What do you think of when you hear the words “high-performing culture” in the legal profession?
Long working hours?
Pressure to meet billable-hour targets?
Putting the needs of clients and the firm first, perhaps at the expense of your own family, or work-life balance?
Those are some of the sentiments reported in high-profile media stories about poor workplace culture, and reflected in responses to the 2022 Solicitors’ Regulation Authority (SRA) Thematic Review of Workplace Culture. That showed 25% of people felt their firm didn’t have a positive workplace culture.
The SRA’s review set clear expectations that, in creating and maintaining “the right culture and environment for the delivery of competent and ethical legal services to clients”, legal firms should be “taking steps to run businesses in a way that supports wellbeing by minimising the risk of working practices and workplace behaviours leading to poor mental health.”
In a previous article, I cited research evidence showing the harmful physical and mental health consequences for people targeted by workplace incivility, bullying and harassment.
I touched on practical steps that targets and witnesses of unacceptable behaviour can take, along with the responsibilities facing leaders in law firms to ensure they have best-practice complaint management, backed up by support services for everyone involved.
Let’s look at that in more depth...
The full article continues to discuss:
How a positive, respectful culture is a pre-requisite for high-performance
The role of positive leadership in underpinning a respectful culture
Qualities of high-performing teams
A preventive, supportive and restorative approach to workplace harm
How trust depends on good practice investigations and complaint management
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Originally appeared in...
The original article was written for the Institute of Legal Finance and Management, and first published in the October/November 2024 issue of their in-house publication,Legal Abacus.
