美国律师职业倦怠调查：39,036 名律师中 47.5% 报告高度倦怠

“Burnout has not been measured at this scale in the profession before, and the distress we found tracks with measurable features of the work: how demanding it is, where it is practiced, and how far it reaches into people’s home lives.”

-Justin Anker.^[1]

How many

In September, Patrick Krill and Justin Anker published the largest study yet of lawyers’ mental health: 39,036 lawyers, invited at random through 28 US jurisdictions and weighted to match the profession. 47.5% reported high or very high work-related burnout, the first large estimate of its kind.^[2] That is above physicians, 41.9% of whom reported at least one symptom of burnout in the AMA’s 2025 data,^[3] and well above US full-time workers, 27% of whom told Gallup in mid-2026 that they very often or always feel burned out at work.^[4]

Where it’s worst

Younger lawyers, litigators, and lawyers in private or solo practice reported the most distress and burnout; unsurprisingly lawyers in-house, in academia and on the bench reported less. Men were more likely to report depression, and women anxiety and stress. Lawyers working 71 hours a week or more had much higher stress and burnout than those working 40.^[5] Distress rose steeply with burnout, and was worst where high burnout met work–family conflict, which 35.9% rated high or very high.^[2],[5]

The hours

In the US, billable hours per lawyer rose 1.2% in the first quarter of 2026, while standard rates rose 11.4%.^[7] More of the work sits below partner level: hours worked by associates for every equity-partner hour reached a record 1.55 at the end of 2025, above the 2008 peak of 1.44, and unlike in 2008 firms were still hiring.^[8] More Am Law 100 firms now require four days a week in the office.^[9]

Career scrutiny

What can a cry for help cost? 53.3% cited confidentiality concerns, and 49.2% their careers.^[2] Only 39.1% think their employer does enough for lawyers’ wellbeing, and 25.3% the profession.^[5] Clients bear some of the cost: 30.8% had come across a legal professional in the past year whose wellbeing raised concerns about their fitness to practise.^[10] In April, the National Conference of Bar Examiners dropped mental health questions from its lawyer fitness review.^[11]

Is this changing?

The case for AI in law firms is that it saves hours. Whether those hours go back to lawyers is a separate question. “What looks like higher productivity in the short run can mask silent workload creep and growing cognitive strain.”^[12] So far, lawyers’ hours have not fallen.

In Chambers’ 2026 survey of 8,200 US associates, the share planning to leave within two years doubled from one in ten first-years to one in five second-years, and 60% of associates at firms that fell short of their cultural promises wanted to leave after two years.^[13]

What lawyers say

Some anonymous quotes:

• “There is something so demoralizing about billing around the clock and then being dragged for the fact that every single thing you turn in isn’t entirely perfect.”
• “If I wake up at 6:30am, I’ll have emails from the partners who start early. Then I’ll receive emails at 10-11pm or later from the partners who work late. Wake up. Check phone. Cortisol levels spike.”
• “Yes, and that’s the depressing part when you bill 12 hours for a 15 hour day.”
• “Clients demand smaller teams now and the work gets kicked to juniors/midlevels. Partners don’t care because it’s more important to keep the client happy than keep the associate at the firm.”
• “I work much more now and have much less ability to unplug. I also make millions of dollars a year. No one has a gun to my head, but if I won the lottery would 100% quit tomorrow.”
• “From personal experience, firms are very sympathetic to medical issues initially, but on some level they smell weakness and the likely inability to work with the intensity they want.”
• “… they fired me for low billables, because they had demoralized me to the point that I was deeply depressed and wasn’t capturing my time well.”
• “Believe it or not, crashing and burning due to overall wellbeing is common in this profession.”
• “I just needed to understand that my wife and kids will be crying at my funeral, but few if any of the law firm partners I’ve supported over the years would even show up; funerals aren’t billable.”

