Psychotherapy enables optimal professionalism

Mental-health support makes a lasting difference to individuals and the legal profession as a whole, a new report reveals.

Speaking at the launch of Wellbeing at the Foundation of the Legal Profession: Research and insights from a decade of trainee solicitor counselling in Ireland, (19 November), 2025/26 Law Society President Rosemarie Loftus said: “I’m so glad that the Law Society has been part of it.” 

“We need to be conscious of each other as colleagues and how we interact with each other,” the president added.

The aim of this new research is to understand more about what motivated trainee solicitors to engage with the Law Society’s Trainee Solicitor Counselling Service and how it has influenced their personal and professional lives.  

The research collates qualitative data outlining the responses of 500 of the 3000 trainee solicitors who have accessed the free counselling service over an eight-year period, between 2015 and 2023. 

Uptake currently stands at more than half of trainees. 

The findings provide fresh insight into the challenges faced by trainee solicitors and the lasting difference that mental-health support can make to individuals, their firms, and the profession as a whole.  The Trainee Solicitor Counselling Service offers six free counselling sessions to each trainee solicitor enrolled in the Professional Practice Course (PPC).

Its goal is to integrate psychological insight and wellbeing into professional life. 

The research, which used an inductive approach, aimed to assess:

• Reasons for engaging with the counselling service, 
• Impact of counselling on personal life,
• Impact of counselling on professional life..

Ruth O’Sullivan (Law Society Psychological Services) described the findings as a “large, rare, meaningful dataset in psychological terms”. 

The Psychological Services executive highlighted that, while the service was used in challenging times, “many trainees access the counselling because they are curious”.

Emotional literacy

O’Sullivan said that this “really demonstrates an early emotional literacy and willingness to learn”. 

Introducing the panel discussion, Catherine Sanz (legal affairs editor, Business Post) asked Law Society Director of Solicitor Services Antoinette Moriarty  about the broader significance of the research.

“What really stands out for me,” Moriarty said, “is that solicitors feel very connected to the work they are doing when they engage in counselling.”

Intellectual rigour

Moriarty said that, as clients, lawyers had “intellectual rigour mixed with good humour, mixed with a passion and a desire to make a change.”

She said that this made a good mix with psychotherapy “because there’s an interest in people, but there’s an analytical desire as well.”

Moriarty detailed how psychotherapy could help with difficulties that faced many practitioners – such as competitiveness, criticism, accepting limitations, and working with clients in challenging circumstances.

Counselling could enhance professional performance, she added.

Referring to global research on lawyers, O’Sullivan said: “We know that they're a high-performing bunch, and they work in complex and challenging work environments, and they're vulnerable to stress.”

This creates “a strong rationale for early and normalised supports, especially at the inception of their careers”, O’Sullivan added.

Law Society Council member Fiona McNulty (Mason Hayes & Curran) described forming the habit of accessing supports as a trainee as one with ongoing and far-reaching benefits. 

She echoed President Loftus’s remarks welcoming the removal of the stigma attached tocounselling.

Open mind

McNulty urged lawyers who had never availed of psychological supports “to keep an open mind and know that that service is out there”.

Regarding the importance of workplace support structure, McNulty discussed the importance of understanding the culture of a firm.

“The most sophisticated employee-assistance programme in the world” could not necessarily counteract instances of bullying or a consistent culture of late nights, she observed.

Firms needed to understand their own culture and also assess if help was clearly sign-posted, she continued. “If someone in the firm is in some kind of difficulty, what does help look like?”

Counsellor and qualified solicitor Barry Lee talked about improvements he had noticed.

“I'm aware of some firms and teams that actually monitor how long the person is online. They keep track and, if you're on emails at nine o'clock at night, a conversation will be had.”

Unique

Returning to the trainee counselling service, Antoinette Moriarty said it was unique and “very particular to the Law Society of Ireland,” which she described as “very committed to our community”. 

“I think there's something about the Irish legal community that really is about everybody being allowed to be their best and be themselves and be distinctively themselves,” Moriarty concluded.

“And what jumped out for me from the research is psychotherapy enables that.”

One trainee solicitor stated the counselling service offered “the opportunity to work through and deal with issues that were impacting my personal relationships”.

Another stated: “It helped me to see my strengths in a work environment so that I gained more confidence in my abilities.”