Lawyers’ main concern in 2012 was stress

The charity LawCare has revealed that stress was the main reason lawyers called its legal helpline in 2012, as statistics show that 69% of callers cited it as their motive for getting in touch.

This figure matches the findings from 2011, although the total case files opened did decrease from 392 (2011) to 378 (2012).

Depression (13%) and alcohol (6%) were the two most frequent problems reported behind stress, with other issues making up the remaining 12%.

It was revealed that of the 272 callers who identified a specific cause of their problem, workload (28%), financial problems (19%), disciplinary issues (14%) and bullying (14%) were the most common issues.

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Other reasons cited were ethical issues (8%), redundancy (7%) and relationship problems (6%).

In regards to professions, lawyers working in litigation accounted for the highest number of calls (17%) followed by commercial (15%) and high street and private client (12%).

The figures show that 35% of callers were trainees or had been qualified for five years or less, and of the callers who complained of stress, 37% had been qualified for more than a decade.

The data also showed that 62% of callers were female and 38% male.