Faced with the complexity of the profession and the high requirements for expertise and skills, the decline in mental health and wellbeing of Vietnamese lawyers is very worrying. What are the underlying causes and solutions to improve this situation? This article aims to clarify the importance of mental health and its challenges and proposes solutions to create a work-life balance for law practitioners in Vietnam.
1. Introduction
Maintaining mental health and wellbeing is a condition for the legal profession to achieve sublimation in work and balance in daily life, especially in the context of the community culture in Vietnam. Whereas until very recently happiness was measured based on raw data, often of an economic and abstract nature, wellbeing and mental health are increasingly used as markers for assessing a society’s state of health at a given moment.
Considering this mental aspect of health, the WHO provides a more precise approach that corresponds to current standards of mental health assessment: “Mental health is a state of mental wellbeing that enables people to cope with the stresses of life, realize their abilities, learn well and work well, and contribute to their community.” Mental Health and Wellbeing is also taking on greater importance for individuals and is a goal to be pursued, a choice.
2. Some Challenges in Maintaining the Mental Health and Wellbeing of Legal Professionals in Vietnam
Like many other professions, the legal profession is not immune to the risks to the mental health of its loyal adherents. With its high exposure to stress, delays, and complications, the legal profession is by definition a high-risk sector for mental health. Exogenous pressure factors (clients’ needs, deadlines, legal disputes) are added to the rigor and accuracy with which these professionals must work, for whom doubt, error, or approximation are not permitted.
On top of this, there is often a heavy workload that exceeds the average for most professions. Over and above these structural factors, the legal profession in Vietnam is facing a series of significant changes, which are constantly leading them to renew and strengthen their areas of expertise. Along with the rapid development of social life in general, the legal profession today has developed far beyond the expectations of previous generations of law practitioners.
Globalization and economic market expansion push law practitioners to constantly develop themselves and meet the ever-changing requirements of customers. To avoid being left behind, legal professionals in Vietnam are not only improving their expertise and skills in the legal field but also cultivating background knowledge of social life fields and, above all, understanding the insight needs of their clients who come from a variety of countries and cultures. This, therefore, requires a relentless and rigorous learning process in both psychological and biological aspects. Furthermore, cross-border working conditions with a large range of clients no longer limited to certain territories increase their challenges.
Because they belong to the world, legal practitioners have also been under constant pressure as a result of events such as the COVID-19 crisis, but they have also been challenged or at least shaken up by the arrival of AI software, which is creating a revolution in the profession that is only just beginning. Given these characteristics, legal professionals are necessarily sensitive to mental health issues.
The purpose of this article is therefore fully relevant: good mental health is an asset for the longevity and productivity of a professional, but the very characteristics of his or her profession are likely to endanger mental health. This illustrates the paradox of the relationship between working life and mental health: while the pursuit of a profession requires the maintenance of good mental health and wellbeing at work, it is also likely to destroy them.
3. Importance of Mental Health and Wellbeing in the Legal Profession
An Emerging Awareness That Collides With Practical Reality
Legal professionals in Vietnam are starting to realize the importance of maintaining mental health and wellbeing. However, from awareness to action is still quite a distance. Prevention, therefore, is rarely applied proactively; instead, some methods are applied to improve and regain balance when clinical symptoms are already too obvious.
In Vietnam, the level of concern for mental health and wellness conditions has improved but has not yet brought practical results. According to the Ministry of Health, Vietnam still only focuses on treating mental disorders by treating clinical symptoms. Treatment of psychological disorders is not focused on any subject. Unfortunately, legal practitioners who are considered professionals with a strong mentality and a certain position in society are rarely the subject of mental health and wellness issues.
Although labor law limits working hours, the increasing demand for expertise and skills and increasing competition force legal professionals to subject themselves to hidden rules on overtime with no salary to complete the set deadline. Overtime is a common issue, especially in law firms or businesses where in-house counsel lawyers perform services.
The Vietnam Bar Association, law schools, and other law associations have not paid attention to the issue of protecting the mental health and wellness of their members. Maintaining mental health and wellness is by default their obligation to ensure job maintenance and is not the general responsibility of the community, firms, organizations, or associations.
