Do Biglaw's Long Hours Need A 'Trigger Warning'? After The Death Of A Partner, This Lawyer Says Yes
A partner's death is making lawyers reassess the long hours that are often required to complete the work at Biglaw firms.
Ed. note: Welcome to our daily feature, Quote of the Day.
That is a massive amount of work on any basis. That is an amount of work that should send a trigger warning and that person needs to be spoken to and looked after as appropriate.
Those sort of hours are massive – I suspect I won’t be hugely popular for saying things like that but if we are to address this then these are the things that need to be looked at.
— Colin Passmore, chairman of the City of London Law Society, in comments noted by the Daily Mail, on the level of work that the late Vanessa Ford, senior partner at Pinsent Masons, had been working prior to her death while she suffered from an “acute mental health crisis.” Some lawyers, like Ford, work more than 3,000 hours a year, and Passmore said this should “cause concern among management.”
Staci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on X/Twitter and Threads or connect with her on LinkedIn.
