Bullying Is ‘Prevalent’ in the Legal Profession, New Study Finds
Almost 1 in 4 lawyers experienced bullying within the past year, according to a survey of more than 6,000 attorneys.
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As the father of a school-age child, I worry about bullying. But bullying extends well beyond the playground. It follows us into adulthood—and even into the legal profession, according to a noteworthy new report that was released last week. Considering the challenges that lawyers already face, the idea of having to navigate them in the face of bullying behavior should trouble anyone concerned about lawyer wellness.
Twenty-four percent of lawyers experienced bullying within the past year, the study found. It was based on responses from more than 6,000 Illinois lawyers who completed a survey commissioned by the Illinois Supreme Court Commission on Professionalism in fall 2023.
One in four lawyers surveyed is no small number. In the words of Roberta “Bobbi” Liebenberg of the Red Bee Group, the consultancy that conducted the survey, “We found that bullying is prevalent in the legal profession in Illinois, and we believe it is equally prevalent elsewhere too.”
Liebenberg added that bullying disproportionately affects women, persons of color, LGBTQ+ attorneys, and attorneys with disabilities. This is particularly concerning given the gains these groups have made in terms of their representation in the legal sector over the years.
Specifically, the study found that 38 percent of female lawyers were bullied at work in the past year, compared with 15 percent of male lawyers. Thirty-five percent of Black lawyers, 34 percent of Hispanic lawyers, and 28 percent of Asian-American lawyers were bullied, compared with 23 percent of white lawyers. Twenty-nine percent of LGBTQ+ lawyers were bullied, as were 38 percent of lawyers with a disability.
The study also found that the prevalence of bullying could vary with age. Thirty-nine percent of lawyers between 25 and 35 reported being bullied, compared with 12 percent of lawyers between 66 to 76.
This made me wonder if different age groups could have different understandings of what constitutes bullying. Could bullying be, at least to some extent, in the eye of the beholder?
“The oldest cohort might have a different tolerance for bullying,” said study co-author Stephanie Scharf. “But it shouldn’t be surprising that the most junior people in the survey reported the highest incidence of bullying. Bullying is a power play—it’s using power against people—and the easiest people to use power against are the most junior.”
Scharf—who holds a Ph.D. in behavioral sciences as well as a law degree—also pushed back on the suggestion of subjectivity to the concept of bullying. She pointed out that in addition to providing a definition of bullying—“inappropriate behavior intended to intimidate, humiliate, or control the actions of another person, including verbal, nonverbal, or physical acts”—the study identified specific behaviors and asked respondents whether they had personally experienced them.
For example, 66 percent of lawyers bullied in the past year reported “verbal intimidation, such as disrespectful speech, insults, name-calling, shouting.” Fourteen percent mentioned “physical intimidation, such as hovering, invading personal space, throwing objects, stalking.”
How is the legal profession dealing with bullying? Not very effectively, according to the report. Only 20 percent of bullied lawyers reported it to a supervisor, upper-level attorney, or human-resources manager. Reasons for not reporting bullying behavior included not wanting to be perceived as weak or a “complainer” (34 percent), fear of the bully’s status (27 percent), and the belief that the employer wouldn’t do anything (27 percent).
Fear of employer inaction is understandable. Of lawyers who did report bullying, 52 percent rated their employer’s response as either “not sufficient” or “totally unsatisfactory.”
“Sometimes the bullies are powerful people in the workplace,” Scharf told me. “Maybe HR doesn’t want to upset the apple cart or create issues. But what they may not realize is that by doing nothing, they are creating issues.”
“Bullying adversely affects lawyers’ productivity, emotional well-being, and physical health,” Liebenberg said. “It results in increased job turnover and attrition from the profession.”
And bullying carries reputational costs for employers that are known to tolerate it. As Scharf put it, “What do people think about you and your lawyers when they see people doing this? Do you want a culture where people feel bullied, or where they feel included?”
Professor Tanina Rostain of Georgetown Law—whose scholarship focuses on the legal profession, but who wasn’t involved in the study—wasn’t surprised by its findings about the prevalence of bullying. She suggested that they shed light on other problems in the profession.
“I suspect that bullying in the legal profession reflects a number of factors,” she said. “They include the adversarial ethos run amok, when it’s from opposing counsel; pressures on lawyers in solo and small practices and a lack of accountability for their behavior, when it’s from lawyers inside firms; and complete lack of accountability of judges, as to how they behave in courtrooms.”
But even if she wasn’t surprised by the overall picture painted by the study, Rostain praised it as an important piece of work: “It’s such a smart report, done so thoughtfully, about something I hadn’t seen framed in this way.” She expressed hope it spurs further research and positive changes.
What might some of those changes look like? The report offered recommendations for addressing bullying. Employers should develop and implement anti-bullying policies, and they should train their employees on anti-bullying policies and procedures. Courts should do their part by adopting standing orders prohibiting bullying and incivility in legal proceedings.
