The Burnout Diagnosis Most Industries Refuse to Make
Singapore’s legal profession is naming what most industries refuse to. The diagnosis matters far beyond law.
Imagine being in a ballroom, listening to Singapore’s Chief Justice deliver an opening address, and somewhere around the middle of it, having to physically restrain yourself from jumping up and down.
That is basically what happened to me last July at the Legal Profession Symposium.
Not because anything shocking was said.
But because the quiet part was FINALLY being said.
Out loud, in public.
By one of the most respected voices in Singapore’s legal community.
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The line that got me was this: young lawyers are not leaving private practice because they are being pulled towards something better.
They are leaving because they are being pushed out by what practice has become, by “push factors rather than pull factors” rooted in growing dissatisfaction with legal practice itself.
So yes, I kept my symposium face on, but inside, I was absolutely losing it.
I have been thinking about that moment again this week from Rio de Janeiro, where I’ve just been speaking at a legal conference about Singapore’s work in legaltech, AI policy, and judicial innovation.
Different country, different room, same question underneath: what does it take for a profession to evolve without quietly burning out the people inside it?
That’s a question every single industry should be paying attention to.
For context, 1 in 3 newly admitted lawyers may leave the profession within 3 years and among those considering leaving their current place of practice, around 80% cited excessive workload or poor work-life balance.
52% cited the impact on their mental wellbeing. 35% cited poor workplace culture.
And the diagnosis was not that young people are fragile, unwilling to work hard, or lacking resilience. The diagnosis was much more uncomfortable.
They want to escape a version of practice where commercial pressure, workload intensity, thin mentorship and constant responsiveness have made good work harder to sustain.
Which is a completely different problem to solve.
And if you are thinking, “OK Noemie, but why should I care if a bunch of young lawyers are unhappy and leave the profession?” fair question but I bring you this:
Ethical fading.
Chief Justice Menon warned that unsustainable workplace practices can contribute to ethical fading, where high-pressure work environments lead employees to make judgements that fall short of high professional standards.
In law, that shows up as worse advice for clients.
In medicine, it shows up as worse diagnoses.
In leadership, it shows up as worse decisions.
In any profession, it means the thing your organisation is paid to be good at starts to degrade because the people doing the work are depleted.
The consequences show up in the work, in the output.
That is why this is not just a young-lawyer problem.
It is not even just a legal-industry problem.
It is a quality problem, a judgement problem, a leadership problem, and since organisations often become very fluent when money enters the chat, eventually a commercial problem.
This Is Bigger Than A Wellbeing Programme
Most workplace wellbeing conversations fail because they start too low down the system.
They ask: “what support can we offer individuals?”
They do not ask: what is the profession repeatedly producing, rewarding, tolerating, and calling normal?
So the answers become predictable: a coaching app, a lunch talk, a resilience webinar, maybe a wellbeing week with a beige graphic and the word “thrive” somewhere in the title.
I am not against support, I am a wellbeing coach after all.
Coaching can help, therapy can help, better recovery habits can help, and a good workshop can absolutely shift how people see themselves and their work.
“But helping people cope with a broken system is not the same as changing the system that is breaking them”.
Both need to happen at the same time.
Because when the drivers of burnout are built into the operating model of a profession, individual support can’t be the whole answer.
Globally, this is not niche.
BCG’s 2024 research found that 48% of workers surveyed across 8 countries were currently grappling with burnout.
So maybe the issue is not that millions of people suddenly forgot how to cope.
Maybe work has been designed in ways that make coping the baseline.
Which is exhausting, because eventually even coping starts to feel like another job.
That is the part leaders have to own.
Not just HR, and not just individual organisations trying to do the right thing around the edges.
This is where industry leaders, professional bodies, regulators, and senior people with actual authority have to say: this is not a private struggle. This is a structural risk.
Because if the work of a profession depends on judgement, and the conditions of that profession degrade judgement, wellbeing is not soft or fluffy.
It is professional infrastructure.
A lot of what we currently call “law firm culture” is inherited suffering dressed up as rigour.
The always-on responsiveness. The prestige attached to endurance. The mentorship everyone says matters but nobody properly protects. The quiet belief that if you survived the system as-is, the next generation should too.
Most of this is not designed by villains. It is inherited, copied, rewarded, and repeated until it starts to look like common sense.
That is why culture is hard to change.
Culture is what keeps happening when nobody intervenes.
If junior lawyers are told wellbeing matters but the reward system still favours the person who is always available, the reward system wins.
If firms say mentorship matters but the business model does not protect time for mentorship, the business model wins.
If everyone agrees the pace is unsustainable but the people who model unsustainable behaviour keep becoming the most powerful people in the room, the room has already voted.
And I say this as someone who has absolutely mistaken instant responsiveness for professionalism.
This is where leadership matters. The kind that changes what gets measured, rewarded, tolerated, and repeated.
Because you cannot ask juniors to be more resilient while leaving the machine untouched. You cannot tell people to set boundaries in a profession where boundaries are still quietly treated as lower ambition.
That is not empowerment. It is outsourcing the problem to the people with the least power to solve it.
The cost of burnout is never paid only by the people burning out.
It is paid by everyone who depends on their judgement.
Which, eventually, is all of us.
With love,
Noemie x
P.S.: What is one workplace habit everyone accepts in your industry, even though it is quietly making people exhausted?
Key Sources
Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon, Opening Address at the Legal Profession Symposium 2025: “The Future of the Legal Profession: A Shared Vision” (29 July 2025).
Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon, Speech at Mass Call Ceremony 2026 (20 April 2026).
Channel News Asia: “IN FOCUS: 1 in 3 new lawyers want out, can the industry fix the burnout before it’s too late?”
Ann Tenbrunsel and David Messick, “Ethical Fading: The Role of Self-Deception in Unethical Behavior”, Social Justice Research (2004).
BCG, “Half of Workers Around the World Are Struggling with Burnout” (2024).
Noemie Mooney is an ACE Certified Health Coach, ICF-trained Behaviour Change Specialist, podcast host and the creator of the MAKE SPACE Method™, a science-backed framework for sustainable habits and mental health. She writes on Substack about burnout, habit formation, and evidence-based behaviour change psychology for people who want practical tools without the self-help BS.
Phenomenal piece.
Wellness Programs - IMO - as well intended as they may be, rarely address the systemic cause. They attempt to treat a symptom without sussing out the root cause.
Like most things in this world, once the economic impact is clearly defined, it will be seriously addressed.
Until then? Keep choosing yourself over what the “system” tells you is standard.
Welcome to the revolution.