What does quiet quitting mean in legal tech, and what are its features?

Petro Krasnomovets
By Petro Krasnomovets,
28th October |
22

When it comes to a lawyer’s work often implies many tasks and responsibilities. Lawyers usually have a hectic schedule, and the workload often extends to after-hours and even weekends. It is not surprising that the legal industry has become one of the most complex and busiest.

In connection with a new trend in the labor market — quiet quitting, the prioritization of employees of law firms has also changed. In fact, this is not a dismissal, as such, but simply an attempt to balance work and personal life. This is one way for a specialist to survive in harsh and difficult conditions, where you often have to work too much.

What is quiet quitting?

In fact, quiet quitting is not a layoff in the usual sense of the word. It’s just a “quiet” detachment from some of your work tasks that are a little out of the box. For example, refusal to work overtime to perform more functions than required. In short, this is the idea that you should not give yourself to work entirely and, to the maximum, to the detriment of your life.

The term has an interesting origin as it is inspired by TikTok, or more specifically, the #tangping Chinese trend. Its essence is that to combat burnout at work, it is necessary to move away from it. The term quiet quitting was first proposed in 2022 by the programmer Zaid Khan, who defined the basic concepts of a new philosophy of attitude to work:

  • you do not have to give yourself to work ultimately;
  • the value of a person as a person is not determined by productivity in the workplace;
  • you save space for just living.
@zaidleppelin

On quiet quitting #workreform

♬ i thought you wanted to dance – ruby

In other words, quiet quitting is an attempt not to become a driven horse in a fast-paced life when you have to manage to do a million tasks at work. And this is very important for lawyers with their massive duties and overtime. Let’s see if this is the case and if quiet quitting has features for lawyers. Is it applicable in practice?

Quiet quitting does not mean giving up work

If we talk about the legal industry, remuneration in this area very often goes precisely for the hours of work of a specialist. Therein lies the main problem. How to connect quiet quitting and the result of a lawyer?

When it comes to the specifics of legal tech and new approaches to the work of law firms, one of the main tasks is to reformat the path to performing daily activities. Any specialist forced to overwork and experience a high workload for a long time has several problems.

You may be asking yourself: Am I getting excellent compensation for my work at the limit of possibilities? Am I getting as much from my work as I give it my effort? Is there a balance between work and personal life?

Such questions are often asked by lawyers on the verge of professional burnout. You may notice that you are on autopilot. There is a feeling that life is passing you by and that you begin to feel the need to step back from work to regain balance.

These things force lawyers to change their approach to work and rethink their long-term goals. It is not only about income but also about mental and psychological health. This is confirmed by a survey of lawyers commissioned by Simmons & Simmons, which shows that young respondents prefer companies that provide favorable conditions for development rather than high salaries.

Increasingly, lawyers have been trading their exorbitantly long workweeks at large, high-paying companies for the opportunity to work from home.

If we analyze all of the above, it becomes evident that quiet quitting legal tech is not an escape from the duties of lawyers or something like refusing to work at total capacity. In this, you can instead see the search for a balance between work and life. This is such a way to protect yourself from burnout.

In other words, for a lawyer, quiet quitting is just a way to reformat their work. Therefore, it is a mechanism for overcoming the difficulties associated with challenging work. This is a way to protect yourself from emotional and mental overstrain to continue building your career without compromising your personality.

How to implement quiet quitting if you are a lawyer?

Quite frankly, quiet quitting requires a lawyer to take drastic steps. In fact, it needs a lot of effort and a willingness to make radical changes to the work. This means that you need to give yourself space to relax:

  • “Disconnect” during non-working hours from the computer and phone in terms of any work interactions.
  • All emails that arrive in your email after business hours can wait until the next business day or until Monday.
  • Make hard stops when you feel low and overexerted.
  • Seriously think about how to distribute your work in such a way that you do not have overloads where they can be avoided.
  • Stop eating lunch and half rest with a phone in hand in the mode of viewing work mail.
  • Take care of more free time in your schedule.
  • Move from a state of pursuit to a state of quiet hunting for your goals. You may have to slow down the speed of work somewhere to not spend a lot of energy.

Studying all these points, one can argue that some things are tricky. You are changing your approach to work now to prevent job dissatisfaction in the future. And this is so because quiet quitting requires the lawyer to work on avoiding overwork.

Such things indicate that the overwork and processing of lawyers in the workplace are not compensated even by high pay. So you need to take care of technologies that will reduce the workload on a specialist. And by and large, the quiet quitting of a lawyer should be seen as an important wake-up call for the management of a law firm.