Are Lawyers Quitters?

Having been involved in the legal profession for more than thirty years, as a lawyer and then as a legal recruitment specialist, I think I can say from experience that generally the answer to that question is a resounding no. As one would hope, the vast majority of lawyers are highly professional, conscientious and driven. For most lawyers I think their drive is born out of a desire to do their very best for their clients and their firm or employer. Generally, they don’t want to quit and when we talk to people about their options they are either considering what’s best for their career or faced with a situation in their work which is genuinely no longer tenable. I’d say that lawyers don’t very often just quit.

The recent talk about quiet and conscious quitting got me thinking about this; I don’t think there will be many lawyers out there who are indulging in quiet quitting, the act of stepping back and just doing the bare minimum to meet the obligations of your job description. It’s just not in most lawyers’ nature or how the profession works (perhaps one for another article?), but I do think that we may be on the verge of more conscious quitting in the legal profession. There is a lot around about the change we are seeing in working life; the great resignation, the great reflection, hybrid working, back to the office, the four-day week and of course ESG and Sustainability.  

All these things are factors. They impact law firms and their clients and we’re already very conscious of the trends which are emerging in the profession around values and purpose. It increasingly comes up in the conversations we’re having with lawyers.

Paul Polman recently commissioned research which throws some light on this. It found that 45% of employees would consider resigning if they felt that their values were no longer aligned with their employer’s and in generation Z 49% of those surveyed reported having already resigned for that reason.

There is a cultural and generational shift going on, driven by the move towards purpose driven business, the awareness of the need for meaningful action to tackle climate change and the growing awareness of importance of environmental, social and governance issues for all businesses. Across the board, where employers stand on key issues like sustainability and diversity and inclusion, and what they are actually doing about it, is increasingly becoming a factor in their ability to recruit and retain the best people.

The legal profession is no exception and in these critical years for the climate and the transition to net zero, not only will law firm clients be looking closely at where their advisers stand but their people will be too.  

Are lawyers quitters?

No, but they could be…………

Photograph by Nick Fewings on Unsplash