How Law Firm Owners Can Take A Stand Against Burnout
It’s no secret that the legal profession is demanding, and for law firm owners, the pressures are compounded by the additional responsibilities of running a business.
For example, you’re not only dealing with casework and clients, you’ve also got to think about admin, financial management, and seeking out new employees. As such, it is hardly surprising to hear that law firm owners (alongside legal professionals more generally) are incredibly prone to burnout.
Moving forward, taking proactive steps to prevent burnout will help:
- Protect your mental and physical well-being, allowing you to work to the best of your ability
- Encourage your team to develop a healthy work/life balance
- Improve your employee retention rates
- Allow your firm to grow and thrive
However, with many considering burnout to be part of becoming a lawyer, it can be hard to know where to start. That’s where this guide comes in!
Prevent burnout through delegation.
Mastering the art of delegation is one of the easiest ways to prevent burnout within your team. This is because it ensures that everyone is carrying their weight, without a single team member being overburdened with their workload. This also creates more opportunities for collaboration, which can also prove useful when an individual employee feels as though they are on the brink of burnout. This is because they feel more empowered to ask for help moving forward.
Discourage overtime.
Unscrupulous law firm owners, the kind who put profit above all else, will regularly praise employees who work far beyond their set working hours. While this is sometimes unavoidable, it should not become a common practice within your firm. Otherwise, you’re putting your entire team on the path to complete burnout, while also drastically reducing their output. For example, how can they be expected to perform well in court when they’re dealing with a lack of sleep or mental fatigue? As such, this is something that you should actually try to discourage moving forward.
Outsource to unburden.
Outsourcing is a great way to reduce the chances of burnout within your law firm. This is because it means that you can delegate non-legal tasks to experts, as opposed to carrying them out in-house. This puts more time in the hands of your employees, without needing them to fit numerous non-billable tasks into their day-to-day activities.
While a wide range of duties can be outsourced, from social media to admin, you should be sure to outsource your accounting. This is because it’s a time-consuming task that is always best-handled by the experts.
At FinOp Group, we have years of experience working directly alongside law firm owners to keep their finances in pristine condition. In doing so, we’ve helped them to keep burnout at bay and ensure their companies continue to thrive for years to come. If you’d like to find out more, please do not hesitate to get in touch today.
We look forward to hearing from you or answering any questions that you may have.
