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"Be brave
Ride the rear"
Have you ever been thrown off by a horse? Yes by the horse. I am not talking about losing your balance or the horse stumbling. I mean when the horse deliberately decides to do what it takes to get you off its back.
Why would it want to do this? There are several possibilities. It could be that the horse is in back pain and needs relief from your added weight. Or perhaps it gets a sudden fright and wants to escape, galloping off.
Alternatively you have applied too much pressure and it activates its basic need to resist this pressure. A horse will usually provide clues, for example it may stop, plant it front feet and refuse to walk on. If you apply more pressure, demanding it walk on, it may buck or rear, either way probably dislodging you from its back. And depending on the exertion applied you may find yourself heading off to your nearest emergency department. As I did after the incident below.
Horses are honest. They offer timely direct feedback. You know where you stand with them. I prefer the role of horse rider to wrestling with the irrational behaviour of many legal workplaces I have encountered in my 5 decades in the law. Where I have been
unceremoniously dumped by organisational leaders who resist the pressure of listening to the uncomfortable truths I have the insight and skills to share with them. Much easier to simply buck me off and out of their organisation.
After 5 decades of picking myself up, dusting myself off and sometimes paying the price of having to get well again I have decided to play a different game.
Lawyers proudly hold their legal work out as logical and rational and ethical. However applying one of the definitions of irrational as, in part, constituting unreasonable, it is my contention that legal workplaces, based on their reluctance to listen and learn from productive reflection and feedback, are often unreasonable workplaces.
Applying this premise, that legal workplaces can be unreasonable and therefore irrational workplaces it follows that some legal workplaces might also be unsafe places to work. Where an organisation is unwilling to understand and then acknowledge what is actually happening in its workplace, with regard to unacceptable behaviour such as bullying and coercive control, then it becomes an unsafe workplace. And potentially a workplace with a fake caring culture.
The Respect@Work Standards
What do I mean by unreasonable behaviour? Specifically I am referring to resisting organisational cultural change to implement the steps required to ensure organisational readiness to meet the 7 standards. These are:
1. Leadership Understand your Respect@Work obligations and have up-to-date knowledge about relevant unlawful conduct
2. Culture Foster a culture that is safe, respectful and inclusive and values diversity and gender equality
3. Knowledge
4. Risk management
5. Support
6. Reporting and response
7. Monitoring, evaluation and transparency.
How do I know this to be true?
Because when I researched how lawyers learn to manage and lead in legal workplaces at Doctorate level there was no interest shown by any part of the legal sector. And when this research included a finding about the nature of Legal Working Culture and how recognition of this phenomenon could assist in ensuring safe respectful inclusive work cultures again there was no interest. And little engagement.
And no one listened. Or engaged. Irrational behaviour? If you see value in the knowing organisation as proposed by Choo (1998) then you bet. Dangerous to the health and wellbeing of individual lawyers and other working in the organisation? Definitely. A risk to equity and diversity? And to the present strategic initiatives in Victoria. What do you think?
Dr. Deborah Hann
1 March 2025
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