Katherine Bryant

State of in-house 2025: 38% of in-house lawyers have experienced burnout in the last year

News
March 17, 2025

London, 17 March: according to a new survey, resource constraints and a turbulent few years have seen stress and burnout levels amongst in-house lawyers climb to new heights.

38% of in-house lawyers have experienced burnout in the last 12 months, with 15% reporting burnout right now.

London and Boston-based intelligent contracting platform Juro surveyed 160 in-house lawyers, the majority of whom were either GCs or Heads of Legal, and found that stress levels were increasing twice as fast as they were decreasing (three times faster for the most senior lawyers at their companies).

69% of respondents expected their legal team to remain the same size or shrink, rather than grow, in the year ahead. 42% have been directly involved in layoffs or reductions in force in the past two years, and half of this group reported negative effects on their mental health as a result.

Due to these pressures, in-house lawyers are reconsidering their working arrangements. 75% are either interested or strongly enthusiastic about switching to a 4-day work week. 26% already work fully remotely, and only 2% believe that working five days a week in the office should be the norm.

While adoption of new technologies like generative AI has been enthusiastic in the legal profession, it seems that the benefits for lawyers have yet to translate to improvements in work-life balance.

Juro made a donation to LawCare, the mental health charity for the legal sector, for every survey submission from an in-house lawyer.

You can read the full findings and analysis in the report: ‘The State of In-house 2025’.

Juro CEO & Co-founder, Richard Mabey, said: “In-house legal is supposed to offer a better work-life balance than private practice, and yet levels of stress and burnout are concerningly high. Vendors bringing solutions to market need to work harder than ever to make sure the benefits brought by AI and technology are actually realised by end-users.”

About the author

Katherine Bryant
Content Marketing Specialist at Juro

Katherine Bryant is a Content Marketing Specialist at Juro. She is an experienced legal content creator and writer, passionate about the intersection of law and history. Katherine has an MA in Modern British Studies from the University of Birmingham, and has been published in the History Workshop Journal.

Previously, she contributed as a content writer and editor for LawCareers.Net and Latin Lawyer before arriving at Juro, where she has written legal features, news, produced podcasts, and supported events (you may have met her at LegalGeek or our own Scaleup GC!).

Instantly book a personalized demo

  • Schedule a live, interactive demo with a Juro specialist

  • See in-depth analysis of your contract process - and tailored solutions

  • Find out what all-in-one contract automation can do for your business

Schedule a demo

To learn more about the use of your personal data, please consult our readable Privacy Policy.

Your privacy at a glance

Hello. We are Juro Online Limited (known by humans as Juro). Here's a summary of how we protect your data and respect your privacy.

Read the full policy
(no legalese, we promise)