Legal wellness and mental health
Rethinking wellbeing in law: Practical tips from Legal Geek Conference 2025 speakers
The legal profession is known for many things: precision, pressure, performance. But one thing it’s never been famous for? Prioritising mental health. That’s changing – slowly, surely, and with the help of passionate advocates pushing for reform from inside the industry.
Ahead of the Legal Geek Conference 2025, taking place on 15 – 16 October in London, we asked a few of this year’s expert speakers for their top tips top tips on how legal workplaces can better support wellbeing and mental health – both now and in the years ahead.
Here’s what they had to say.
Elizabeth Hyde – Founder and Director, Hesper GRC
What’s one practical change legal workplaces can implement immediately to better support their people’s wellbeing and mental health?
“As a former health and safety lawyer, it is my view that leadership teams should be trained not only on the need to treat wellbeing and mental health with the same level of urgency as physical health and safety, but also on the benefits of including wellbeing as a core part of their strategy. Aside from being in breach of UK health and safety legislation, if law firms don’t invest adequate resources into building safe workplaces, it may lead to employee burnout, high employee turnover, and poor performance.
If I had to choose one practical change which could be implemented immediately, it would be to encourage law firms to survey staff to measure current levels of burnout and psychological safety – and to then act decisively on the findings.”
How do you see the legal profession’s relationship with wellness and mental health evolving over the next few years, and what gives you hope?
Photo: Elizabeth Hyde
"Wellbeing should be treated with the same urgency as physical health and safety."
“If our regulators follow Australia’s lead, where enforcement around psychosocial safety and mental health is becoming a serious priority, then we will see substantial change in the UK. In Australia, SafeWork NSW is actively enforcing psychosocial risk laws, signalling that mental health is now being treated on a par with physical safety.
Separately, there is a growing awareness of the concept of ‘team psychological safety’. Whilst it is not about wellbeing per se (it’s about encouraging speaking up behaviour in a team environment), research shows a significant correlation with high levels of team psychological safety and improved wellbeing. When employees feel comfortable raising concerns, including those relating to mental health, it creates a more supportive and responsive workplace. Google’s research famously identified psychological safety as the “key differentiator” between high and low performance teams. Ironically, it may be this business case – rather than a moral or legal obligation – that finally convinces law firms to meaningfully invest in wellbeing as a strategic advantage.”
Jodie Hill – Solicitor, Founder of Thrive Law
Photo: Jodie Hill
"More firms are putting wellbeing at the heart of people strategy – not as a tick-box, but a foundation."
What’s one practical change legal workplaces can implement immediately to better support their people’s wellbeing and mental health?
“Start by creating space for open conversations. A simple, immediate step is encouraging leaders to regularly check in with their teams – not just on work, but on how they’re really doing. This is especially important in remote and hybrid teams. This signals that it’s safe to talk about mental health at any time, and that support is available, not just when things reach crisis point.”
How do you see the legal profession’s relationship with wellness and mental health evolving over the next few years, and what gives you hope?
“We’re slowly moving away from the “burnout badge of honour” culture, and towards workplaces that genuinely value psychological safety and inclusion. What gives me hope is the growing number of firms, especially smaller and mid-sized ones, putting wellbeing at the heart of their people strategy – not as a tick-box, but as a foundation for performance and retention.”
Marco Imperiale – Founder and Managing Director, Better Ipsum
For a busy lawyer reading this interview who wants to start incorporating wellness practices but feels overwhelmed by their current workload, what would you recommend as the most impactful first step they could take today?
“Start small. Take ten mindful breaths before your next call or meeting. Not tonight. Not next week. Just before the next call or meeting on your calendar. No app, no device, no preparation. Just ten deep, intentional breaths.
It may sound almost trivial. But that moment – short, quiet, deliberate – creates a crack in the flow of the day. A break in the sequence of doing. And through that crack, something vital can enter: presence.
From that presence, you can begin to build. Try adding a five-minute reflection buffer between meetings. Take a walk during your lunch break or before work. Write down your thoughts at the end of the day: not a novel, just a few lines about what felt meaningful, and what felt heavy.
These aren’t major lifestyle changes. They’re small acts of presence. Gentle refusals to worship at the altar of busyness. Over time, they can grow into habits: avoiding emails first thing in the morning or last thing at night, practicing monotasking, writing down a daily list of what you’ve chosen to let go.
The truth is, most lawyers don’t lack tools. They lack permission, internal and external, to slow down. To reflect. To remember that behind the contract reviews, the risk matrices, and the redlines, there is still a human being. With a nervous system. With needs. And sometimes, it takes only one breath to come back to that.”
Photo: Marco Imperiale
"Most lawyers don’t lack tools – they lack permission to slow down."
These conversations aren’t theoretical – they’re practical, urgent, and rooted in real experience from professionals driving change in legal workplaces today. Whether you lead a firm, support a team, or simply want to breathe a bit more deeply in your daily practice, there’s something here to start with.
And if you’re ready to go further, join Elizabeth Hyde, Jodie Hill, and Marco Imperiale at the Legal Geek Conference 2025 on 15 – 16 October in London.
