Burnout in law

Among lawyers in the 2025 Victorian Lawyer Census who said their workload was not acceptable, 43% were at very high risk of burnout. Among those who said it was acceptable, the figure was 16%.

Workload was one of six workplace conditions the census asked about, alongside fair pay, conflicts with professional obligations, sexual harassment, and experiencing or witnessing incivility. Across the census, workplace experience was more strongly associated with burnout than personal characteristics were.

The World Health Organization describes burnout as "a syndrome conceptualized as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed". The three parts it lists are exhaustion, increased mental distance from one's job or negative and cynical feelings towards it, and reduced professional efficacy. The WHO uses the term only for experiences at work, and its classification says "It is not classified as a medical condition."

1What the Victorian census found

The Victorian Legal Services Board + Commissioner ran its lawyer census in early 2025. In all, 1,887 lawyers responded, about 6.4% of practising certificate holders in the state, and more than 1,500 of them answered the wellbeing questions. The full findings were published in June 2026. The census covers Victoria only, and burnout was measured with a short version of the Burnout Assessment Tool.

According to the regulator's research brief, 53% of the lawyers who answered were at risk of burnout. A quarter were at very high risk. Of the same group, 13% had symptoms of severe psychological distress.

Lawyers in their twenties and thirties were the most likely to be at very high risk of burnout, at 30%, against 17% of lawyers in their fifties. Employee lawyers were at 30%, and principals at 18%. Among lawyers working 61 to 70 hours a week, 29% reported severe psychological distress.

In a 2024 study of 1,890 lawyers across Victoria, New South Wales and Western Australia, published in April 2025, researchers at the Australian National University and the University of Melbourne found 65% of participants worked 40 hours a week or more. Almost 43% of lawyers with less than five years' experience after admission showed raised levels of psychological distress. In New Zealand, a July 2026 study of 379 lawyers by Auckland University of Technology found 67.6% described their workload as heavy or extremely heavy.

2The workplace conditions

All six conditions were based on what lawyers reported. An unacceptable workload predicted psychological distress, and burnout, more strongly than anything else in the researchers' analysis.

The more of these conditions lawyers reported, the higher their risk. Among lawyers who reported none of the six, 9% were at very high risk of burnout. Among those reporting five of the six, it was 58%, and among those reporting all six, 77%.

When the researchers accounted for personal and professional characteristics, such as gender, income and firm size, workplace conditions were "the most powerful independent predictors of both psychological distress and burnout". In the brief's words, "Demographic differences in psychological distress and burnout are largely explained by differences in workplace experience."

3Workload, retention and professional obligations

In the Victorian census, lawyers with distress or burnout reported lower satisfaction with their "physical health, personal relationships, time, job, financial situation, and life as a whole", as the regulator's research centre summarised it. Both were associated with plans to leave the profession. In the brief, lawyers considering leaving gave reasons including "burnout, stress and fatigue, high workload and billing pressure, toxic or unsupportive workplaces".

A departure can leave matters to be redistributed across the remaining team, which we looked at in Will AI replace lawyers? In New South Wales, the Law Society's 2025 Annual Profile of Solicitors, drawn from the 15,464 solicitors who responded to its practising certificate survey, found 37% of respondents with a disability, long-term illness or mental health condition were considering leaving the profession, against 26% of those without one. The most common effects of a mental health condition on a solicitor's work were "feelings of burnout, being overworked, anxiety and stress".

Safe Work Australia's model Code of Practice for managing psychosocial hazards names job demands as a hazard, including "unreasonable or excessive time pressures" and role overload. Under the model WHS laws, a person conducting a business or undertaking must eliminate psychosocial risks where reasonably practicable, or otherwise minimise them so far as is reasonably practicable. The applicable legal framework varies by jurisdiction. In Victoria, the census report notes that the conditions it measured are examples of psychosocial hazards under the Occupational Health and Safety (Psychological Health) Regulations 2025, which WorkSafe Victoria says began on 1 December 2025.

The census brief describes workload, professional conflict, incivility, harassment and unfair compensation as "psychosocial hazards that employers, professional bodies, and regulators have the capacity and, increasingly, the obligation to address."

4AI in a lawyer's day

In the census's AI findings, 37% of respondents said they used AI tools in their practice, and more than half of those used them daily or weekly. AI can take a first draft or a summary of a long file off a lawyer's desk.

Among the lawyers using AI, 89% said they took steps to make sure the output was accurate, most often by cross-checking it against other sources. The NSW Supreme Court's Practice Note SC Gen 23 requires the author of written submissions or summaries of argument prepared with AI to verify that every citation and authority exists, is accurate and is relevant, and says that verification "must not be solely carried out by using a Gen AI tool or program".

AI also makes it easy to produce more: another version of the advice, or a longer summary of the file. Each one is quick to ask for and has to be read, and some of it can turn out to be workslop, work that looks finished and needs redoing.

Using AI can also add small decisions, of the kind covered in Is AI helping or hindering our decision fatigue?: whether client information can go into a tool, or whether a summary accurately reflects the file it summarises. The same practice note lists material, such as information under a non-publication order or subpoenaed material, that must not be entered into a Gen AI program unless the platform keeps it confidential and does not use it for training. A shared prompt library and an agreed way of using AI on common matters can settle some of these questions once for the team.

Research outside law gives some indications of how AI can change workload. In an eight-month study inside one American technology company of about 200 employees, Berkeley researchers Aruna Ranganathan and Xingqi Maggie Ye wrote that the changes AI brought to people's work "can be unsustainable, leading to workload creep, cognitive fatigue, burnout, and weakened decision-making", in the Harvard Business Review. A preprint involving 442 software developers, from researchers at Oregon State University, found "GenAI adoption heightens burnout by increasing job demands, while job resources and positive perceptions of GenAI mitigate these effects". Neither study involved lawyers, so they cannot tell us whether the same effects occur in legal practice.

In a survey of 1,037 Australian legal practitioners by LexisNexis, which sells legal AI tools, 45.3% named billing more hours or delivering more work as a benefit of generative AI tools, and 48.4% named a better work-life balance.

5What a firm can change

The census measured conditions a firm can influence: how work is allocated, whether people feel fairly compensated, how conflicts with professional obligations are handled, and how incivility and harassment are addressed.

In a practice that uses AI, a lawyer's workload includes the checking that comes with it. For each kind of matter, a firm can ask whether AI is reducing a lawyer's work, or replacing one task with drafting, checking, supervision and more output.

6Starting points

7Where we come in

Our investigation shows where workload sits across the firm, how long the work takes, where AI is changing it and how much checking sits around AI-assisted work. A whole-of-firm survey means you hear from people at every level. The findings belong to your firm whether or not we go any further together.

If you would like to see how the work is spread across your firm, and where AI fits into it, reach out to our team. The first conversation works out whether your firm is the right fit for the AI Uplift Program, and whether we are the right people to help.

Six places to start