Sustainable performance the challenge as leaders face ultimate test

In short:

• In fast-moving times, over-stretched partners and practice leaders should pay attention to self-regulation to ensure that their decisions and supervisory performance are not diminished.
• With ‘right-to-disconnect’ legislation now part and parcel of business, leaders must respond to the risks of an always-on environment and treat it as a ‘system issue’.
• Sustainable excellence for law firms will require the intentional design of work, supervision and leadership.

People management must come to the fore like never before if law firms are to deliver sustainable excellence, writes Leonie Green.

The start of 2026 has felt relentless. For many leaders, it has been a year that began at full pace and has not eased.

Client expectations are high. Regulatory scrutiny is sharper than ever. Hybrid work is embedded. AI is accelerating. Psychosocial risk is no longer theoretical – it is a very real risk to manage. Younger lawyers are making deliberate decisions about where they will, and will not, stay. All of this sits against a geopolitical backdrop that feels increasingly unstable.

In this environment, managing people is no longer a ‘soft’ function sitting adjacent to the real work. It is the work. In a profession where performance is assumed, the real leadership question for 2026 is this: how do we ensure performance is sustainable, rather than depleting, for our people and for us as leaders?

That question points us towards several critical areas of focus for leaders in 2026.

1. Put on your own oxygen mask first

In high-demand professional environments, leader self-regulation is not optional. It is foundational; we must put on our own oxygen masks first.

Partners and practice leaders who are exhausted, reactive, or constantly in urgency mode transmit that state to their teams. Decision quality drops. Feedback becomes blunt, or avoidant. Supervision narrows to task review, rather than development.

In 2026, effective leaders should:

• manage their own energy deliberately
• model boundaries without signalling disengagement
• pause before responding under pressure
• separate urgency from importance
• build reflective space into their week.

Self-management is not indulgent. It is the foundation that makes consistent supervision, fair performance management, and psychologically safe teams possible.

2. Disconnect and reconnect

The emergence of ‘right-to-disconnect’ legislation has not come out of nowhere. It reflects a broader reality – many organisations, including law firms, have not proactively managed the impact of a 24/7 connected culture. Constant accessibility has quietly become the norm.

We live and work in an always-on environment. And we know that sustained cognitive intensity without structured recovery erodes judgement, patience and decision quality.

This is not a call to lower standards or reduce responsiveness to clients. It is a call to address the system and reduce organisational risk.

Sustainable firms in 2026 are not relying on individual boundary-setting alone. They are:

• defining what genuinely requires after-hours response
• clarifying escalation pathways
• modelling senior restraint in non-urgent communications
• setting realistic turnaround expectations internally, not just externally
• treating rest and cognitive recovery as performance infrastructure, not indulgence.

Right-to-disconnect frameworks are a regulatory nudge. The real leadership task is cultural design, and system-level clarity.

If we do not address this as a system issue, we will continue to manage it as an individual resilience issue. And that is neither fair nor sustainable.

3. Focus on time capture and underpayment risk

The recent underpayment cases involving major employers such as Coles and Woolworths were not simply payroll errors. They were system-design failures.

They exposed what happens when salaried arrangements drift too far from actual hours worked, particularly when modern award or enterprise agreement coverage applies.

In law firms, the Legal Services Award applies to a defined cohort of employees, not the whole firm. But that does not limit the lesson to award employees.

The broader question is this: do our remuneration structures, billable expectations and actual working hours genuinely align?

Professional services environments often assume goodwill, ambition and professional identity will absorb pressure. Billable targets stretch. Non-billable expectations grow. Overtime becomes normalised, rather than monitored.

For award-covered employees, this may create direct compliance exposure. For others, the risk may be contractual, cultural, or reputational. In both cases, the underlying issue is the same: invisibility.

Leaders should be asking:

• Do our salaried arrangements stand up when tested against actual hours worked?
• Are billable expectations realistic within sustainable working time?
• Is overtime visible and reviewed, or simply assumed?
• Are we relying on professional goodwill to close structural gaps?

Invisible overtime creates compliance risk and sustainability risk; we need to consider what systems we use to assess and evidence our sustainable work practices.

In a profession where performance is assumed, long hours can quietly become a proxy for commitment. Sustainable performance, however, requires alignment between commercial design and human capacity. It requires deliberate system design to manage and reduce organisational risk.

The same principle applies to psychosocial risk.

4. Treat psychosocial risk as core governance

Psychosocial risk management is no longer aspirational guidance. It is an operational risk management obligation.

The guidance from the Legal Services Board + Commissioner reinforces the notion that supervision, workload, bullying prevention and support systems are core risk domains for legal practices.

