Addressing the mental wellbeing crisis in Australia’s legal profession: The need for structural and cultural change

Abstract

The 2009 Courting the Blues report revealed significant mental wellbeing concerns within Australia’s legal profession. Addressing these concerns is vital for individual lawyers and the broader legal profession, with consequences for public trust, professional standards, and occupational health and safety. However, efforts to address the mental wellbeing crisis often prioritise resilience-building of individual legal professionals over structural and cultural change to the profession. This prioritisation is evident within the legal admissions process, resilience education programs, and counselling initiatives. This essay argues that addressing poor mental wellbeing among lawyers requires the legal profession to divert its focus from individual resilience-building initiatives towards resolving systemic structural and cultural issues. In doing so, it argues that positive structural and cultural settings benefit individual wellbeing, reduce stigmatisation of mental illness, facilitate better access to support, and promote long-term, sustainable change. While more expensive, time-intensive, and resource-intensive than resilience-building strategies, addressing the structural and cultural causes of poor mental wellbeing is a crucial investment for Australia’s legal profession.