Firms join forces again to address depression

Depression in law firms has for too long been the “elephant” in the room, according to those who deal with the condition – but not anymore. As part of the resilience@law project launched earlier this year by top tier firms Allens Arthur Robinson, Blake Dawson, Clayton Utz, Freehills and Mallesons Stephen Jaques along with the College of Law, a new joint metal health first aid training course for human resource staff and senior managers has been developed and conducted.

“The best thing for lawyers is for us to work together on this issue, it is far bigger than commercial competition,” said Gareth Bennett, director of people and development at Freehills. “I think everyone in society recognises that depression is a growing issue, but it is a more poignant issue in legal firms. To get five competing firms and the College of Law working together is great,” he added. Vicki Irvine, wellbeing manager at Mallesons, said doing the mental health workshops together helped staff to share stories and tips with other legal professionals. “We are all here for the same reason, to make a difference in our profession,” she said. Caroline Clark, people and development manager at Allens Arthur Robinson added that training staff in mental health first aid was an important step to normalising mental health conditions. “Those mental health first aid officers become the first point of contact when that person has a question...It gives people permission to come to them for help,” she said. “Since this project started there have been a number of people coming through talking about their mental health issues more regularly, and a number of people saying that they want to help others. Staff have definitely become more open about it,” said Irvine “More people learning to ask for help and more people offering help has been the biggest thing to come out of this.”

Each of the firms has created their own in-house initiatives as part of the project to raise awareness and decrease negative connotations associated with mental health issues. Allens plans to run mental health awareness training for partners and senior managers and the firm is also continuing its resilience training program and adding new components to the training. “It’s not only about the leadership team managing depression and stress, it’s about individuals managing their own careers. We have run a number of training courses around resilience and stress management for lawyers at the firm; rather than running broad stress management courses, we have decided to break down the factors that cause stress and run individual courses on how to address those issues, such as time management,” said Clark.

Freehills has held a number of presentations in-house as well as a public forum on depression and mental health in Sydney for clients and other interested organisations. They are planning a similar event in Melbourne soon. “At Freehills we have started a top-down and a bottom-up approach,” said Bennett. “We have built the short film DVD into the induction process for new staff at the firm and graduates. We are holding resilience training sessions during lunch hours for staff on how to identify symptoms associated with depression,” he added. Allens and Mallesons also plan to include the DVD as part of induction processes for new and graduate staff. Mallesons has held workshops on mental health and resilience training with partners, so that all of them are aware of mental health in the workplace. “Everyone in the firm has been given the opportunity to watch the DVD and receive additional information about mental health assistance,” said Irvine. The firm will also be launching an intranet site featuring information, tips and where to go for advice and a mental health self assessment test for staff to take privately in the near future. “Next year we will be rolling out the ‘building resilience’ program for all graduates. Each of them will receive three one hour sessions as part of that,” said Irvine. Graduates will also be paired with another professional in the firm who they will meet with on a monthly basis, so that they feel they have a friend at work.

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