1  Why wellbeing?

Research across multiple jurisdictions has indicated that mental ill-health and poor wellbeing are problems in legal workplaces (IBA, 2021). In the UK, there is a growing literature on the issue (LawCare, 2025; LawCare, 2021). Various reasons are cited for these issues with workplace wellbeing. These include:

• the interactional demands of working with clients
• the interactional demands of working with colleagues and others
• unrealistic billing requirements
• high caseloads
• long working hours
• dealing with emotionally challenging cases and evidence.

There are both ethical and financial imperatives to prioritise employee wellbeing. Doing so can prevent individual suffering and promote better productivity and lower absence and attrition rates.

In addition, employers also owe legal duties under the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 and the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 (HSE, 2025). Some parts of the legal sector have also developed specific regulations and guidance, for example, the Solicitor Regulation Authority’s Workplace environment: risks of failing to protect and support colleagues (2023). This highlights the link between toxic workplace environments and potential regulatory breaches of the Codes of Conduct governing the solicitors’ profession.

The following video emphasises the importance of a healthy workplace.

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Transcript: Video 1  The importance of a healthy workplace

MATHIJS:

Developing healthy workplaces is, of course, really important because everyone wants to work in a healthy workplace. No one wants to work in a toxic or a really unpleasant workplace. And creating a healthy workplace is so important to employees, to employers.

RAJ:

And I think that getting the best from your staff and getting productive staff means that you have to work on developing psychologically healthy workplaces. If people are really stressed, they probably aren't making great decisions. If people are working in isolation a lot, which happens a lot in the legal profession, they don't necessarily get full appraisal of how rational that decision is. So there's that about how it can improve the function of the firm.

End transcript: Video 1  The importance of a healthy workplace

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Video 1  The importance of a healthy workplace

Next, go to 1.1  Putting wellbeing into practice.

As you work through the content of this course, you will see that there are a series of activities for you to complete. These are designed to enable you to begin creating a ‘theory of change’ record for the work you are undertaking. In other words, it will give you a roadmap for putting your ideas around wellbeing into practice.

There are many different models but in general, a theory of change sets out the following:

• What goal you wish to achieve and what outcomes you are looking for.
• What changes you need to put in place to achieve these outcomes and reach this goal.
• What is involved in each of these changes.
• How you will evaluate the results of these changes and outcomes.

You may have a number of goals. If these are closely linked, your theory of change may cover all of them. However, if each goal is sufficiently distinctive, you may wish to develop separate theories of change for them.

You can create a theory of change at the start of a project, but you can also create one at any time during its lifecycle. Therefore, whether you are taking up a new role or are already well-established in a role, these activities will be relevant.

It is worth noting that developing a theory of change is commonly done by co-creating it with a range of relevant stakeholders. Therefore, you should treat the theory of change you begin to develop during this course as a starting point to open up discussions. A theory of change is also often depicted in a visual form, so you may wish to translate your notes from the activities into a flow chart or other diagrammatic form.

The next activity is designed to develop your knowledge of what a theory of change is and how it can be applied in your own workplace context.

Next, go to 2  The context of wellbeing support in legal workplaces.