Most lawyers are accustomed to setting aside their own needs to meet the demands of their work. Clients are waiting, deadlines are approaching, emails keep arriving, and there is always another call to return or problem to solve. Over time, many lawyers become exceptionally good at functioning while tired, stressed or mentally overloaded.
That ability is often viewed as part of being a professional. The problem is that burnout often hides behind competence. When you continue showing up, serving your clients and meeting your obligations, it can be difficult to recognize when exhaustion has become something more than a particularly demanding stretch at work.
Burnout does not usually begin with a breakdown or a moment when everything suddenly stops working. More often, it develops gradually, which makes it surprisingly easy to normalize.
A lawyer once described it this way to OLAP. “I thought I was just tired. Then I realized I hadn’t actually felt rested in years.”
He was still getting his work done, meeting deadlines, responding to clients and maintaining a successful practice. From the outside, nothing appeared to be wrong. Internally, however, he noticed that the work started to feel different. To remain engaged required more energy, while the satisfaction that once came from practicing law seemed increasingly difficult to find.
After pushing through exhaustion for so long, feeling exhausted had simply become normal.

Burnout Often Hides Behind Professionalism
The legal profession rewards endurance. Lawyers learn early that there will be long days, difficult clients, demanding cases and periods when work has to take priority. Being able to perform under pressure is often considered part of being a good lawyer.
That makes it easy for burnout to hide behind high functioning. You continue doing the work, meet deadlines, answer emails, and return the calls. You take care of your clients. At the same time, smaller changes may begin appearing beneath the surface.
Perhaps your patience is shorter than it used to be, and concentrating requires more effort. A client call that once would have been routine now feels draining. Sunday evening arrives and you are already thinking about everything waiting for you Monday morning. Even when you take time away from work, you have trouble truly disconnecting from it.
It is easy to attribute those feelings to being busy, getting older or simply practicing law. Sometimes, however, they are signs that you have been operating under sustained stress without enough opportunity to recover.

Burnout Does Not Mean You Are Weak
Lawyers are problem-solvers. Clients come to you because they need answers, guidance and reassurance. That dynamic can make it particularly difficult to acknowledge when you are the one who needs support.
Burnout can feel like evidence that you are no longer handling the demands of the profession as well as you should. You may look around and see colleagues who appear to be managing similar workloads and wonder why you cannot simply push through.
Burnout is not a measure of strength or professional ability. It can develop when sustained demands continually exceed the opportunities you have to recover from them.
Lawyers routinely absorb conflict, urgency, uncertainty and other people’s problems. A difficult conversation ends and another begins. A stressful hearing is followed by a client call. One deadline is met and another takes its place. There is often little opportunity to process one experience before your attention is required somewhere else.
Over time, that constant output has an effect.
It is important to recognize the signals rather than treating them as evidence that you simply need to work harder.

What Burnout Can Look Like
Sometimes burnout makes you feel detached from work that once felt meaningful. You may become more cynical or irritable, have difficulty concentrating, or wake up already feeling mentally exhausted by the day ahead.
It can show up physically through headaches, disrupted sleep or persistent fatigue. You may notice yourself relying more heavily on alcohol, food, medication or other habits to relax at the end of the day.
Changes may also appear outside the office. You have less patience with your family. You decline invitations because you are too tired. Hobbies begin to disappear from your schedule. Even when you have free time, you may find that you do not have the energy or interest to do much with it.
Because these changes tend to develop slowly, it is possible to adapt to them without realizing how different life has become.

Why Paying Attention Matters
Chronic exhaustion can affect more than how you feel about work. It can make concentration more difficult, shorten your patience and make it harder to remain fully engaged with clients, colleagues and the people in your personal life.
You may find yourself rereading something several times because you cannot focus. Small decisions begin requiring more effort. Problems that once felt manageable become disproportionately frustrating.
Meanwhile, the work continues.
That is one of the reasons burnout can persist for so long among lawyers. There may never be a moment when you simply cannot function. Instead, functioning requires progressively more of you.
Burnout rarely improves because you become even better at enduring it.

Small Adjustments Can Make a Difference
Addressing burnout does not necessarily mean leaving your job, changing careers or making dramatic changes to your practice. Often, the first steps are much smaller.
You might need clearer boundaries around when you respond to email or take client calls. Perhaps you need to use the vacation time you have been accumulating instead of waiting for the mythical week when nothing important is happening. It may mean protecting time for exercise, sleep, hobbies, friendships, family or anything else that allows your mind to spend some time away from practicing law.
It can also mean taking a closer look at the expectations you have placed on yourself. Not every email requires an immediate response, and not every problem needs to be solved tonight. Being available to clients does not require being available every hour of every day.
Most importantly, pay attention when the things that once helped you recover no longer seem to be enough. Persistent exhaustion, changes in mood, increased substance use or feeling increasingly disconnected from your work and personal life may be signs that it is time to talk with someone.

You Do Not Have to Handle Everything Yourself
Lawyers spend much of their careers being the person other people turn to when something has gone wrong. It can be uncomfortable to reverse that role, but asking for support gives you an opportunity to address what is happening before exhaustion begins affecting more areas of your life.
You also do not need to wait until you are in crisis.
OLAP provides confidential support for lawyers dealing with stress, burnout, mental health concerns, substance use or simply the feeling that something has changed and they are not quite sure what to do about it. Sometimes a conversation is enough to help you step outside the cycle of simply getting through the next deadline and begin thinking about what you need.

OLAP Is Here to Help
The Ohio Lawyers Assistance Program provides confidential support to Ohio lawyers, judges and law students facing mental health concerns, substance use issues, stress, burnout and other challenges that can affect personal and professional well-being.
If this article resonated with you, consider reaching out. You do not need to have a diagnosis, know exactly what is wrong or wait until a concern has become a crisis. Sometimes recognizing that you have not felt like yourself lately is enough reason to start a conversation.

Scott R. Mote, Esq. is Executive Director of the Ohio Lawyers Assistance Program.