In a world-first for the legal industry, the Tristan Jepson Memorial Foundation yesterday unveiled its Psychological Wellbeing: Best Practice Guidelines for the Legal Profession to tackle the high rates of depression and anxiety within the legal fraternity.
The Guidelines aim to create mentally healthy legal workplaces by assisting firms and other legal employers to identify workplace factors that are key to mental health, and introduce initiatives to address them.
The Guidelines cover 13 factors that contribute to psychologically healthy workplaces, including culture, workload management, staff engagement, balance, and psychological and social support, and can be adapted to a variety of legal workplaces, including law firms, government organisations, in-house legal teams, law faculties, barristers’ chambers and even sole practitioners.
Twenty-six organisations have already signed up, including the law societies of the ACT, New South Wales and Queensland, the law faculties of UNSW, USyd, UTS and UWS, as well as a number of law firms and community legal organisations.
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