Why Don’t In-House Lawyers Want to Manage People Anymore?
Does the management role evolve? Do organisations split the obligations, mentoring programs, wellbeing leads, HR business partners, so no single person carries it all?
07th Apr 2026
1. We put a simple question to our LinkedIn network:
Has management become harder and less attractive over the past decade?
88% said yes.
Management roles were once seen as the natural next step for in-house lawyers. Today, we’re speaking with lawyers who would take a $60K pay cut just to avoid managing a team. The Australian HR Institute confirms it isn’t just in-house lawyers: 58% of HR professionals say more employees are turning down people management roles than ever before.
So what’s changed?
2. The Burnout Numbers Are Stark
According to the Australian Institute of Management, 58% of Australian managers are experiencing burnout, up from 42% in 2019. Globally, managers are 36% more likely to burn out than non-managers, and 24% more likely to be considering quitting within six months.
Managers are sandwiched between senior leadership demanding results and employees expecting support, consistently scoring lower on work-life balance than both the executives above them and the individual contributors below them. They’re being held accountable for culture problems they often didn’t create.
3. Younger Employees Expect More
This is where the burden has quietly but dramatically shifted.
Deloitte’s 2025 Gen Z and Millennial Survey (800+ Australian respondents) found these generations, set to make up 74% of the global workforce by 2030, now come to work with what Deloitte calls a “trifecta” of expectations: money, meaning, and well-being. And they expect their manager to deliver all three.
Half of Gen Zs want their manager to actively mentor and coach them. Only 36% say it happens. They want mental health support and flexibility, not as perks, but as baseline conditions. 52% of Australian Gen Zs have already left a job because it lacked purpose.
The modern manager is now expected to be an employer, career coach, mental health advocate, flexibility negotiator, and cultural custodian, all at once, on top of an often-increasingly demanding workload.
4. Then Came the Regulatory Wave
For in-house lawyers, the past two years have added a layer of legal obligation that lands squarely on managers’ desks, and that in-house counsel is expected to implement across the whole business.
Employers are now required to proactively identify and control psychosocial hazards, bullying, sexual harassment, role overload, poor management practices, as safety obligations carrying serious penalties. Positive duties mean managers can no longer simply respond to complaints. They must prevent them.
Add the right to disconnect, in force since August 2024, and managing a hybrid team across time zones and competing business demands has become a compliance minefield.
5. And the Claims Landscape Has Exploded
Mental health conditions now account for 12% of all serious workers’ compensation claims in Australia, a 161% increase over the past decade. The average psychological claim now costs over $46,000 and keeps workers off for nearly five times longer than physical injuries.
Now add AI. The Fair Work Commission received a record 44,075 lodgements in 2024–25, 24% above the five-year average. FWC President Justice Adam Hatcher addressed this directly in February 2026:
“The bottom line is that the FWC’s total workload will have increased by over 70% in three years. That this is principally caused by the increasing use of AI tools by potential litigants is, in my view, the only reasonable inference.”
— FWC President Justice Adam Hatcher, Victorian Bar Association, 18 February 2026
He demonstrated the problem himself, opening ChatGPT, entering basic facts about a dismissal, and receiving a ready-to-file application complete with a witness statement containing, in his words, “a substantially-invented story” and a suggested payout of $15,000–$40,000. It took less than 10 minutes.
Every one of those claims, regardless of merit, requires investigation, a formal response, and management time.
6. The Next Generation is Watching and Saying No
75% of Gen Z professionals now prefer to advance as individual contributors rather than take on management roles. Having seen what management involves, it’s hard to blame them.
The vicious cycle is already in motion: as experienced managers burn out or opt out, the burden falls on fewer people, making the role even less attractive to the next cohort.
7. So, Where Does This Leave Us?
The in-house lawyer taking $60K less to avoid managing isn’t irrational.
More compliance obligations. Higher legal exposure. A workforce with deeper expectations. AI-enabled claims. And fewer colleagues are willing to share the load.
The real question for organisations isn’t why their best legal talent keeps saying no, it’s what they’re prepared to do about it? Does the management role evolve? Do organisations split the obligations, mentoring programs, wellbeing leads, HR business partners, so no single person carries it all?
We’d love to hear from you: what would make you say yes to a management role again, or for the first time?
