Despite growing awareness of mental health and wellbeing across the workplace, new data from LawCare shows that demand for support in the legal sector is not easing – in fact, it is intensifying.
LawCare, the mental health charity for the legal profession, has published its Impact Report 2025, revealing that it supported more people last year than at any point in its history, including during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. The findings provide a stark reminder that awareness campaigns and wellbeing initiatives alone are not enough to address the deep-rooted pressures facing legal professionals.
Demand for mental health support exceeds pandemic levels
During the pandemic, many organisations in professional services acknowledged – often for the first time – the significant mental health pressures their people were facing. Flexible working arrangements, wellbeing conversations and mental health resources became more visible and more widely discussed.
However, LawCare’s latest data suggests that the end of lockdowns has not brought relief. Instead, demand for confidential, specialist mental health support has continued to rise.
The Impact Report shows that 753 individuals accessed LawCare’s services in 2025, exceeding the levels seen during Covid-19. This indicates that many of the underlying stressors – long hours, high workloads, billing pressures and cultural expectations – remain a challenge.
For HR, wellbeing and people leaders, the figures underline the need to look beyond surface-level interventions and assess whether existing approaches are genuinely reducing pressure, or simply helping people to cope with unsustainable working conditions.
Online chat usage highlights changing support needs
One of the most striking trends in the report is the growth in demand for LawCare’s live online chat service. In 2025, 140 people accessed support via online chat, representing a 13% increase in just one year.
This rise highlights the importance of offering multiple access points to mental health support. While helplines and email services remain essential, live chat can feel more accessible for those who may be hesitant to speak on the phone, are working long or irregular hours, or want discreet support during the working day.
For employers, this reflects a broader shift in how people want to engage with wellbeing services – favouring flexibility, anonymity and immediacy. It also reinforces the value of signposting external, confidential support options alongside internal resources.
Stress, burnout and anxiety remain entrenched
The Impact Report’s findings align closely with Life in the Law 2025, LawCare’s wider research into mental health and wellbeing in the legal profession. Together, the two reports provide compelling evidence that mental health challenges are not isolated incidents but systemic issues affecting individuals across roles, seniority levels and practice areas.
The persistence of these challenges suggests that while awareness has improved, meaningful cultural and structural change has been slower to follow. For many employees, the gap between wellbeing rhetoric and lived experience remains wide.
Why awareness alone is not enough
Elizabeth Rimmer, CEO of LawCare, emphasises that increasing awareness of mental health issues – while important – does not automatically reduce the need for support.
“Our Impact Report 2025 shows that rising awareness alone isn’t enough. People in the legal sector are still under significant pressure, and the need for immediate and confidential mental health support continues to grow,” she says.
Rimmer also highlights the scale of the challenge facing charities like LawCare, which deliver frontline mental health support with limited resources. “Sustaining and growing our services to meet this increased demand is a key priority,” she adds.
For employers, this raises an important consideration: if demand for external crisis and support services remains high, it may indicate that internal wellbeing strategies are not fully addressing root causes.
The role of organisations in creating meaningful change
Both the Impact Report 2025 and Life in the Law 2025 point to the need for a more proactive and meaningful approach to mental health at work. This goes beyond offering employee assistance programmes or mental health awareness training.
Meaningful change may require organisations to rethink workload expectations, performance measures, leadership behaviours and psychological safety. It also involves listening closely to employee feedback and being prepared to address uncomfortable truths about culture and ways of working.
Targeted support for individuals remains critical – particularly confidential, independent services that people can trust – but this must sit alongside sustained organisational commitment to reducing harm, not just managing it.
Strengthening mental health support across the legal sector
The Impact Report also highlights the wider work LawCare is doing to strengthen mental health support across the profession. This includes the efforts of its board, staff, volunteers and champions, as well as initiatives designed to drive longer-term cultural change.
Key developments include the continued growth of LawCare’s 25 Club, the launch of a reverse mentoring toolkit, and the reach of its free webinars, which were attended by more than 1,000 people in 2025.
Importantly, the report also includes the voices of people who have directly benefited from LawCare’s support – reinforcing the real-world impact of accessible, confidential mental health services.
A call for sustained focus on mental health
The message from LawCare’s Impact Report 2025 is clear: mental health challenges in the legal sector are not diminishing, and complacency is not an option.
For HR, health and wellbeing leaders, the findings serve as a timely reminder that progress requires persistence. Supporting mental health at work is not a one-off initiative or a communications exercise – it demands ongoing investment, honest reflection and a willingness to challenge entrenched norms.
As organisations continue to navigate rising workloads, technological change and economic pressure, ensuring that mental health support is robust, credible and genuinely effective will remain a defining challenge for the sector.
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