The people we encounter in our therapy rooms are thoughtful, capable, high-functioning professionals. They care deeply about doing good work. They are not fragile; they are uber diligent, and often exhausted.
Burnout in law does not arrive dramatically: it builds slowly, often invisibly, shaped by structures and cultural expectations that have been normalised for so long they are rarely questioned. A lawyer might begin by telling us they are ‘just tired’ or ‘a bit flat’. They describe waking in the night to check emails. They talk about the low hum of anxiety that never quite switches off. They say they feel less sharp than they used to, rereading paragraphs, forgetting small things, becoming irritated more easily.
Stress, in itself, is not the problem, because law is and always will be demanding, with a constant stream of deadlines, pressures and responsibilities. Healthy stress rises and falls in tune with the situation at large. Burnout, on the other hand, is not resolved
