ready for another day of battle.”

Taghavi puts it differently. The current generation does have work to do on resilience, she says, though not entirely through their own fault. Law school is theoretical, and does little to prepare graduates for judges, difficult clients, criticism and mistakes.

She also draws a line not everyone will accept. Some conduct described to her as judicial bullying looks more like constructive criticism to her, or an attempt to improve a junior’s advocacy skills. Genuine bullying should never be tolerated, she says, but not every uncomfortable interaction is bullying. She urges juniors to talk to someone more experienced before deciding what they are dealing with.

The Law in Distress report cites a 2018 survey of New Zealand Criminal Bar Association members in which 65% of criminal lawyers reported experiencing judicial bullying, with comparable findings in Australia that same year. It also notes the Judicial Commission of Victoria’s 2023 definition – conduct a reasonable person would perceive as belittling, humiliating, insulting, victimising, aggressive or intimidating. New Zealand now has a Judicial Protocol and the New Zealand Law Society published guidance in 2024 on responding to a judge’s conduct in court.

“I don’t like the idea of being more resilient because… people trying to be resilient are putting up with things that they can’t manage,” Cummings says. “[It] is just another way of saying… ‘big boys don’t cry’.”

Lawyer wellbeing is not simply a question of individual resilience, Manning says. Work design, workload, time pressure, control over work, exposure to traumatic material and workplace relationships create risk in themselves.

As Divich sees it, distress has always been in the law. What has shifted is that behaviour that was once acceptable is no longer tolerated. She does not think the current generation is softer. Rather, she says, they are unwilling to put up with what she had to endure in order to progress in her career.