Practise Law Well

Practise Law Well provides expert wellbeing solutions specifically tailored to the legal sector. It comprises three key elements:

• Training to upskill individual lawyers, with a gamification element to promote regular engagement and to assist with CPD requirements.

• Resources to empower legal workspaces in enacting positive organisational change, including interactive surveys and generation of bespoke templates.

• Opportunities to share insights and case studies and co-create new resources, enabling collaboration across the legal sector.

In providing these wellbeing solutions, Practise Law Well addresses the current issues with lawyer wellbeing which have been highlighted by a range of national and international research studies. This evidence has led the International Bar Association to refer to a current crisis in lawyer wellbeing.

Such a crisis of wellbeing has detrimental impacts not only on individuals but also on the sector as a whole. It negatively impacts productivity, efficiency, ethical decision-making and talent retention. It can lead to reputational damage and a lack of trust from the general public.

• Provides evidence-based content, tailored specifically to the needs of the legal profession. Practise Law Well's content is written and curated by Dr Emma Jones. Dr Jones is a solicitor and a legal academic at the University of Sheffield with years of both legal practice experience and research experience focused upon wellbeing in the legal sector. Unlike existing Employee Assistance Programmes, the content is sector-specific and addresses the bespoke issues which arise within law.

• Addresses existing training gaps. Legal education and training currently socialises law students into harmful norms and fails to develop important skills around wellbeing. Legal workplaces often offer limited, if any, training on these topics. This leaves individuals struggling to deal with common wellbeing challenges.

• Tackles structural and cultural issues rather than 'individualising' wellbeing challenges. Evidence demonstrates that wellbeing issues cannot simply be tackled by promoting good self-care. Instead, legal workplaces have an important role to play in tackling the underlying causes. Practise Law Well provides such workplaces with a simple and effective tool to empower them to make meaningful change.

• Promotes collaboration, tackling the siloes that exist within the legal sector. By facilitating knowledge-sharing and co-creation it further upskills individuals within the legal sector and avoids individual legal workplaces continually having to 'reinvent the wheel'.

Feedback, suggestions for further development, and assistance with funding are welcomed.