“Pressure pushing down on me, pressing down on you, no man ask for. Under pressure that burns a building down, splits a family in two, puts people on streets …” (Bowie & Queen, 1981)
Under Pressure isn’t just a beloved, avante-garde single from pop royalty Queen and David Bowie. It’s an unexpected source of insight about wellbeing in a chaotic world. But it’s oh-so-relatable to the realities of legal life and conversations about acculturated behaviour and consequences. Like the song, modern wellbeing discourse explores the often-destructive pressures of everyday life, relationships, and the complexities of human connection. And the aggressive billing pressure synonymous with legal practice often strikes the sharpest chord.
Claims about billing targets driving productivity are overpowered by reality – that they’re more-often used to monitor and control employee performance, promote competition, and maximise a law firm’s profits. By design, billing pressure is a merciless mistress. It dominates working hours, intimidates us through toxic competition, and violates healthy work-life boundaries. And there are two main routes to this all-too-familiar destruction. The first path leads to an unrelenting overabundance of work. The second runs through a professional wasteland – there just isn’t enough work around to meet your billable hour target.
Don’t stop me now
It’s good to be busy, right? You might think a steady, abundant stream of work would release the pressure. But this scenario actually feeds the culture of overwork.
You’re usually under-resourced because the firm wants to maximise profits. You’re almost always exhausted. You need a pressure valve, like a vacation. But with a mountain of work to return to, you know you’d never be able to fully switch off and relax. So you either begrudgingly go on holiday but never feel like you left, or you bow down at the altar of billable hours and sacrifice even more personal time.
One of the worst outcomes from this scenario is the effort-reward imbalance. If you’re astute and manage your time well, this scenario really penalises your efficiency – because the actual billable time spent on each case is lower, so you constantly need to do more to bill more. If you’re inefficient (intentionally or not), you’ll probably hit target. Likely, though, it’ll tax your sense of achievement and self-worth. And don’t forget the hit to client relationships when bill shock hits and matters are drawn out.
I want it all, and I want it now
Scenario two is arguably worse – not billing enough. It’s not by virtue of laziness or lack of commitment. Sometimes, the flow of work just slows to a crawl through no fault of your own. Maybe you’re stuck waiting for a client’s instructions, or the person who assigns your work fails to delegate for some reason. Not knowing when the work will pick up, whether you’ll make budget, and whether you’ll keep your job is extremely stressful. And all-too-often, you’ll suffer in silence because you fear being judged as a failure. But the isolation is a killer – it fuels intrusive negative thoughts and your anxious heartbeat becomes the deafening soundtrack to your anticipated demise.
The most insidious consequence of this second scenario is the scarcity mindset. When there’s not enough work to go around, survival mode kicks in. It breeds an insatiable desire to win all the work and a desperate drive to do it all now to make budget … this time. So, you spend as much time at work as you can, your focus narrows, you start to obsess over what others have instead of celebrating your own wins, and collegial relationships become aggressively adversarial.
Sadly, the risk of unethical billing practices is far higher in this scenario. The fears, anxiety, and fierce competition can drive some to exaggerate their hours to hit targets and maximise their chances of career progression. It can also tempt lawyers into under-exaggerating hours to avoid appearing slow and inefficient.
I want to break free
It’s extremely difficult to change something so entrenched as time-based billing. And when the consequences of maintaining the status quo are so heavy, it can feel like mortal combat. So, first the battle, then the war.
We start by focusing on what we can control and change – our own relationships with the pressures we face. Let’s call it a perspective pivot. It requires regular, sustained effort. But the rewards actually are worth the effort here. We need to gain distance from the profit-centric mindset and redirect focus to outcomes. The number of hours we spend chained to a desk provides no meaningful value – to us or our clients. What really matters is how we helped others, what we learned, what we enjoyed, and the kind of person we were along the way.
Lawyering is so much more than billing. Next time you glance over at the timesheet to see one hour of billable time versus three non-billable hours and that sense of dread, fear, or panic looms – remember to check in with your own values (even if you do work in a profit-centric firm). Find things that give you your meaning, your purpose, and joy of fulfilling why you practice law. Shifting to an abundance mindset and practising gratitude are powerful tools to restore perspective and break free from toxic attitudes and behaviours. Redefine value by redefining our bottom line.
References
- Bergin, A. J., & Jimmieson, N. L. (2014). Australian lawyer wellbeing: Workplace demands, resources and the impact of time-billing targets. Psychiatry, Psychology and Law, 21(3), 427–441. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13218719.2013.822783
- Brady, M. (2019). VLSB+C lawyer wellbeing project: Report on legal professionals’ reflections on wellbeing in the legal profession and suggestions for future reforms. Victorian Legal Services Board + Commission. https://lsbc.vic.gov.au/resources/lawyer-wellbeing-report
- Gutiérrez, O. I., Polo, J. D., Zambrano, M. J., & Molina, D. C. (2020). Meta-analysis and scientific mapping of wellbeing and job performance. The Spanish Journal of Psychology, 23, Article e43. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/spanish-journal-of-psychology/article/abs/metaanalysis-and-scientific-mapping-of-wellbeing-and-job-performance/A24F99CDC96E7A4FF5C6F30CE86AF54C
- International Bar Association. (2021). Mental wellbeing in the legal profession: A global study. https://www.ibanet.org/document?id=IBA-report-Mental-Wellbeing-in-the-Legal-Profession-A-Global-Study
- James, C. (2017). Legal practice on time: The ethical risk and inefficiency of the six-minute unit. Alternative Law Journal, 42(1), 61–66. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1037969X17694786
- Krill, P. R., Degeneffe, N., Ochocki, K., & Anker, J. J. (2022). People, professionals, and profit centers: The connection between lawyer wellbeing and employer values. Behavioral Sciences, 12(6), Article 177. https://www.mdpi.com/2076-328X/12/6/177
- Nielsen, K., Nielsen, M. B., Ogbonnaya, C., Känsälä, M., Saari, E., & Isaksson, K. (2017). Workplace resources to improve both employee wellbeing and performance: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Work & Stress, 31(2), 101–120. https://www.doi.org/10.1080/02678373.2017.1304463
- Parker, C., & Ruschena, D. A. (2011, March 18). The pressures of billable hours: Lessons from a survey of billing practices inside law firms. SSRN. http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1790082
- Reich, J. F. (2020). Capitalizing on healthy lawyers: The business case for law firms to promote and prioritize lawyer wellbeing. Villanova Law Review, 65(2), 361–418. https://digitalcommons.law.villanova.edu/vlr/vol65/iss2/3
