Where high performance meets well-being.
At Seyfarth, we recognize how important the health of our people is to our continued performance as a firm.
That is why we created Seyfarth Life, our targeted effort to increase the firm’s organizational resiliency through a focus on well-being and performance. Seyfarth Life enables the firm to achieve the highest levels of client service and career satisfaction for all personnel through individual development, innovative benefits and career paths, user-friendly technology solutions, and the cultivation of strong interpersonal relationships.
We were one of the first firms to create a formal program to address the mental and physical well-being of our people. As such, Seyfarth Life is a reflection of our continuous effort to find a better way to serve our clients and each other, demonstrating the cultural underpinning of who we are and how we practice. It is a direct result of the innovative DNA of our firm.
As a leading voice in the effort to improve the emotional health and well-being of legal professionals, we are an original signatory of the American Bar Association’s Well-Being Pledge.
Seyfarth Life includes four pillars that work together to promote resiliency and the highest levels of performance across the organization.
- Individual Development. At the core of Seyfarth Life is resiliency and performance training and resources for our people. We have launched a variety of support programs to build resilience and mindfulness, including professional development help from how to “manage up” and disrupting persistent thoughts, to leading high-performance teams.
- Organizational Support. This pillar includes our existing benefits, career tracks and policies, focused on transforming the traditional career ladder model. To that end, we have created multiple attorney career tracks to suit the shifting needs of our people.
- Seyfarth Works. In a firm known for process improvement, making work easier for our people is second nature. Through this pillar, we offer coaching on efficiency and team dynamics, and human-centered technology enhancements. For example, because client service often means being on the road, we created a mobile version of our award-winning portal to make work easier everywhere.
- Internal Community Networks. We recognize that strong personal connections lead to increased career satisfaction and offer well-structured mentoring programs and support groups at every level of the firm.
Leadership
The Seyfarth Life steering committee is composed of senior leaders from both the legal and administrative sides of the firm. It includes a member of our executive committee, three office managing partners, a department chair, and chief technology, inclusion, human resources, and practice development officers. Together, they collaborate with teams across the firm to flesh out comprehensive programming and communications to further the Seyfarth Life mission.
Impact
As a truly process-driven firm, we are iterating and improving on Seyfarth Life in real-time. Our ever-growing list of programs, initiatives, and benefits includes:
- The Inspiration Project, a yearly scholarship for six of our people to pursue a dream project focused on health, wellness, lifelong learning, or community development.
- Identification and activation of ambassadors in each office who offer real-time feedback to leadership on morale, resiliency and engagement of our people.
- Mindfulness sessions featuring internationally-recognized speakers and best-selling authors.
- Resiliency training and coaching with 73% of participants reporting improved well-being.
- A commissioned study that showed a practice of mindfulness caused:
- Job effectiveness to increase by 6.15%
- Depression to decrease by 28.84%
- Anxiety to decrease by 30.29%
- Stress to decrease by 32.45%.
- Meditation and mindfulness programming at partner meetings, as well as other activities designed to increase connection of our partners with one another.
- A national book club conversation about the effect of meditation/mindfulness on anxiety in the legal profession.
With these steps, Seyfarth Life is having a long-lasting positive effect on our people, our clients, and our firm’s resiliency.