In practical terms, firms should be asking, for example:

• Do we actively monitor workload peaks?
• Are supervisors trained to identify early signs of strain?
• Do we respond early to low-level conflict?
• Is performance management structured and fair?
• Do people know how to raise concerns safely?

The shift is from reactive complaint handling to proactive risk design. Psychosocial risk should be treated with the same rigour as financial or regulatory risk. That means identifying exposure points early, embedding supervision standards and reviewing workload systems before issues escalate. This is not a wellbeing initiative. It is governance.

And just as we have seen with the right to disconnect, regulatory guidance continues to expand in this space. That expansion tells us something. When organisations do not address these issues as governance matters, risk does not diminish. It accumulates.

5. Address AI anxiety and career sustainability

Just as firms are recalibrating workload, risk and sustainability, AI is reshaping how legal work itself is performed. For many leaders, the pace of change itself is becoming part of the load.

AI brings opportunity. It also brings anxiety about capability, credibility and career sustainability. Leaders are expected to guide their teams through both, often while navigating the shift themselves.

Junior lawyers worry about skill erosion. Senior lawyers worry about credibility and staying relevant. Supervisors worry about accountability for AI-assisted work.

The leadership task in 2026 is to hold both realities:

• use AI to improve efficiency and reduce low-value work
• protect deep thinking, judgement and ethical reasoning
• clarify supervision standards for AI-assisted drafting
• invest in capability, not just technology licences.

The firms that thrive will treat AI as augmentation, not outsourcing of judgement.

6. Measure your progress

The pace of change is unlikely to slow. Regulatory expectations will continue to evolve. Technology will continue to accelerate. Client demands will remain high.

The leadership challenge, then, is not to eliminate pressure. It is to design for it.

Sustainable firms are not those that simply endure intensity. They are those that deliberately align commercial ambition, governance discipline and human capacity.

Progress is not measured by how busy everyone looks. It is measured by whether high performance can be sustained without eroding judgement, culture or compliance.

Traditional metrics still matter, such as:

• revenue per partner
• billable hours
• realisation rates.

But these are lag indicators. If people leadership is strategic, we must also pay attention to leading indicators.

Leading indicators are rarely perfect measures, but they provide early signals of whether pressure is being managed or merely deferred.

Leading indicators might include:

• retention rates of high-performing lawyers beyond years two to five
• frequency of structured supervision and development conversations
• workload concerns identified and addressed before formal escalation
• partner time visibly allocated to supervision, mentoring and people leadership.

If people management is strategic, it must be measured with the same discipline as financial performance.

A final reflection

Managing lawyers in 2026 is not about lowering standards. It is about sustaining excellence.

The firms that will outperform are not those that simply push harder. They are those that design work, supervision and leadership with intentionality.

That is the leadership discipline 2026 requires.

2026 people leadership checklist for law-firm leaders

Use this quick diagnostic to help identify where to focus your efforts next.

Self-management for leaders:

• Manage energy deliberately, not just calendars.
• Model boundaries that support both client service and sustainability.
• Pause before responding under pressure.

Disconnecting for sustainability:

• Set explicit response-time expectations.
• Clearly define emergencies.
• Know that performance is measured by outcomes, not presence.
• Make sure flexibility feels fair across the team.

Workload and time:

• Set billable targets that are realistic for the role and aligned with sustainable working hours.
• Ensure that remuneration arrangements stand up when tested against actual hours worked.
• Make non-billable expectations explicit, visible and proportionate.
• Ensure overtime is monitored, not assumed, particularly for award-covered employees.
• Make sure early-career lawyers are not absorbing invisible loads to ‘prove themselves’.
• Anticipate and actively manage workload peaks, rather than leaving them to individual endurance.
• Regularly review whether commercial design and human capacity remain aligned.

Psychosocial risk:

• Recognise and address early signs of strain before they escalate.
• Address low-level conflict early.
• Actively monitor workloads.
• Ensure people know how to raise concerns safely.
• Make sure performance management is structured and documented fairly.

AI and supervision

• Have clarity about AI supervision expectations.
• Use AI to remove low-value work, not deep thinking.
• Invest in capability development alongside technology.

Leadership capability:

• Ensure partners actively participate in leadership development, coaching or mentoring.
• Make sure feedback conversations happen early, not after problems escalate.
• Measure leadership contribution as part of partner performance.

Leonie Green is the founder of Conscious Workplace, a consultancy that partners with business and law-firm leaders to align people strategy with business strategy. Leonie began her career as an employment and industrial-relations lawyer in private practice, then moved into senior corporate roles including HR director. With more than 20 years’ experience working in and with the legal industry, she is an accredited organisational coach and workplace mediator, and facilitator for the Legal Practice Management Course at the College of Law, Victoria. She can be contacted at Leonie.Green@consciousworkplace.com.au