And those who engage in bullying must be held accountable, the authors argued. As one survey respondent said, “It’ll never stop if there aren’t meaningful consequences to bad behavior.”
Law firms and other legal employers should review this research and consider what reforms they might want to institute in response. While it’s possible to imagine overbroad conceptions of bullying or anti-bullying efforts going too far, law school graduates deserve to enter workplaces where they will be treated with civility, dignity, and respect.
A version of this article originally appeared on Bloomberg Law, part of Bloomberg Industry Group, Inc. (800-372-1033), and is reproduced here with permission.
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I find it unlikely only 25% of attorneys are bullied.
Displaced aggression is arguably the most common form of aggression in the animal kingdom. I think that’s what a lot of bullying behavior is when you peel back the onion and think about it.
Is it bullying to respond to an act or omission that should cause ire with anger? I tend to think it may not be an optimized management strategy but it’s a different issue than bullying behavior with a different remedy.
I wonder how often the target of anger is able to distinguish between the two forms of aggression. Because the truth is: It can be hard to get out of our own perspective.
That said, I do think there are a lot of times where the offense is real but the response is disproportionate in this profession. There are elements of displaced aggression in that behavior too.
I think a lot of times what is going on is that displaced aggression is a reflection of the high stress nature of this job. And it only gets more stressful. The aggressor has some stress acting on them and they pass it on in the form of displaced aggression.
Because the thing is: Displaced aggression does, actually, work to make the aggressor feel better and reduce their stress levels.
We have all this training in this profession on the not to do’s. The hours and hours and hour of CLE and insurance mandated courses is unending.
But how much time do we spend teaching people how to do it better and why it’s in their own interest to do it different than was modeled for them?
In any given instance — Maybe what’s perceived as bullying is bullying. Maybe it’s not. Maybe it kind of is.
Regardless: Engaging in behavior that is reasonable to interpret as bullying is not in the long-term interest of anyone. There’s science out there as to why. Perhaps because we are creatures obsessed with risk and downside, we focus an incredible amount of attention and conversation on how to avoid stepping into traps. And the laundry lists of “do nots” can feel like a Byzantine maze that ultimately gets discounted as impracticable or ignored.
It seems like a little more attention on “How to manage” and “How to interact with colleagues” and “Why this is in your own interest to learn these skills” might be a better approach that has more stickiness.
It is very hard to figure out how to create a culture of accountability and excellence that is also kind. And if there’s an underlying theme in this profession it’s that absolutely nothing is taught. You have to teach yourself.
Terrible way to run a talent management business.
Now, notwithstanding all of what I just said acknowledging there is an issue and suggesting a different approach: I do think things have gotten a lot better over the years. Things that used to be considered bullying when I was coming up are now considered felonies or misdemeanors.
DL's report was interesting so I took a quick look at the study. It is disappointing.
For example, in the one regression analysis mentioned (p. 31) it mentions only race/ethnicity and does not provide any of the regression results. We are left wondering what other factors were controlled for - firm size seems relevant, as does type of practice, and sex. This is a warning flag to me to not put a lot of weight on the study - good statistical work is "hands above the table." You report full regression results, for example, since if you misspecify the regression the results by leaving out important independent variables correlated with the dependent variable aren't valid.
Other red flags: they don't provide numbers as well as % which would enable readers to spot very small cells in tables from which drawing conclusions might not be particularly useful, and they don't situate the study in the universe more clearly than was done here (the Illinois State Bar surely knows the breakdown on most of these variables of lawyers in IL and so the sample could have been compared to the overall bar membership).
Biggest red flag of all: There's very little detail in the methodology section, for example. it says 6,010 responded - but how many were asked? To take just one problem here, this doesn't sound like a random sample, and it seems likely that far more people who were bullied would respond to a survey about bullying than people who were not bullied. Yet we get no methodological discussion of how the authors addressed selection bias. If you just surveyed the entire IL state bar and these are the responses you got, there's a selection bias issue here.
My criticisms don't mean there isn't bullying going on - it's just that this seems to not be a best practices study so we need to be cautious in interpreting it.
This study was probably pretty pricey to do - and they certainly put a lot of effort into a nice layout for the report - so it is a shame that they didn't give us a very good basis for evaluating it. Perhaps there is more to this than I am giving it credit for, but I don't see it and there's no link I could find to a more thorough methodology and results somewhere else. All that leaves me with the feeling that it would be a mistake to conclude from this anything beyond what we already knew - there are plenty of jerks in the legal profession who behave badly toward their colleagues. I'm not sure this study tells us much more than that, which is too bad.
Big caveat - this is a quick reaction, not the result of hours of study, but I don't think this is a good enough analysis to merit hours of study on it, so I didn't want to invest a great deal of time in it. If others spot more information that I missed (I did search in it on a bunch of key statistical terms and found little, and I looked at all the tables), please point it out.