After 25 years inside the legal machine—as a corporate lawyer, partner-level recruiter and now certified health & wellness coach—Anne-Marie Goodbody knows exactly how high performance can slide into burnout. In a recent Inside Practice interview, she shared her personal collapse in 2009—diagnosed as ME/chronic-fatigue syndrome after literally “falling to the floor” at work—and how that year-long recovery reshaped her mission: helping lawyers build energy, resilience and sustainable peak performance.
Goodbody says burnout is “no longer rare; it’s embedded in the culture of law,” with junior associates and business-services teams now showing symptoms earlier in their careers. While firms have raced to roll out wellbeing policies, a yawning “awareness-to-action gap” remains, often compounded by persistent stigma around admitting struggle.
The solution? Move beyond the old “push through” definition of resilience and adopt an energy-management mindset. Goodbody will unpack practical micro-rituals—balancing blood sugar, two-minute nervous-system resets between calls, sleep hygiene—that lawyers can weave into packed diaries without adding yet another task to the to-do list.
Delegates at Legal Wellbeing: London (11 September 2025) can expect an honest dialogue about what’s working, where culture still lags, and concrete steps to protect individual health and firm profitability alike. “Burnout isn’t failure,” she insists. “It’s a system breakdown we can prevent.”
Ready to future-proof your practice? Join Ann-Marie and a cross-sector faculty at Clyde & Co’s London HQ this September and turn energy into your firm’s competitive edge. Click here to learn more.
