In a nutshell, these “young lawyers” are the future talent of our profession and, as a cohort, face demanding conditions.

This cohort enters a legal profession that is accustomed to news articles with flattering titles such as “This cruel system almost destroyed me: How big firms break wannabe lawyers before they've even started” or “Law students get ready for Hunger Games-style clerkship season”.

Similar conditions for law students and law graduates existed during my time as president of the Australian Law Students’ Association. In 2016, ALSA conducted a qualitative survey of 121 law students. Participants were asked for their opinion on “the most pressing issues facing the legal industry”.

The four most frequent categories of responses were: a) mental health and workload; b) perceived lack of job opportunities; c) discriminatory hiring and promotion practices; and d) automation of the legal profession.

ALSA’s survey results of young people entering the legal profession generally aligned with findings from a study of people leaving the legal profession. In the Law Council of Australia’s 2013 National Attrition and Re-engagement Study Report, the most frequent and important reasons cited for leaving the legal profession were: a) better work-life balance; and b) reduced stress and pressure.

Law firms are not the only cause of these conditions. Law schools are increasingly directing their students down the competitive commercial pathway, whether intentionally or not. Nowadays, a student in law school will collect their books from the Herbert Smith Freehills Law Library, and there are reports of some law schools receiving almost 10 per cent of their annual budget from such commercial partnerships.

Students themselves perpetuate the competitive ecosystem too. Almost all Australian law student societies run promotional events for law firms targeted at their clerkship ready cohorts in exchange for sponsorship that will fund their other activities.

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The aggregate of these factors, and many more, create the competitive and challenging conditions that induce stress and exert pressure upon law clerks and graduates to take up a job with long hours and demanding work conditions.

Recently, commentators have viewed the issue (and therefore the solution) through the prism of work hours.

Law firms, however, are not unique in their demands. Long hours are consistently worked by leading management consulting firms, who service demanding clients and who often hire from the same pool of high achieving graduates as law firms.

Boston Consulting Group’s internal solution to burnout is a self-reporting system known as Predictability, Teaming and Open Communication, or PTO, which was developed by Harvard Business School Professor Leslie Perlow.

PTO works like this: before each new case team begins a project, team members openly discuss how they will do their work and define norms for things like travel, how quickly emails require a response and how often the team will meet in person. Each member also picks a different time period each week to go completely offline.

PTO facilitates consultants making and keeping plans during their weekly predictable offline moments. Ms Perlow, and her researchers, found that participants of PTO spent less time on lower value work and developed more innovative and collaborative approaches to problems. Perhaps most importantly, PTO became a vehicle for vertical feedback about workload and delivering value for the client. In the process, consultants gradually built trust and respect, enabling them to feel comfortable raising and resolving a wider range of topics bearing on their satisfaction and performance at work.

The problem being solved by Ms Perlow was not long hours at work. BCG’s consultants expected long hours when they joined the firm. Rather, Ms Perlow discovered, the problem was consultants had a complete lack of predictability or control over their daily lives. When consultants woke up in the morning, they had no idea how many hours they would be putting in that day.

The following description by Ms Perlow could apply to any Australian law firm: “We understand that the success of professional services firms depends on hardworking people who value the intensity of the work and are committed to their clients… what professionals don’t like is the bad intensity – having no control over their own work and lives, being afraid to ask questions that could help them better focus and prioritise, and generally operating in ways that are inefficient. Professionals accept the bad intensity without hesitation, believing it comes with the territory.”

BCG’s internal survey recorded that 77 per cent of surveyed consultants agreed PTO had improved the predictability and sustainability of their work, while 85 per cent agreed that PTO had helped them achieve their personal protected time goals since the previous survey.

PTO may not be appropriate in all legal practice groups, but the outcomes of PTO should be sought after by law firms: improved communication, satisfaction and performance. Relevantly, each of these outcomes is measurable at a team-specific level unlike firm-wide surveys that tend to disguise key indicators among the average.

PTO is an initiative that reflects a proactive approach to working conditions in law firms. It is disappointing, by contrast, that some law firms and commentators are choosing to be reactive in this space.

For instance, the view of Nine Publishing is that “law graduates [may] want more balance between work and life, and that some might opt for alternative careers. If this trend costs law firms the top talent, then their cultures may need to adapt.”

We should not wait for law students and graduates to opt for alternative careers before deciding change is needed. Law firms can learn from existing examples in other professions to improve themselves. The legal profession will better serve our community and clients when our best and brightest are incentivised to join and are satisfied to stay among our ranks.

Dan Trevanion was the president of ALSA in 2016-17 and formerly sat on the Law Council of Australia’s Australian Young Lawyers' Committee.