The case for taking self-care seriously

Newcastle local Paul Tobin is a keen surfer who values the connection with nature, adrenaline release and social connections of the pastime he has enjoyed for four decades.

“I still go surfing with the same person I started with 40 years ago when we were 10- and 11-year-olds,” he says. “There’s also a broader group of neighbours and locals I surf with.

“There’s something about sitting out in the ocean – the relaxation and serenity that comes with it. It’s also an opportunity to have a chat with people in the water.”

Tobin is also a keen runner, often scheduling in four or five runs a week when he’s training for an event. “Exercise is a key part of what I do. I like it and I know it improves my mental health and wellbeing,” he says.

What does this have to do with law? Tobin is also a partner at Sparke Helmore Lawyers and the national practice group leader for the firm’s projects and government commercial practice. He juggles a busy professional and personal schedule but says “self-care is an essential ingredient in being a high performer”.

It’s well known that lawyers experience significant challenges with mental health and wellbeing. Burnout, anxiety, depression and stress are common experiences. Yet many lawyers continue to put self-care on the backburner, believing it to require time, effort and energy they simply don’t have time for amid the rigours of maintaining a busy career.

But here’s the thing: self-care – that is, regular maintenance of mental and physical wellbeing – can be prioritised and embedded into the fabric of everyday life, even for the busiest of legal people. And the benefits can be transformative.

Looking after your wellbeing

Put simply, self-care is the activities that support and enhance physical, emotional, social and mental health, and overall wellbeing. Self-care is an ongoing commitment to looking after ourselves through helpful practices that protect us during times of stress.

Self-care looks different for everyone. For people like Tobin, it’s about being physically active. Other people listen to music, read books, hang out with friends, meditate or take long baths. Or you might drink a hot cup of tea with your partner in the garden each morning, get a manicure every week or take a regular salsa class.

“Self-care is taking time to give yourself whatever you need to maintain positive mental wellbeing. It’s broad because it doesn’t look the same for everyone, and it works because it’s exactly what each person needs and finds useful,” he says.

“For some people, it can be taking time in nature, it can be doing yoga or getting coffee with a friend – just making time for yourself to do whatever it is that helps you relieve stress and look after your mental wellbeing.

Self-care aids wellbeing because it capitalises on healthy coping strategies, explains Arena, who enjoys pottering around in the garden and cooking as a form of self-care.

“Self-care strategies are usually things that help you regulate your emotions. They can often be quite mindful, which is important because a lot of our mental anguish – a lot of anxiety and depression, for instance – comes from focusing on the future or the past,” he says.

“It’s also likely that what you’re doing for self-care is aligned with your values and gives you meaning, which is crucial for wellbeing.”

Barriers to self-care

That legal professionals often run into barriers that limit, or seemingly prohibit, wellbeing strategies like self-care is evidenced by high rates of poor mental wellbeing.

“There’s a broader narrative around burnout, mental ill health and attrition in the legal profession, as there is in a lot of corporate environments,” says Margaret Cai, a lawyer and board member of Minds Count Foundation, which promotes workplace psychological health and safety in the legal community.

The Corporate Mental Health Alliance Australia’s inaugural Leading Mentally Healthy Workplace Survey Report 2023, which includes people working in professional services, shows 44 per cent of employees are experiencing some level of burnout.

“The demands of long hours, which are often tied to billable units, and working on complex issues where there might be client pressure around time and output can be problematic. These working habits attract questions around sustainability in the absence of self-care, especially if lawyers are rolling from one thing into another,” Cai says.

She also cites persistent stigma around prioritising self-care, “particularly the fear of not being a team player if you do set those boundaries but other people in your team don’t”.

The issues can compound throughout a legal career, says Richard Wood, managing principal at Gilchrist Connell, who has worked in the law for more than 30 years.

“When people are trying to establish themselves in their careers in private practice, there are competing demands from clients and senior lawyers, which can interfere with people’s ability to concentrate on what they need keep themselves healthy, both physically and mentally,” he says.

