Articles From the Team

Stress in the City

I read an interesting article in The Evening Standard this week about The Priory opening a new clinic in the heart of the Square Mile.

This new clinic based on Fenchurch Street will be a specialist psychotherapy centre assisting City executives suffering with stress.

According to the Office of National Statistics more than 3.5 million days were lost to sick days for stress, depression and anxiety in London and the South-East alone last year. It has been reported recently that in the City, the long hours and at times unsupportive culture can lead to unmanageable stress. Commonly cited causes at work include excessive workload, unrealistic targets, threat of redundancy and poor management.

In recent years many organisations, including banks and law firms have started to invest in the mental well being of their staff and many firms now provide counselling and support services to their staff.

The legal profession has always been known to be a demanding career choice and quite often partners, associates and more junior support staff will work very long hours, dealing with very complex matters, whilst trying to balance family and work life, leading to high pressure and ultimately stress.

In my ten years in legal recruitment I have sadly met many highly talented city lawyers who have resigned from their jobs because of the high stress levels and ultimately “burn out”. The good news for these lawyers is that resigning from a permanent fee earning role does not have to mean the end of a legal career which they have worked so hard to achieve.

The solution is interim legal roles, meaning that experienced lawyers can go into temporary roles in law firms to assist with a matter or bridge a gap. Temporary and interim roles provide the perfect solution.

The roles tend not to be as high pressure or demanding taking away the risk of long term stress. Candidates are also able to take time off between assignments to give them a better work life balance.

At BCL Legal we specialise in placing lawyers and paralegals into temporary and fixed term contract roles. For further information please contact BCL Legal or call 0845 241 0933.