Check on your colleagues. Many lawyers are struggling.

In a high-stakes, profit-driven industry, well-being can often take a back seat.

Almost half of the attorneys surveyed by Bloomberg Law this summer said their overall well-being had decreased since the beginning of 2025. That’s a lot of attorneys on a skid. It’s also nearly double the number who reported their well-being declining when asked this question in 2024.

Roughly half of this summer’s survey respondents said they experience job burnout, have difficulty disconnecting from work, and have trouble focusing. For those who said their well-being is deteriorating, those numbers go up strikingly. Almost 80% of them are burned out. Seven in 10 can’t disconnect or focus.

There is a lot going on these days – rogue AI, the skyrocketing prices of housing, gas, and groceries, multiple wars - and we’re still only a handful of years out from a global pandemic. It’s not surprising that 52% of respondents said they were worried about world events.

Looking at the data overall is eye-opening, but there are meaningful nuances between groups of respondents. Roughly one-third of both men and women said they cared for children at home, but women were more likely to be exhausted by the combination of work and caring, and also less able to separate their work from their caregiving life. Women were also more likely to have caregiving responsibility for a parent.

It’s not just differences between men and women. The most prominent differences were between those who reported their well-being significantly increased and those who reported a significant decrease. Attorneys with rising overall well-being tend to socialize outside of work regularly and use exercise and other hobbies to support their mental health. They have a stronger sense of belonging in their workplace and generally feel safe admitting mistakes or that they don’t know something. That doesn’t mean this group isn’t struggling at all. Half of them still report anxiety due to work-related issues, and 28% feel more isolated at work than they used to.

Contrast that with attorneys who said their well-being has significantly decreased. Three-quarters of them feel more isolated at work than they used to, and 87% have work-related anxiety. They are less likely to rely on colleagues for emotional support, feel less safe admitting errors or gaps in their knowledge, and they don’t feel like they have time to get help.

Many law firms and corporate legal departments are trying to help. Six in 10 responding attorneys said their organization offered some sort of support outside traditional medical insurance. This includes well-being programs, staff dedicated to well-being, and professional or executive coaching programs.

Even when these services are available, only half of attorneys take advantage of them. There are only so many hours in a day, which creates a push and pull between an hour billed and an hour spent elsewhere - even if that elsewhere is in service of mental health and well-being.