Restoring a Lawyer’s Sense of Agency

In the legal profession, workload, pressure, and burnout are often talked about but we often overlook one of the deeper psychological dynamics that drives these challenges: a negative sense of agency.

Agency, in psychological terms, refers to the feeling that one is in control of their actions, decisions, and outcomes. It is the experience of being the author of your choices. Research across a range of high-demand professions shows that a positive sense of agency is closely linked to motivation, well-being, and long-term resilience. When agency is measured as negative, even high performers can begin to feel disengaged, exhausted, or stuck.

Why Sense of Agency Matters in Law

While formal autonomy is often built into senior legal roles, particularly at Partner level, the felt experience of agency can be quite different. Lawyers are expected to exercise judgment, take responsibility, and be available to clients at all times. However, the internal experience of being “in charge” can diminish under pressure.

The reasons vary. While some lawyers face rigid structures and tight controls, others find the lack of structure just as disorienting. Without clear boundaries or support, decision-making can become overwhelming, and the sense of choice can fade. In both cases, too much structure or too little, the result may be the same: a diminished feeling of agency and control.

Why Do Lawyers Lack a Positive Sense of Agency?

Psychological research suggests that our sense of agency is shaped over time, and can be eroded by both environmental and internal factors. For many lawyers, this happens gradually and imperceptibly. Below are three key contributing areas:

1. Developmental Factors

Many lawyers are drawn to the profession because of strong cognitive abilities, diligence, and a desire for achievement. From an early stage, often beginning in education, success is shaped by external validation: grades, rankings, feedback, client satisfaction. Over time, this can lead to a pattern of over-adapting to external demands, rather than cultivating a clear internal compass. This can limit the development of agency, especially when perfectionism or fear of failure were central to the motivation.

2. Workplace Dynamics

In the workplace, agency is frequently challenged by:

Client expectations that dominate scheduling and decision-making,
Team structures and partnership politics that restrict independent action,
A high volume of reactive tasks, which can fragment attention and reduce intentionality.

In a workplace without a framework for prioritisation and safe collaboration even senior lawyers may begin to feel out of control.

3. Technology and Responsiveness

The ‘always-on’ nature of legal work, amplified by technology, plays a growing role in diminishing agency. Constant access to emails, messages, and digital documents can create a sense of being perpetually available, and therefore perpetually reactive. Over time, this can dull the awareness of choice, one of the foundations of agency, and reinforce the feeling that work is happening to you, not by you.

An image of black frame glasses on a notepad

Why This Deserves Attention

When agency declines, well-being and engagement often decline alongside it. Even when performance appears steady, the internal cost can be high. Lawyers may begin to feel less motivated, more anxious, or emotionally detached from themselves, others and their goals. Unlike stress or overwork, a low sense of agency can be invisible to others and even to the person experiencing it.

The good news is that agency is not fixed. It can be restored!

What Can Be Done?

Restoring a sense of agency is not a matter of simply “taking back control.” True agency is built on a set of interconnected psychological capacities and is composed of four core components:

1. Intentionality – The ability to make conscious choices about actions, responses, even thoughts. This includes the efficient use of energy and attention. For lawyers, cultivating intentionality means learning to pause before reacting, to choose where to focus, to flex attention, and to act with purpose rather than momentum.

2. Forethought – This involves being conscious of inputs: what you say yes to, what you prioritise, who you let in, what gets your attention. Lawyers who have agency over their forethought are not just busy, they are strategically engaged, able to connect their current choices to longer-term goals.

3. Self-Regulation – The capacity to manage internal states, especially under pressure. This includes recognising emotions, adjusting responses, and setting boundaries. Without self-regulation, agency becomes out of reach. With it, agency becomes available.

4. Self-Efficacy – A belief in one’s own ability to influence outcomes, grounded not only in realistic optimism, but in observed evidence. Self-efficacy is strengthened when lawyers allow themselves to acknowledge progress, to build confidence through experience, and to pursue growth that is aligned and paced correctly. It’s not about being ready for everything but being equipped for what matters most.

I’m currently conducting a survey into how law firm Partners experience agency in their work.

If you’re a Partner at a UK law firm, I would be grateful for your anonymous contribution. The survey takes under 2 minutes.

Take the survey here.

Join me for a special session on Wednesday, 24th September.

This is an opportunity to book dedicated 1:1 time with me to ask any questions you may have about sense of agency in lawyers. This could be about your own agency or facilitating better agency in your team. Book your session here.