Senior lawyers risk creating a culture of exploitation within firms by requiring young lawyers to work long and unreasonable hours, taking credit for the junior lawyers’ work and blaming the juniors for their own mistakes, Australian High Court Judge Jayne Jaygot said.
In a speech on burnout in the legal profession, Jaygot said workplaces with extreme hierarchies and pay differentials, in which junior lawyers have little autonomy and their time is of lesser value than everyone else above them, risk their psychological wellbeing.
