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Over the past few years, there has been increasing concern about the high incidence of depression, anxiety, substance abuse and suicide amongst members of the legal profession. Although the factors implicated in lawyer distress are said to be both structural and individual, the overall tendency in addressing lawyer distress has been to focus on the individual. In other work, I have sought to show that this focus may be unfortunate, tending to render structural issues invisible and to pathologise certain responses and behaviours. My specific interest in this paper is the impact of unethical behaviours — such as bullying, discrimination and harassment — on wellbeing. The paper is written in response to three recent Australian reports which have found widespread incidence of such behaviours in legal workplaces. These are not the only reports to evidence the dysfunctional nature of legal practice in Australia; indeed, the problem has been described as ‘pandemic’. Although structural factors in legal practice, such as billable hours, heavy workloads and stress have long been implicated in the ill-being of lawyers, relatively little attention has been paid to the physical and psychological effects of unethical behaviours. Drawing from a considerable body of literature that examines the impact of such behaviours on the health and wellbeing not only of victims, but of perpetrators and third parties, I pose the question: is unethical behaviour in the legal services industry the elephant in the room in the wellbeing debate?
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