Thank You!

First of all, thank you to everyone who supported the launch of this newsletter. I so appreciate all of you who cheered on various social media posts, forwarded the sign-up link to women lawyers you know, and otherwise reached out to me about the launch last week. It means more than you know. I will do my best to live up to your enthusiasm!

This Again?

Although there aren’t a ton of statistics measuring the level of burnout in the legal profession, at least one smaller survey suggests that burnout affects far more female lawyers than male lawyers. In one study conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago of Massachusetts attorneys, 86% of female lawyers reported burnout, compared to 70% of male lawyers. Lawyers who experienced bias, harassment, discrimination, and vicarious trauma reported higher burnout, anxiety, and depression.

Even though, aside from the lack of statistics, many of us know burnout affects many women attorneys, I don’t blame you if you rolled your eyes when you saw the title of this newsletter: I can’t count the number of articles about burnout I deleted over the last five years of my career.

Why did I delete articles that might have helped me? First, many of them were written by people who had never practiced law, and I didn’t feel their solutions, like getting more sleep, were either doable or would help me. As Paula Davis explains in an insightful Forbes article about how to address burnout in the legal profession: “People over-simplify burnout when they focus on one of the big dimensions of it—exhaustion—and prescribe self-remedies like sleeping more, time management techniques, or exercising as quick fixes.” Because burnout is caused by a sense of lack of control, autonomy, and fairness, it can’t be fixed by a yoga class.

Second, and perhaps more profoundly, even if the articles were written by a woman lawyer who had experienced burnout, I had convinced myself that I was stronger than all those other women and therefore would never burn out. I’m not proud of this. But I had internalized many explicit and unspoken messages that I should never admit I was struggling. These messages were only reinforced when I tried talking about feeling burnt out and was met with responses like “But everyone else here is working hard too. What’s your problem?”

My limited view of what was happening to me likely came in part from the word “burnout” and the colloquial use of it. If you’re burnt out, you really aren’t experiencing any type of “burn” at all. The word burnout also implies that it’s the subject’s actions that are causing the result. Like similar words that end in “out” (e.g., wipeout, blackout, spinout, flameout), the “out” suggests some type of failure in action. But burnout is not a personal failing or a sign of weakness, it’s a sign that you need more support. Indeed, burnout “tends to hit the best employees, those with enthusiasm who accept responsibility readily and whose job is an important part of their identity” the hardest.

Burnout Defined

If burnout isn’t just a state of exhaustion, what is it? According to the World Health Organization, [burnout] is included in the 11th Revision of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11) as an occupational phenomenon characterized by three dimensions:

1. feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion;

2. increased mental distance from one’s job, or feelings of negativism or cynicism related to one's job; and

3. reduced professional efficacy.

It’s complex workplace sensation that arises not from you, but from characteristics of the profession and/or your specific workplace.

Where Does Burnout Come From for Women Lawyers?

While at first blush it may be difficult to understand how the best employees with the most pressure and responsibility may become cynical about their jobs and withdraw from colleagues, when you realize what contributes to burnout it makes more sense.

In fact, a 2021 report completed by the ABA Commission on Women in the Profession, based on interviews of more than 100 women attorneys who had practiced for 15 years or more, listed these as the reasons experienced women are leaving the profession entirely:

1. Pay Disparities (Real or Perceived)

2. Hyper-Competitiveness Has Eroded Collegiality

3. Isolation

4. Sexist and Racist Behavior

5. Opportunities for Challenging or Fulfilling Work Elsewhere

6. Passed Over for Promotion

7. Long Hours and Unpredictable Schedules

You’ll notice that nearly all of these factors find their root in a sense of lack of control, autonomy, and fairness. Thus, experienced women are not leaving because they are afraid of hard work or just can’t hack the stress. They are leaving because pay disparities, sexist behavior, or being repeatedly denied promotion opportunities deprive them of a sense of agency. And it’s the lack of agency that contributes to burnout.

When I burnt out, it wasn’t just because I was working too hard. In working on my new firm and this newsletter, I’ve logged more hours than I was at my last law firms. But in blazing my own path I am in control of my professional success and happiness. I am no longer spending my energy objecting to policies or practices I didn’t choose to put into place. And I can select the things that take my energy and dedication. That has made all the difference. It’s not just me: the results of a small informal survey of women law firm founders around the world showed that the primary reason women started their own law firms was for “freedom and control.”

In Closing. . .

Looking at the reasons women leave the legal profession shows why it’s so difficult to give women lawyers advice about avoiding burnout in the first place. It’s also why it’s hard for us to articulate to employers and others in our lives why we may be experiencing burnout. All of the reasons experienced women are leaving the law are indicative of deep institutional problems we need to fix. (More on these in future newsletters!) Apart from starting your own firm or leaving the law altogether, until we all start fixing the institutional problems, the most you can do is do your best to find an employer where most of the seven factors identified above work in your favor.

If you want to understand more about how the profession contributes to burnout, and thus women ultimately leaving law, I highly recommend reading Amy Conway-Hatcher’s book Infinitely More. You can also follow her on LinkedIn.

Rants & Raves

• Rant. Bloomberg Law reports that only 28% of the cases before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit were argued by women. In raw numbers, of the 456 D.C. Circuit arguments last term, 327 of them were made by 290 different male attorneys, and 129 arguments were made by 112 different female attorneys. While that’s better than the 24% of women who argued before the United States Supreme Court, put me in the camp of Gabe Roth, Executive Director of Fix the Court who’s quoted in the article: “It’s a little bit pathetic.”

• Rave. The United States District Court for the Southern District of Georgia appointed an all-women slate of co-lead counsel in Kolstedt v. TMS Finance Corporate Services (Case No. 4:23-cv-00076). Congratulations to Amy Keller of DiCello Levitt, Kelly Iverson of Lynch Carpenter LLC, and MaryBeth Gibson of the Finley Firm, P.C.! We need to see far more MDLs led by women.

By the Way …

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