My affection for Twitter, combined with my ability to be easily distracted, leads me down many an avenue of intriguing discovery, such as the lawyer in a cage spotted last week at Liverpool Street Station (pictured below right). It turns out it was the law firm Keystone Law, which was, to quote the press release, "challenging the norms for legal careers with a call to action".

ce0lavrwoae2amxBeing stuck in a cage for three days on the main concourse of the station certainly got plenty of attention, including mine, and was a novel way of making the point that a career in law doesn't have to feel like a prison sentence. As for the call to action, applying to Keystone may be one response, but most of us may be more likely to take stock and reflect, probably only momentarily, whether we are anywhere near getting our work/life balance right.

Talk about work/life balance and concern for lawyers' mental health and wellbeing is nothing new; although in reality, that concern is likely to be confined to other lawyers and their families, rather than the public at large, who hold us in lower esteem than estate agents and who see us all as fat cats.

While it may be true that no-one ever said on their death bed that they wished they'd spent more time in the office, that is rarely an acceptable answer to a demanding client, senior partner, head of chambers or practice manager. Going on holiday does not mean getting away from work but does require you to remember to take your Blackberry (other phones and mobile devices are available) out of your pocket before going in the sea.

Keystone's caged lawyer recruitment stunt occurred a few days after the release of a Bar Council report, Wellbeing at the Bar, which highlighted that 63% of the very large sample were either unable to integrate the things that are most important to their lives and work, or were only able to do so sometimes. In addition, 34% said their workload was unmanageable or only sometimes manageable.

Unsurprisingly, however, 76% did not think that the most important things that happen in life involve work (the other 24% are very sad!) The report also reveals good things about the Bar, but it is quite clear that work/life balance remains dangerously tipped in favour of work.

One of the attractions of the self-employed Bar is the autonomy and independence it can give, but chambers increasingly and understandably have a more corporate approach to legal business (a word that would itself have been anathema to any barrister 25 years ago).

With the corporate-like striving for better work and greater turnover must come greater support and effective measures to ensure that members of chambers are supported in stressful times, together with imaginative and creative maternity, paternity, parental and carer policies to enable members to combine a career, that so many continue to love, with the things and people that are indeed more important in life. That is something that Hardwicke, the chambers of which I am a member, has looked to achieve. Whether we succeed is another matter, but at least we are trying.

So are lawyers trapped in cages? Probably, but for the self-employed Bar some of those cages are of our own individual making. Perhaps we should say no to some work, as we do not have the capacity without harming our health. Perhaps some of us (here's looking at me kid) should spend less time looking at Twitter and then I wouldn't need to be in chambers every day from 7am until at least 8pm… although I might then miss out on an interesting legal story.