Because of prejudices about society in general work in particular, and the culture of the community, law professionals in Vietnam are often afraid of criticism and silently endure pressure until they choose the final solution to withdraw.
It is quite normal for legal professionals to be sought after working hours to handle work. Furthermore, ‘dinner table culture to handle work’ causes a lot of discomforts and directly affects legal professionals themselves and their families, seeing that family discord can increase and promote mental health problems more seriously.
Currently, in Vietnam, there is no official research or index on the mental health and wellness of legal professionals due to a lack of interest.
4. Warning Signs of Decline in the Legal Profession
Clinical symptoms of deterioration in mental health and wellbeing are easily recognizable to the naked eye or through the sense of mental health deterioration. The legal profession always requires professionalism, precision, and seriousness. Therefore, law practitioners must pay attention to their outer appearance and emotions. This can cause mental disorders due to differences in personality and living habits. Professionalism and integration are often equated with stereotypical copying of external symbolic elements. In addition, the legal profession requires a clean private life, so keeping personal matters, including mental health and wellbeing conditions confidential, is also considered the default position. Thus, maintaining a professional image sometimes puts legal professionals under pressure and they become reluctant to express their personalities, especially when combined with the influences of Eastern culture.
Legal professionals in Vietnam often tend to accept mental health and wellbeing issues and keep them hidden. Furthermore, the backwardness of the medical system, especially in Vietnam, along with social prejudices, makes them not dare to express or admit their mental health condition and unwell feelings. Negative emotions appear or exist, such as anxiety, depression, fear, an increased level of control or disengagement, and loss of concentration. Loss of taste leads to loss of appetite, sleep disorders, etc. These manifestations and signs directly affect the quality of life and work, the ability to assess and make decisions.
With the emphasis on efficiency in the workplace, many law firms are strict in maintaining an image and quality of work without paying attention to the spiritual life of their employees. Evaluation using performance-based criteria without considering the underlying personal reasons always haunts legal professionals and further pushes them into a vicious cycle of mental disorders that go untreated until the condition becomes more and more severe.
Drawing up an objective assessment of the context and the causes leading to a threat to mental health and well-being enables us to better understand the various solutions available to ensure that these crucial aspects of a legal professional’s productivity and integration are better considered. While mental health, when sufficiently deteriorated, requires clinical treatment that goes well beyond the professional sphere, there are several points to watch out for to avoid this breaking point. Existing solutions can therefore be found directly in the social and professional environment of the worker concerned, as discussed further below.
5. Solutions for Maintaining Mental Health and Wellbeing
Proactively Finding Balance
Striking a balance between career and private life is a pillar of mental health. This balance is constantly threatened by the constraints inherent in the world of the legal profession: urgency, deadlines, but also professional events, client meetings, and partnerships, which are certainly gratifying activities from a social point of view, but which remain insidious when they are not sufficiently controlled and encroach too much on private life.
In Vietnam, the search for this equilibrium seems increasingly to be a priority for job seekers, particularly the youngest (25–34 years). In this age group, out of 1,000 job seekers, 73 percent consider work-life balance to be the priority, closely followed by income and financial security. Changing jobs is almost a priority choice to ensure life balance with the prerequisite factor being shortening working hours.
Despite this awareness, two issues are emerging. First, it is not sufficient to consider work-life balance a priority to benefit from it, and second, each individual has his or her balance and markers. So, there is no abstract solution that can be applied to everyone, just avenues of reflection that need to be proactively implemented by individuals. However, to achieve balance, the starting point is correct and scientific self-awareness.
Flexible working is a growing phenomenon today. Legal professionals in Vietnam are also trending towards flexibility in scheduling. Some options are freelance or work-from-home positions which have a double edge: the flexibility it brings to the workplace can become a real asset when it comes to preserving a balance, such as taking days off to work from home, which reconnects people with the notion of comfort at work. However, in certain circumstances, this flexibility results in a lack of visibility over the actual working time and can lead to a large excess of working hours.
The division of time between work and private life is undoubtedly the most important aspect of well-being and mental health. Maintaining a balance between life and work already means setting limits, with varying degrees of precision, on an effective working time in line with your goals.
