When lawyers talk about the pressures of practice, they usually describe exhaustion – the long hours, demanding clients, the sense of always being on call. LawCare’s Life in the Law 2025 report confirms it: nearly 80% of legal professionals work beyond their contracted hours, and burnout levels are high across the sector. But beneath that exhaustion lies a sense of disconnection. The report’s respondents speak of lost collegiality, fading mentorship, and a kind of loneliness that even busy offices can’t disguise.
I spent ten years interviewing partners in law firms. During that time I watched the entire industry reshape itself. Offices went digital. Workloads became global. Firms started talking about wellbeing, inclusion, and flexibility. But one issue has barely shifted: loneliness.
The recent Business vs Loneliness report from the Economics of Mutuality Alliance, written with The University of Manchester, found that 44% of people globally experience medium or high levels of loneliness. It’s a staggering number and it reframes loneliness as something systemic, not personal. Loneliness doesn’t come from being bad at relationships (most lawyers certainly aren’t) but it comes from environments that make connection harder to sustain.
The Life in the Law 2025 report makes this vividly clear. Nearly 60% of legal professionals report poor mental wellbeing, half experience anxiety frequently, and three-quarters regularly work beyond their contracted hours. Over half expect to leave their current role within five years. This isn’t simply burnout but disconnection on an institutional scale.
Law has always been a high-pressure profession, but pressure alone doesn’t explain why so many talented people feel alienated from their work. Law firms have for too long been designed to reward individual output: the hours billed, the client landed. What gets lost is the connective tissue – the mentorship, the belonging, the subtle culture of care that allows people to keep showing up.
The architecture of disconnection
The Economics of Mutuality Alliance research focused on loneliness in its three forms.
- Intimate loneliness is the absence of close, trusted relationships where you can speak without performance.
- Relational loneliness is what happens when you’re surrounded by colleagues but feel unseen or excluded from genuine connection.
- Collective loneliness is what happens when you no longer feel part of something larger than yourself – when belonging to the firm or the profession starts to feel abstract.
All three exist within law, though the last two dominate. Partners describe “crowded loneliness”, or being constantly in demand but emotionally separate. Associates talk about feeling invisible in hybrid teams, adrift in a system that prizes efficiency. Even the most successful lawyers describe a sense of professional estrangement.
The WHO Taskforce on Social Connection recently declared it a global health emergency.
Connection as competitive advantage
Firms have tended to approach wellbeing as a personal issue – something to be managed through workshops, resilience training, or gym memberships. But loneliness is an organisational condition. It’s not about how individuals cope; it’s about how systems connect.
The Economics of Mutuality Alliance data shows that connection thrives under two conditions: when people have the confidence to form relationships, and when their environment makes it possible to do so. That means redesigning the way firms think about work.
Life in the Law 2025 report points to similar conclusions. Firms that actively manage workloads, value people management, and measure belonging see better retention and engagement. These aren’t gestures of kindness; they’re strategic decisions. Connection builds trust; trust drives collaboration; and collaboration is what sustains client relationships and profitability.
Imagine hybrid schedules designed around connection, not convenience. Partner appraisals that reward mentorship, not just billings. Offices designed for spontaneous conversation and quiet reflection in equal measure. Each of these things costs less than losing another generation of lawyers to exhaustion and cynicism.
A new kind of leadership
Partnership models depend on collaboration, trust, and shared purpose – yet these can be the first casualties of overwork and remote delivery. Treating connection as a strategic priority means recognising that it underpins everything from talent retention to client service.
Firms could start by embedding belonging metrics into engagement surveys, creating peer-learning programmes that connect people across seniority, and explicitly recognising people leadership in performance reviews. These aren’t acts of sentimentality; they are investments in organisational capability.
Younger lawyers, in particular, are calling for this change. They want to work for firms that value authenticity over stoicism, collaboration over competition. They don’t want to choose between ambition and belonging – and increasingly, they won’t.
The human core of law
The sustainability of the legal profession depends on the wellbeing of the people who deliver that service. Loneliness erodes empathy and judgement – the very qualities that give law its moral weight.
Both Life in the Law 2025 and Business vs Loneliness point to the same truth: connection isn’t a “soft” issue. It’s the infrastructure of trust. For law firms, investing in connection isn’t just about caring for people – it’s about preserving the profession itself.
Perhaps the next great challenge in law isn’t AI, regulation or economic uncertainty – it’s emotional. It’s whether we can build firms where people still feel part of something, even as the world they work in becomes more fractured and remote.
Loneliness isn’t inevitable. It’s a design flaw – one that firms have the tools, and the reason, to fix.
For more information and a selection of free tools please visit the Business vs Loneliness website.
Liam Sharkey
Liam joined the Economics of Mutuality Alliance as Director of Growth in 2025. Prior to joining the Alliance, Liam spent over a decade in legal market research, working closely with law firms and corporate clients on benchmarking, thought leadership, and industry analysis. He was also at a leading US consulting firm, focusing on social sustainability in financial services.
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