“Those pressures tend to increase the more senior you get, because you absorb more pressure and you have more balls to keep in the air. Unless there is a discipline around staying healthy and looking after yourself, it becomes quite overwhelming.”

Making self-care a habit

Wood spoke to LSJ from the local golf course he frequents. He’s also a keen walker, usually clocking up 12 to 13 kilometres a day.

“I’ve got dogs and if I get out for an hour early in the morning, even if I’m feeling stressed or there’s something bugging me, I find it clears my head. It gets the blood flowing and some endorphins flowing. It’s just a walk – it’s not a huge gym session,” he says.

Wood wasn’t always as dedicated to self-care and says setting up Gilchrist Connell in 2008 was a particularly intense time. “Most lawyers who have been in the game for a while go through periods that are less than ideal. Hopefully, you get wiser as you get older,” he says.

Wood says even though self-care activities needn’t be especially onerous or time-consuming, committing to the practice requires a conscious decision. “You have to make the decision for yourself: what do you want to do and when do you want to do it? What are your priorities in life?”

Karen Booth, director of the Australian Self-Care Alliance and president of the Australian Primary Nurses Association, agrees that for busy professionals like lawyers, “quarantining time” for self-care is one of the most effective strategies.

“Sometimes it takes a bit of discipline. You’re busy, so you need to be deliberate and purposeful about setting some time aside,” she says. “Even if it’s one hour on Friday afternoon – that’s your hour and no one else can have it.

“Think about how the busyness around you is affecting you and your health. Especially if you’re feeling stressed, then maybe it’s time to look at how you might intervene and how you might take some time for yourself, even if it’s to do something simple like go for a walk around the block.”

Arena explains self-care involves two important components: knowing what works for you and making time for those activities.

“If it’s something that you don’t schedule in and carve out the time for in your calendar, it’s so easy to postpone and postpone indefinitely. If you can make a schedule or a routine that’s achievable, then it’s more likely that it will become an ingrained, habitual behaviour,” he says. “It’s when self-care becomes a habit that it becomes preventative for mental health.”

Research suggests as many as 40 per cent of our daily actions are habits – behaviours we do repeatedly without thinking – and that it takes 66 days on average to form a new habit.

Leading by example

The higher our stress levels, the more important self-care is, explains Arena – and the more impressive the benefits. “Self-care stops people getting to a tipping point where they can no longer function well at work. It helps people do their work better,” he says.

Practising self-care also helps lawyers balance their work identity with their identity outside work, which acts as an effective buffer against stress.

“People in demanding, high-stakes jobs like lawyers are often extremely invested in their work and their work becomes central to their identity. What that also means is that when things are stressful at work, it can impact on them at a deeply personal level,” Arena says.

“Self-care helps us balance our work identity with other parts of ourselves that are important to us, so when work is stressful and not going to plan, we still have other sources of satisfaction to keep us well.”

Initiating self-care might be an individual lawyer’s responsibility, but firms also have a role to play in ensuring the practice is normalised across the profession. Cai says receiving “permission from leaders” to engage in self-care is important.

“When you see managers, partners and leaders within a firm practise self-care for themselves – for example, blocking out some time for exercise or taking lunch away from their desk – that behaviour gives permission for others in the team to do the same,” she says.

“It’s important that people who can set examples do and people who have more autonomy over their working day lead by example.”

Alongside more formal wellbeing initiatives Sparke Helmore Lawyers has put in place as well as a particular focus on fostering work-life balance, Tobin agrees that leaders shoulder much of the responsibility of creating a culture of self-care in the firm.

“If I’m going for a surf, I let people know. Or if there’s a massage booked into my calendar, I tell people,” he says. “People know that I prioritise exercise and that I might head out during the day or at the end of the day to go for a run.

“When I was more junior, I was probably hiding those things more, whereas the culture in law firms has changed a lot. Leaders speaking about what we’re doing enables people to see that self-care is an important part of our lives – and it should be in theirs as well.”