The Unique Dynamics of Drinking Cultures Among Lawyers: Interview with Dr Nyssa Ferguson

If one walks through the central business district in any major Australian city after 5 pm on a Thursday, one notes that the area’s drinking establishments are packed with office workers, knocking back a few alcoholic drinks with colleagues, discussing their weekly woes, as well as the prospects for the weekend ahead.

Work drinks are a tradition in most Australian workplaces. Afterhours drinks are understood to be a time when staff can leave the rigid behaviours of their places of work behind, and in letting down their hair, go on to forge stronger bonds and relationships with colleagues that ultimately build a greater comradery amongst them.

Afterhours workplace drinking cultures, however, have come under increased scrutiny over recent decades, due to greater awareness around the dangers of excessive drinking.

Indeed, dangerous afterhours drinking practices developed in all capital cities during the war years, as over that time, pubs and hotels closed their doors at 6 pm, which led to those finishing work at 5 pm to rush down to the public bar to sink as many alcoholic beverages as possible prior to 6 o’clock closing.

This practice became known as the six o’clock swill and early closing was imposed upon NSW from 1916 until 1955.

But after years of warnings about the harms of excessive drinking, the pendulum is starting to swing back, as society in general has tempered its alcohol consumption practices, and the benefits of the camaraderie forged amongst colleagues at the pub afterhours are once again being acknowledged.

Drinking culture among lawyers

La Trobe and Monash universities are currently conducting research into drinking cultures amongst Australian lawyers. And in order to garner a greater perspective as to what barristers and solicitors are up to afterhours, the tertiary institutions are conducting a quick 20 minute anonymous survey.

The researchers explain that by drinking culture, they “simply mean the ways a group of people drink alcoholic beverages together, including their shared understandings of social norms, meanings and practices around drinking and what is and what is not socially acceptable for the group when they are drinking together”.

The survey has been designed to provide a greater understanding of the meanings and settings that are involved in the drinking cultures amongst lawyers, any benefits or problems that lawyers may experience due to these cultures, along with identifying opportunities to promote health in these circumstances.

Sydney Criminal Lawyers spoke to La Trobe School of Psychology and Public Health research officer Dr Nyssa Ferguson about the reasons why lawyer drinking culture is of interest, that researchers are not necessarily focused on any particular drinking problems and the fact that these drinking cultures may be beneficial in building stronger relationships between coworkers.

A joint research project involving La Trobe and Monash universities is currently underway examining the unique dynamics of drinking cultures among Australian lawyers.

In order to gather data in regard to this issue, the research team is currently inviting legal professionals to fill out a 20 minute anonymous survey.

Nyssa, you’re a research officer at the La Trobe School of Psychology and Public Health, so why is there this interest in the drinking cultures of lawyers?

I’ll begin by emphasising that our interest in studying the drinking cultures of lawyers is not because we think there are particular problems associated with alcohol consumption among lawyers.

Our study is actually prompted by a broader interest in understanding drinking cultures in the social worlds of occupational groups.

Research suggests that occupational collective drinking offers important opportunities to socialise with coworkers, debrief about work, relax and build social and strategic relationships, but it may also result in negative outcomes for workers who drink too much, say the wrong thing, or engage in regrettable behaviour.

Drinking alcohol is often a social activity – done in the company of others – and we are interested in how the collective activities involved in drinking together with colleagues, and the norms and meanings around drinking that are shared within occupational groups might support or encourage both negative and positive encounters with alcohol.

There are many occupational groups we could have chosen for our study.

We selected lawyers mainly because they generally have a strong occupational identity and often work in teams and collective drinking, in the form of afterwork drinks, networking, informal get-togethers, celebrations, liaising with clients and so on, seems to be an important element in their repertoire of occupational activities.

It has also been suggested that workplace cultures and practices, including profit-driven stressors, long hours of work and alcohol-related reward practices, may considerably influence drinking among lawyers.

In terms of ‘drinking cultures’, you note that this means more than simply knocking back a few, but rather it includes shared understandings around social norms, meanings and practices involved in people drinking together, and in this case, lawyers drinking together.

