‘It’s about the sustainability of the profession’: LawCare and the CLLS push firms to prioritise mental health

In an interview with Legal Business, CLLS Chief Executive Patrick McCann, LawCare CEO Elizabeth Rimmeras, and CLSC’s charity committee chair Peter King discuss the importance of the three-year partnership between the organisations.

The partnership will see the CLLS and CLSC provide £45,000 in additional funding to the charity over the next three years, with the organisations joining LawCare’s 25 Club, which calls on firms and leading individuals to commit funding to the charity.

CLLS chief executive, Patrick McCann, says he hopes the partnership will encourage contributions from law firms. ‘I’m a big believer in collaboration amongst competitive organisations, and this is something we should all be doing together. It is very much in City law firms’ interests to have healthy, engaged, high-performing people, and that doesn’t come without support. So there’s a real bottom-line benefit to making sure your people are looked after.’

‘That’s partly why we want to support LawCare, it’s very much that we wanted to support the people who work in our law firms, but also we want this to be a beacon to other organisations to do something similar,’ he concludes.

McCann agrees that the industry has made progress, but believes there is still a long way to go. ‘I suspect that nearly every senior leader has perspectives on this, and experiences this. I’d love people to talk more about this, to allow all of us to go: okay, this is a normal part of the job, and it needs to be dealt with,’ he says.

‘I think some changes have happened, and we do seem to be moving in a better direction. But I’m not sure we are there yet. I’m not sure we are in a world where people can properly ask for what they need and that what they need is necessarily being provided for.’