Conclusions

• Nearly half of US lawyers report high burnout, and it is worst where the hours are longest and work collides with home.
• The hours are not falling: US billable hours are rising again, and more of the work sits below partner level.
• It seems likely that some kind of reform or change to state and national level practice groups will be required, and not simply a wellness CLE.

References

1. University of Minnesota Medical School, ‘Study of lawyer mental health provides first large-scale estimate of burnout in legal profession, reveals high levels of distress’ (EurekAlert!, 5 October 2026) <www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1146490>
2. Patrick R Krill and Justin J Anker, ‘When demands equal distress: An updated understanding of lawyer mental health and well-being’ (2026) 415 Journal of Affective Disorders 122479 <doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2026.122479>
3. American Medical Association, ‘AMA: Physician burnout rates are falling, specialty gaps remain’ (press release, 16 April 2026) <www.ama-assn.org/press-center/ama-press-releases/ama-physician-burnout-rates-are-falling-specialty-gaps-remain>
4. Gallup, ‘Employee Wellbeing and Sustainable Productivity’ (Gallup Workplace, 27 July 2026, updated 28 September 2026) <www.gallup.com/workplace/713057/employee-wellbeing-productivity.aspx>
5. American Bar Association, ‘New ABA/Krill Strategies lawyer mental health study shows escalating burnout, risky alcohol use’ (ABA News, 10 September 2026) <www.americanbar.org/news/abanews/aba-news-archives/2026/09/new-lawyer-mental-health-study/>
6. American Psychological Association, ‘Workers with psychological capital better prepared to weather increasing work stress’ (press release, 22 September 2026), reporting the 2026 Work in America survey <www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2026/09/psychological-capital-work-stress>
7. Amanda Robert, ‘Surge in BigLaw’s first-quarter revenues, new Wells Fargo data shows’ (ABA Journal, 30 April 2026) <www.abajournal.com/news/article/wells-fargo-data-shows-surge-in-biglaws-first-quarter-revenues>
8. Zoe Miranda, ‘Q2 2026 LFFI analysis: Law firm leverage just broke a 17-year record — and this time, it’s not because of layoffs’ (Thomson Reuters Institute, 18 August 2026) <www.thomsonreuters.com/en/institute/articles/q2-2026-lffi-analysis-law-firm-leverage>
9. ‘More Am Law 100 Law Firms Have Turned to 4-Day In-Office Mandates’ (The American Lawyer, 21 August 2026) <www.law.com/americanlawyer/2026/08/21/more-am-law-100-law-firms-have-turned-to-4-day-in-office-mandates/>
10. Krill Strategies, ‘Largest Ever Study of U.S. Lawyers Finds Nearly 1 in 2 Highly Burned Out, with Burnout Strongly Linked to Significant Rates of Mental Health Distress’ (Business Wire, 17 September 2026) <www.financialcontent.com/article/bizwire-2026-9-17-largest-ever-study-of-us-lawyers-finds-nearly-1-in-2-highly-burned-out-with-burnout-strongly-linked-to-significant-rates-of-mental-health-distress>
11. Karen Sloan, ‘US Bar Group Scraps Questions on Mental Health from Lawyer Fitness Review’ (Reuters, 23 April 2026) <law.stanford.edu/press/us-bar-group-scraps-questions-on-mental-health-from-lawyer-fitness-review/>
12. Aruna Ranganathan and Xingqi Maggie Ye, ‘AI Doesn’t Reduce Work—It Intensifies It’ (Harvard Business Review, 9 February 2026) <hbr.org/2026/02/ai-doesnt-reduce-work-it-intensifies-it>
13. Kathryn Rubino, ‘Biglaw Culture Is Fueling The Associate Lateral Churn’ (Above the Law, 26 May 2026), reporting Chambers, State of the US Legal Talent Market 2026 <abovethelaw.com/2026/05/biglaw-culture-is-fueling-the-associate-lateral-churn/>