Generally speaking, working long hours can, in the medium- to long-term, lead to a drop in productivity and motivation. Productivity at work is essentially fueled by the wellbeing of the individual: a good work-life balance is not only important for preserving mental health but is also a factor in the growth of a business.
Furthermore, it is not just limited to working hours, the tendency to overuse technological devices during rest time means that legal practitioners do not rest. The misconceptions of rest, entertainment, and relaxation cause the balance of life to be upset and fatigue takes up most of the day. Proper rest, therefore, also needs to be actively learned and applied to truly ensure its quality.
The correlation between mental well-being and productivity should prompt proactive measures by legal practitioners that require their comprehensive awareness.
6. Maintain Connections
Most legal professionals are often caught up in the cycle of working at the workplace and even at home. This omnipresence of work and stress in the face of deadlines regularly leads to an inability to reconnect with oneself, even when the individual has left the workplace. Generally, this reconnection with oneself can take some time and the presence of those around the person (family, close friends, etc.) can be obscured. Inevitably, this process is a vicious circle: the more difficult it is to reconnect with oneself, the less beneficial the time spent away from the workplace will be.
This exercise in reconnecting with oneself and one’s surroundings is crucial to revitalizing a sense of well-being that is sometimes altered. Because they are subject to constant pressures, legal practitioners must arbitrate an internal conflict between accumulated stress and professional preoccupation with the need to recover to cope with these tasks. Reconnecting with oneself then allows one to better reconnect with his or her social environment—feeling part of a group, integrated into a social system—and is a clear marker of well-being.
The COVID-19 crisis marked the disillusionment of individualism: isolated, many professionals, particularly in the legal world, developed symptoms of depression and reduced productivity at work. This crisis has revealed one of the essential drivers of growth: social well-being, meaning the ability to feel useful and socially integrated into a group. Moreover, this need is particularly acute in Vietnam, where the culture is traditionally based on Confucian roots, meaning a strong sense of community.
However, in another aspect, this sense of community hinders each individual’s deep connection to the community when personalization is difficult to accept and must always follow the general rules of the majority. In their family, legal professionals may be forced to follow family traditions and not have opinions. At the workplace, rules are sometimes harsh and restrict individual freedom. Discussing work compensation and benefits is almost taboo in some Vietnamese businesses and organizations when it is considered a factor in maintaining order and solidarity.
Connecting on a broader scale, including nature, people, and society creates a network of relationships or connection networks. However, sanity in relationships and methods to connect is a condition for legal professionals to create a sense of satisfaction for themselves. Personal satisfaction and the satisfaction of those around them, such as relatives, family, and society, sometimes create conflicts. Discomfort can arise especially with prying into one’s private life in the name of the interest of some individuals or exploitation to receive free legal services.
Connection will also imply resolving or accepting conflicts that arise. Maintaining connection is not moment-oriented but process-oriented. This means that there will be times when the connection is interrupted but it will be quickly adjusted. Therefore, you should not rush or put pressure on yourself as if it were a task. Get acquainted and gradually make connections naturally, starting from understanding yourself.
7. Find the Right Partner
The idea that mental health and wellbeing depend solely on individual solutions is a mistake: it is a more collective phenomenon that leads to growth and productivity being preferred to the detriment of individual wellbeing. In the legal profession, as in many other fields where a hierarchical structure allows professionals to perform better, the employer’s share of responsibility for maintaining mental health is predominant. So, first, job seekers must choose the right structure to work in, and second, they need to be able to leave if the conditions it offers don’t allow them to strike a balance between wellbeing and professional imperatives.
Beyond theory, it is not easy to escape the general rules, but there will still be places that promote mental health and wellness. Trying to force yourself to ‘integrate’ at work when your mental and physical health cannot stand it will mean that retreating will only happen sooner rather than later. Furthermore, accepting and tolerating many inappropriate things does not lead to a good result. Make decisions and accept trade-offs to find joy in life and work.
Although rare, some law firms and economic organizations in Vietnam are placing people first of all, their employees in the most important positions, taking the human factor as the core of the company’s course of action. Therefore, they promote life-work balance and believe that this is the foundation to create a happy community and maintain sustainable development.
