TikTok Famous Lawyer: The Brutal Reality of Big Law (Why I Finally Quit) | Henry Nelson-Case

Lawyer Unleashed

Henry Nelson-Case shares his harrowing experience in a toxic City law firm where he faced relentless bullying from an equity partner, severe anxiety, and burnout, ultimately leading him to quit

Key takeaways

• Henry Nelson-Case experienced severe workplace bullying from an equity partner at one year PQE, resulting in crying in office toilets, vomiting from anxiety, and eventual burnout.
• Lawcare reports indicate nearly 70% of lawyers experience mental ill health annually, with men significantly underreporting struggles due to stigma around vulnerability.

Main topics

• Mental health crisis in the legal profession
• Toxic workplace culture and equity partner bullying

Notable quotes

You don't have to be a dick to be successful. You can be nice and you will still do really well.

Conclusion

The episode underscores the urgent need for systemic cultural reform in law

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:00) I was told things like, oh, you don't have a brain, like, are you stupid? Cried quite a few times during the day, threw up during the day. I left that role, inevitably, because I thought, I just don't want to do that anymore. And then after that, that's when I started making content. You've got, Speaker 1 (0:14) what, 350,000 people following you across all the different platforms. Speaker 2 (0:18) I messaged them, that's the line from TikTok, I thought. Hi lads, that's me. You just want to be an influencer, you don't want to be a lawyer. It got really aggressive. It Speaker 1 (0:26) hit the headlines, didn't it? Speaker 2 (0:27) You don't have to be a dick to be successful. You can be nice and you will still do really well. Speaker 1 (0:33) On paper, Henry Nelson Case had the dream law career. The reality was very different. He worked in toxic cultures that had him crying in the office toilets, throwing up from anxiety and being told by a partner that he was stupid. Then he did the unexpected. He started creating content about the hidden realities of working life and soon realised he wasn't alone. Today he has a global audience of over 350,000, has interviewed A-list movie stars, delivered a TEDx talk and become a role model for an entire generation. Henry Pruve's a law career doesn't have to box you in. It can open a million doors. Speaker 1 (1:19) So Henry, I want to start with the topic of mental ill health in law. We've got some really shocking stats. Nearly seven in 10 lawyers experienced mental ill health in the last year. Six in 10 legal professionals have poor mental well-being and half of lawyers regularly experience anxiety. How have we got into this mess? Speaker 2 (1:42) I mean, I'm not shocked by those figures. There's been reports out by Lawcare and other organisations that have kind of spoken about this, but the pressures of billing, time recording, client demands, salaries that NQs are being paid and the work that they have to output as a result. of that and just the sort of fiercely competitive nature of the industry. Those stats are unsurprising. And as we've seen, like in the legal press of recent times, that the result of that is ultimately that lawyers are burning out. They're having to take time off. They're leaving the profession. And ultimately, some of them are taking their own lives because it's become that much of a stress for them. Speaker 1 (2:27) It's really, really harrowing, isn't it? When you read those stories of the lawyers, for example, who have taken their lives. And the thing that really gets me every time is I think almost that could have been me. Not saying I was near that point, but when you look at their workload, you look at their stress and you think, actually, they're not that different. from many lawyers out there. It's not like they're the anomaly in terms of what they're going through. Speaker 2 (2:53) Exactly. And I think one of the things with the legal profession, my own personal experience was the fact that when I was a junior and I was struggling with sort of the anxiety, the stress and approaching burnout, is that you think that you are the only person going through it. And everyone else in the office is walking around and they look like they have it all together when actually those stats and when you start talking to other people. you realize that that isn't the case. If we take the most recent unfortunate story of the lady from, I believe it was Pins and Masons, who sadly took her own life. She was a partner. One of the stats around that was that, or one of the bits of information around that, was that she was reportedly working 18-hour days back-to-back for a prolonged period of time. 18-hour days is 24 hours in a day. So what that gave us, six hours. left for the rest of the day to look after children to eat to sleep that's not sustainable and if your organization for whatever reason is allowing that and there have been no checks no balances nothing to say oh that's a bit excessive why don't you take a a day off why don't you um accumulate whatever it may be there are things that like measures that can be put in place to stop that and then if you're paying juniors in the city 110 120 grand a year they are going to think, well, they're expected to work long hours. And these are 25, 26-year-olds that perhaps have never worked before. And suddenly they're being worked all of these hours to earn this salary. That's going to take a huge, huge toll on their mental well-being. And when you can't, if you're not... again used to like that's a huge salary for someone to have at that age you then get all of the financial pressures that come with that you've suddenly got access to money you've perhaps not had before and then in turn that can become you could start drinking more because you need to cope you could start substance abuse there are so many impacts or roll-on effects that kind of come with the stress of working as a lawyer and Speaker 1 (4:55) talking of the high salaries i saw a post on instagram that really troubled me the other day. It was actually in the US. This person has a reasonably big following and they were saying, I made it into big law, I got rich, and now they've created this framework for how other people can get into big law and also get rich. Now, I'm not saying I've got no problem with anyone wanting to earn any amount of money. That's their business and it's up to them. And I think we should be abundant in this lifetime. At the same time, there was nothing about... Do this because you're passionate about it. Here's actually what this job entails. It was almost