If you’ve been feeling stressed out, anxious, or depressed over these past few months, you are not alone. When the Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC), a leading organization for in-house lawyers, surveyed its members in June, it found that almost 20 percent are experiencing depression, more than 40 percent suffer anxiety, and almost 75 percent have moderate to severe burnout.
It’s not hard to understand why, given that our nation is suffering through a pandemic and a recession at the same time. Our country, our economy, and our legal profession are going through a huge amount of turmoil and change — much of the change bad, but not all of it — and dealing with change is difficult, even during good times.
If you are a lawyer looking for guidance and support as you help your organization navigate all this change, consider looking to the principles of change management. For those of you who are not familiar with it, change management consists of “the process, tools, and techniques used to manage the human side of change for the achievement and sustainment of a desired business outcome.” Change management has revolutionized the business world — and it’s now being adopted in the legal world as well.