Like a message of hope, Corporate Social Responsibility (‘CSR’) seems to be gradually gaining ground in Vietnam and becoming the source of a management style that is more focused on human needs. This theory encourages companies to develop a positive impact on their environment or at least not to destroy more than they produce. CSR is largely composed of a human dimension, through which the prospect of taking better account of the well-being of workers remains a factor of loyalty and growth. The trend is therefore to promote the wellbeing of the individual within his or her professional structure, so it is now possible to opt for a structure in line with these values.
8. Enjoy Moments
Although wellbeing and mental health are complex concepts and their integration into the professional sphere is a real challenge, they can sometimes be found in the simplest of things. Wellbeing and mental health are made up of lots of little moments, gestures, and thoughts that sometimes make the essential difference between a healthy environment and a toxic one.
The legal profession particularly suffers from certain negative apprehensions, that is, it is considered to be strict, with a very structured and formal environment. This type of profession can sometimes lead people to believe that lighter moments are forbidden. It is important to steer clear of this kind of cliché.
However strict and formal it may be, the day-to-day practice of law does not turn its practitioners into robots, and they still have human needs. It will be more effective to build lasting love and excitement in life and work when you know how to enjoy interesting moments that happen.
For example, congratulate yourself when you complete a task, take a deep breath and be grateful for your co-workers’ help on a project, enjoy a full cup of coffee, or rest during breaks. These are always good methods to maintain positive energy and increase connection and excitement of work.
These precepts for living, which are shared by so many people, sometimes have difficulty penetrating professional life, which we imagine to be sterile and untouched by human emotions. Transforming your vision and incorporating the human values of everyday life into the workplace also helps you to create a strong sense of belonging with your colleagues associates and those around you.
Hence, do not hesitate to express your diversity and versatility in your ways without lacking sophistication.
9. Seek External Support
One unfortunate but common mistake is to isolate your issues when faced with a personal or professional situation that is damaging one’s wellbeing and mental health. It is intuitive to refocus on oneself and ignore the outstretched hands of those around you (if they are aware of the period of difficulty that the person is going through). But seeking external support remains a good solution and a promise of improvement.
The combination of the above solutions to protect yourself from mental health and wellness issues and seeking external support will help legal professionals address their problems. External support can come from family, friends, colleagues, or associations through sharing and consulting. Understanding starts from sharing and then leads to supportive solutions.
In case of need, do not hesitate to consult psychologists and doctors to help yourself quickly return to a balanced state. When prevention and improvement can no longer be achieved solely through friendly or caring support from those around you, there are clinical solutions that can help you manage disorders when your health has become too impaired.
This approach is also wise because it allows you to speak freely and others will be able to listen to you and confide their doubts and weaknesses.
10. Conclusion
On a much larger scale, a general liberalization of the debate on wellbeing at work would have enormous positive consequences for the future of legal practitioners. This is expected shortly with the accompanying concern and social responsibility from organizations.
In short, mental health and wellbeing play an important role in the overall health and the activities of legal professionals, contributing to career growth and advancement or causing work stagnation. Maintaining good mental health and wellness is a condition for the developing career of legal professionals. To achieve this, legal professionals first need to be aware of their desires and needs (understand themselves). At the same time, to increase effectiveness and maintain the mental health and wellbeing of legal professionals, it is necessary for the joint contributions of firms, economic organizations, and associations to balance economic benefits and maintain a spiritual and physical life.
There is a general trend towards greater awareness of the human problems associated with the pressure that the legal profession may suffer every day. Awareness of mental health and wellbeing issues is not just a human concern, it is not a counter-productive or charitable gesture. These issues hold the promise of greater productivity in the workplace, sustained growth, and above all, longer working lives.
Following these principles, it is possible that this general awareness, which can be observed worldwide, will lead states to legislate proactively on these subjects, to impose certain standards, regulations, and remedies to enable better control of health at work, and to provide solutions. It is still relatively early days for a system of this kind to emerge, especially in Vietnam, but the rhetoric and the philosophy are changing and they are now turned towards progress.
Note: Pham Nga (27 February 2023), ‘Vietnamese Quit High-paying Jobs In Quest for Work-life Balance’, VN Express International; available at: [link]
Click [here] to read more about this topic (pg. 30 – 35).