Can you elaborate further on the sorts of norms and practices that you might be observing in the case of lawyers, and why it might be important to understand these?

When we talk about ‘drinking cultures’, we mean the ways a group of people drink together, their shared understandings of the meanings of drinking, their shared practices when drinking together and so on.

Drinking culture should not be understood as only meaning heavy drinking. Drinking cultures are highly variable.

For example, among some groups, the usual practice might be to buy a jug of beer to share, while among other groups the accepted practice is for each member to buy their own drink.

Some groups might support the consumption of large quantities of alcohol during a drinking event, while other groups might support only drinking a small amount of alcohol.

All of these reflect drinking cultures in terms of shared understandings and practices of drinking alcohol together.

In examining ‘norms and practices’ of drinking among lawyers who engage in occupational collective drinking, we are interested in learning about the ways they drink together: what they drink, do they buy in rounds, what are usual quantities consumed, what are the situations in which they drink collectively – afterwork drinks, celebrations, etc – and also, what it means to them, what purpose it serves, what benefits do they derive, and what, if any, problems they see as arising from drinking.

We think it is important to gather nuanced, in-depth information about drinking cultures among lawyers in order to understand potential benefits of drinking together with colleagues and also to understand the practices lawyers themselves engage in to reduce any potential problems that might be experienced during collective drinking events – so the local harm reduction strategies and care practices that lawyers themselves may have developed.

You further outline that drinking cultures amongst occupational groups is an important area because most Australians spend much of their time in working environments interacting with colleagues.

So, in your assessment so far, does active participation in an afterhours work drinking culture bring with it benefits to the workplace or can it cause problems?

We are still in the process of collecting and analysing data so we can’t provide final findings at this stage.

Some preliminary analyses of data we gathered through our qualitative interviews have highlighted the important role that alcohol plays in the workplace among some of the lawyers we spoke with.

Our participants have told us that drinking together with colleagues affords opportunities to better know colleagues, debrief and relax and thereby strengthen workplace relations.

Some participants have also described how these benefits can sometimes sit in tension with their concerns around maintaining professionalism, as well as broader ideas around health and wellbeing – these are areas we will be examining further through our workforce survey.

Another aspect of what the survey might provide a clearer picture of is in relation to identifying “opportunities to promote positive encounters with alcohol”, so would this infer a response to current drinking habits amongst lawyers that might be problematic and how might that be countered?

As noted, our study does not assume that all alcohol consumption among lawyers is problematic. Indeed, from the limited research that is available, the majority of lawyers engage in drinking practices without harmful consequences.

Across Australia, workplaces and managers are, appropriately, concerned with worker wellbeing.

Such concern is readily apparent within the legal profession, with discussions evident in industry journals and magazines and law associations also discussing concerns with lawyer wellbeing.

In line with this, there is also a growing trend of identifying alcohol consumption as negatively impacting on lawyers’ – and other workers’ – wellbeing.

Alcohol consumption is increasingly framed as inherently harmful and something to be substantially reduced if not ceased altogether.

We argue, however, that these ideas are not grounded in strong empirical evidence and that they obscure potential benefits drinking together with colleagues might provide for lawyers.

We hope that by gathering information directly from lawyers about the place of alcohol in their occupational lives, our study can inform policy making in more targeted and meaningful ways.

For example, if lawyers themselves do identify problems with alcohol consumption during collective drinking events, workplace polices might be aimed at shifting norms to disrupt any potentially harmful practices, or, importantly, to strengthen harm reduction and care practices already being enacted by some groups of lawyers when they drink with their workplace colleagues.

Overall, our research aims to generate nuanced in-depth information on the role of alcohol and drinking together with colleagues among lawyers.

We consider that nuanced information is essential in order to inform policies and strategies aimed at supporting lawyer health and wellbeing, in ways that are meaningful to lawyers themselves and that do not risk denying lawyers any pleasures or other benefits that collective drinking may afford.

And lastly, Nyssa, how do legal professionals willing to lend a hand access the survey? How long have they got to fill it out?

We would love to hear from lawyers who are keen to share their perspectives on these issues. The survey, which is now live, closes on 31 March.

The survey can be accessed here.