Team Success Starts Here: How to Keep Your Best Legal Talent from Walking Out the Door

As I moderated our recent webinar exploring burnout and attrition in legal departments, one stark statistic stood out to our audience members: 73% of in-house lawyers globally report experiencing stress and burnout, with 42% saying this burnout is severe. These numbers from our 2024 In-House Legal Survey paint a concerning picture of the challenges facing legal teams today.

I was joined by an exceptional panel of legal leaders who shared candid insights about managing burnout and maintaining team motivation: Femi Giwa (Chief Legal Officer at Salsify), Richard Buckley (Chief Legal & Risk Officer at Modular), and Nicole Olsman (Chief Legal Officer & Head of Sustainability at Linxon). Their combined experiences leading legal teams across different industries provided valuable perspectives on this critical issue.

The Nature of Legal Burnout: It's Not Just About Hours

One of the most interesting themes that emerged was how the lawyer mindset itself can contribute to burnout. As Richard Buckley noted, "Lawyers are conscientious. By nature, we want to pick up stuff, we want to be helpful, and we want to do the extra things in a way that perhaps other roles, other professions don't have that same sort of feeling."

This conscientious nature, combined with the service-oriented role of in-house counsel, can create a perfect storm. Femi Jiwa highlighted how supporting internal clients, particularly sales team members, adds another layer of pressure: "Having to interface with people who are very driven and trying to get their work to the top of your list, that's a very difficult job."

The challenge is further complicated by what Nicole Olsman described as the "doing more with less" paradigm: "We have the constraint in terms of resources, we could have constraints in terms of support. The lawyers are seen as ‘we're not profit, we're a cost center.’" This perception of legal departments as cost centers rather than value generators creates a difficult cycle because as companies look to control costs, legal teams often face budget constraints that limit their ability to add headcount or engage outside counsel, even as business demands increase.

The result is that existing team members must shoulder ever-growing workloads, from routine contract reviews to complex strategic matters. This squeeze is particularly acute in industries with thin margins or during economic downturns, where legal teams are expected to maintain the same level of risk management and business support with fewer resources. As Femi noted during our discussion, this dynamic can lead to work gravitating toward high performers who become overwhelmed: "You can easily get lopsided in terms of the amount of work that people are handling, particularly if you've got somebody who is ambitious and is good at their role and people like working with them." That’s why it’s important to keep an eye open for the signs he or she have reached their breaking point.

Early Warning Signs and Prevention Strategies

The panel shared several key indicators that might signal impending burnout:

• Changes in communication tone and style
• Decreased work quality or increased errors
• Visible stress or irritability
• Withdrawal from team interactions

As Femi noted, "Snappiness is definitely a sign that I tend to see... When you see the tone change from our standard tone to one that's tenser, you're probably already too far down the burnout path."

The experts emphasized the importance of regular check-ins and creating safe spaces for open communication. Richard shared a particularly effective approach: "Always starting the conversation with 'how are you' and then asking that question a second time is really important because often people aren't prepared for that question superficially."

Practical Solutions for Team Leaders

The panel shared several strategies for managing team burnout and maintaining motivation:

1. Structured Work Distribution

Femi described how his team uses different roles and resource types to optimize workload: "We have different levels of roles and different backgrounds on our team. I loved having a contracts manager because they may be excited to do some work that the senior attorney may not want to do."

2. Technology Integration

The panel discussed how AI and other tools can help reduce repetitive work. As Richard noted, "If you get it right then that potentially can have a huge bearing on your ability to keep your team motivated because if you can get rid of low-value work, you can get them focused on more interesting stuff."

3. Clear Communication with Business Partners

Nicole emphasized the importance of setting boundaries: "Speaking to the business to make sure that they understand that we're a finite resource ... we need to prioritize what really needs to be done and what's high risk."

4. Recognition and Appreciation

A key point raised was the importance of acknowledging team contributions. As Nicole pointed out, "When there's a big success, it's my job to make sure that everyone knows who did the work and why they should be appreciated. Recognition boosts morale a lot."

The Future of In-House Legal Teams

Looking ahead, the panel engaged in a discussion about how technology, particularly AI, could help address burnout and retention challenges. While acknowledging initial resistance from some lawyers, the panel was optimistic about AI's potential to transform legal work. As Richard Buckley noted, "It's a big topic—we all know there's a huge amount of issues with it."

The panel acknowledged that getting lawyers to embrace AI requires a cultural shift. Richard highlighted this challenge: "I think the other thing you need is getting buy-in to using it sometimes with your own lawyers. There is a challenge in being able to sort of get people to say this is worthwhile."

Femi Jiwa proposed a practical solution to this adoption challenge, suggesting team workshops on prompt engineering. "One of the things that I've been thinking about this year is: ‘Why don't we get together as a team and do a workshop around prompt engineering just to actually practice together in person and see the value?’" He noted that his research had uncovered helpful YouTube resources for structuring such workshops, and his team plans to take real work examples and experiment with how they might approach them using AI chat applications. This hands-on, collaborative approach to AI adoption resonated with the other panelists, with a few of us expressing interest in participating in such a workshop.

The discussion also touched on how AI is already showing promising results in specific areas. Femi shared his experience with AI's drafting capabilities: "I've already seen in some small tests the ability of AI to produce a letter in such a fast speed, and perhaps better than I could do; it probably would take me hours and hours to do." However, the panel emphasized that technology should be viewed as a tool to enhance lawyer capabilities rather than replace them, potentially leading to more engaging work for legal teams and helping address some of the routine task burden that contributes to burnout.

The human element, however, remains crucial. As Richard emphasized, "First and foremost, always remember your team members are human beings before anything else, and if you treat them as fellow human beings, you're going to get a better outcome on any of these challenges."

As legal leaders, we cannot afford to ignore the warning signs of burnout and potential attrition, especially as new executive orders cause ripple effects through in-house legal work. The cost of losing top legal talent — both in terms of institutional knowledge and team morale — is simply too high. If you're seeing signs of burnout in your legal team or want to proactively prevent it, don't wait until it's too late. Axiom can help develop strategies to support your team and maintain their engagement, whether through flexible staffing solutions, technology implementation guidance, or organizational design consulting.

💡 Don't let burnout drive away your best talent; let's work together to create a more sustainable future for your legal team.