Tracking Well-being in a Major Business Law Firm under covid-19 (launched, April 2020) 

Extended firm-wide distance working is an unprecedented change in the operations in business law firms. This study will track the continuous impact of distance working on the work force in a firm. 

Design:  

• IT based survey
• assessing well-being and social support, which are correlated with seniority, position, and practice group

Impact of Imposed Remote Working in a Law firm due to the Covid-19 virus – a qualitative study (concluded, April 2020) 

Design of the study:

•  research interviews
• broad representation of participants  encompassing all positions and seniority, from associates to partners, from lawyers to support staff
• correlating findings with previous quantitative research

Leadership in Professional Services (launched May, 2020)

Despite the distinctiveness of professional service firms, very little academic research has been conducted on leadership in the sector. This study seeks to explore several under-researched aspects of this particular type of leadership.

• Which leadership is most effective in leading associates in professional services?

• Which leadership skills are most requested by associates?

• How can leaders be trained more effectively?

• What is the best leadership strategy to manage insecure overachievers?

The Resilient Associate Project (Fall 2019-)

To identify personality trait/s that accurately can predict resilience in lawyers.

• Perfectionism is a prominent and important trait in both law students and lawyers, and current research differentiates between adaptive and maladaptive perfectionism. By considering this factor in recruiting the following parameters could hypothetically be substantially improved in the firm without any other intervention: 

Phase I (concluded): 250+ associates in three major Swedish business law firms. 

Research Review of the Effects of Corporate Mindfulness in Law firms

Evaluate outcomes of mindfulness in law firms in general, and Potential Project’s corporate mindfulness program in particular. 

Levelling the playing field for female lawyers in law firms and assessing stress in associates (Fall 2019, concluded). 

Identifying the factors that could explain why female company lawyers report thirty percent more stress than their male colleagues. 350+ participants in two law firms. 

• Increased understanding of stress in associates.
• Decreased staff turnover among female associates.
• A model for understanding differences in stress between male and female associates
• An actionable road map for increasing the proportion of female partners in law firms.

Quantitative assessment of stress in inhouse lawyers (2019) in collaboration with the Swedish Company Lawyers’ Association (concluded). 

• Analysis of surveys of 250+ corporate counsels.

International study of inhouse lawyers in collaboration with Thomson Reuters (Spring 2020): gender based patterns of stress (concluded).  

• Survey to be distributed to 30.000+ in-house lawyers. 

Assessing sexual harassment and discrimination based on gender in firms (Fall 2017-ongoing). 

• 600+ participants. 
• Developed a survey that maps harassment and discrimination based on gender in among legal workers.
• Assessed frequency and type of harassment and discrimination in Swedish law firms.

National study of Swedish lawyers: stress and efficacy factors (2017, concluded).

• 1800+ participants. 
• Identified new, or underestimated factors, or efficacy and well-being: leadership and capacity for focus. 
• Analyzed changes in Swedish lawyers between 2005-2017 quantitively as well qualitatively.
• Analyzed the impact of IT on lawyers in the past decade.