like one of those cheap sales packages, you know, and they're like, oh, I'll teach you how to get to this point. And the comments were really excited young people saying, yes, I want this. Yes, I want to buy my parents a house. Yes, I want financial freedom. But there was nothing about the whole story on there. Speaker 2 (5:52) And Speaker 1 (5:52) I find that deeply disturbing. Speaker 2 (5:55) Well, I think firstly, is anyone actually that passionate about completing mergers and acquisitions? Probably not. Speaker 1 (6:01) We'll get some backlash for that one. All the M &A lawyers. Speaker 2 (6:04) That's so funny. But I think ultimately, it's the point around that the legal profession is largely glamorized on social media. You see the compilations of people going into the office in expensive clothes, they go into their offices, canary wharf, wherever it may be, drinking expensive coffees, going to Sushi Samba. for their dinners, whatever it may be. And I think young people are obviously impressionable and think, I want that lifestyle. I want to live like that. I want that high figure salary, X, Y, and Z. I guess there's a whole side point, spin-off narrative of is working X amount of hours a week for X salary, actually financial freedom. Who knows? Because if you lose the job, what have you built around that? Have you been smart with your investments? I don't know, but that's a side issue. I think the profession, as I mentioned, is over glamorized. So that's almost a lifestyle that kind of people are sort of being sold and think, yeah, I want that. And then you obviously get the big mortgage. If you have kids, you might want to put them into a fee paying school. Then you suddenly get all of these responsibilities that if you then subsequently. lost said role you've got to almost stay on that wheel because you can't afford to risk losing it which I think does create added pressure for so many people. Speaker 1 (7:28) It's the golden handcuffs isn't it? Speaker 2 (7:30) Exactly that yeah. And Speaker 1 (7:31) it only gets harder harder and harder because I think when you Speaker 2 (7:36) went up to partner level didn't you so that must have been quite like a shift for you. Speaker 1 (7:41) Do you know what's strange, though? I don't think I didn't earn as much as I think a lot of people think that I did. I mean, I think partner comes in many shapes and many forms. And I was also working part time. Now, don't get me wrong. I wasn't hard up. I'm not trying to say that. Speaker 2 (7:54) Oh, my God. Poor me. Speaker 1 (7:56) I was a partner and I didn't earn enough money. I'm going to get such Speaker 2 (8:00) backlash. But no, Speaker 1 (8:01) that is not true, people. That is not true. That's not what I'm saying. But what I'm saying is it wasn't a life changing amount. Yeah. Speaker 2 (8:07) And Speaker 1 (8:07) it wasn't. ridiculous amounts more than my senior associate salary. Not really. And I think this is where there's sort of a bit of a misnomer around partnership because you can have the sort of salaried partners who are the more junior partners all the way up to the top equity who might be on millions. But actually you've all got the partnership badge and there's a lot in between. Speaker 2 (8:28) But Speaker 1 (8:29) going back to your point for a moment on the influencers who are perhaps over glamorising the profession. I used to get so angry about this because a few years back, I'd be there on my Instagram sitting in the office or whatever it was. And you'd see these day in the life trainee videos where there's swimming pools and, oh, I'm having a coffee and I'm having a chat and look at me, I'm going home at six and I might log on for half an hour. And I was thinking. Speaker 1 (8:59) Love. The reality of the magic circle is not that, Speaker 2 (9:05) is Speaker 1 (9:06) not that. And there is nothing wrong with it being hard work. But I think it's a really dangerous position we're in if we're selling the wrong story about law. Would you agree with that? Speaker 2 (9:20) Yeah. And I think that's probably why I've been quite open around the... kind of content that I showcase in the legal profession in a sense that arguably it's the polar opposite. It's a bit more, I don't want to say the realities because everybody, everyone's reality in the profession is different, but it's more around the wellbeing side. And the reason I built the platform was because I was struggling myself with my sort of mental health within the legal profession. It was hard. Speaker 2 (9:55) And I kind of struggled. So to me, it was never like glamorous or like fancy. And like in my immediate family, I'm the other than my girlfriend, I'm the only lawyer. I don't come from like stacks of money. So I was never kind of aware of what like the legal world, what was like in a sense. So I'd never really had. anything to compare it to other than like an episode of suits and as cool as that was I was kind of like oh I don't think my um like firm is gonna it wasn't reflective of that and I also qualified at a time 2018 when day in the lives of law firms weren't necessarily as kind of prominent so I wasn't seeing on my kind of everyday And yeah, it just was never my reality, actually. My reality was quite the stark contrast of crying in a bathroom and throwing up with anxiety, which I can laugh at now. But obviously, that was an awful time for me. It's allowed me to, well, it was a really, I would say, scary time as well, because I didn't necessarily, I didn't know what the term burnout was at the time. um aware of what anxiety was because I didn't see other people talking about it and I think particularly as well as a man it's not something you necessarily um speak around either and that was just my existence in that time Speaker 1 (11:28) And that's really harrowing, isn't it? That idea of crying, throwing up in the toilets. And what I'm noticing in myself, as you tell me that, I can feel the kind of shock factor of, oh my gosh, that's awful. At the same time, I'm almost noticing, and this is awful to say, I've heard that story in different variations so many times, it's almost like on some level I have a numbness to it. It's like I can hear you and go, Henry, that's awful. Do Speaker 2 (11:59) you find as well, when you would tell something like that to your lawyer friends, they'd be like, lol, me too. But when you tell it to your non-lawyer friends, like, that's disgusting. How is that allowed to happen? Why can't you just log off at 6.30? Why do you keep cancelling your plans? But I think it's just become so normalised within the profession. And when I posted, apologies for talking over you,