Running on Coffee and Deadlines

Why IP teams never switch off

One of the biggest issues is that people in IP never really switch off. Even when the laptop is closed, the brain usually isn’t. There’s always a deadline approaching, an email waiting for a response, instructions you’re chasing, a filing you hope went through correctly, or a small nagging feeling that you might have forgotten something important.

The work follows people home because the consequences of mistakes can feel huge, and that creates a culture where people are permanently half-working, even in their downtime.

I think a lot of people outside the profession underestimate how mentally consuming IP work can be. A filing isn’t just a filing. A deadline isn’t just a date in a calendar. Every task carries responsibility behind it, whether that’s protecting a client’s rights, coordinating with foreign associates, managing formalities across multiple jurisdictions or simply trying to keep dozens of moving parts under control at once. It requires constant attention to detail, and that level of concentration all day, every day, is tiring in a way that’s difficult to explain unless you’ve worked in it yourself.

The problem is made worse by the fact that most IP professionals are very good at coping. The industry attracts conscientious people who are reliable, organised, and calm under pressure. The downside is that those same people tend to push themselves too far before admitting they’re struggling. It becomes normal to answer emails late at night, check Teams messages during dinner, or “quickly log on” during annual leave because something urgent has come in.

Clients want immediate responses, workloads continue growing, and technology means people are reachable all the time. Hybrid working has brought a lot of positives, but it has also removed what little separation many people had between work and home life.

There used to be a clearer end to the day. Now it’s incredibly easy for work to quietly spill into evenings and weekends without anyone even noticing it happening.

From personal experience, I think burnout in IP often builds very slowly. It starts with skipping lunch because you’re busy, then checking emails before bed, then feeling anxious when you’re offline for too long. Eventually, constant stress starts to feel normal. You stop noticing how mentally drained you are because everyone around you seems just as busy and overwhelmed or sometimes you think needing a break means you can't handle the world of IP.

There’s also a strange guilt that exists in professional industries like IP. Many people genuinely enjoy the work and appreciate the opportunities the profession provides, so they feel they shouldn’t complain. But enjoying your career doesn’t stop you from burning out. If anything, caring deeply about your work can make it harder to set boundaries because you always want to do a good job.

The good news is that the industry is starting to talk about this more openly. Firms are paying more attention to wellbeing, workload management, and flexible working, and AI and automation may eventually help reduce some of the repetitive admin pressure that takes up so much mental energy. But technology alone won’t solve the problem if the culture stays the same.

IP teams need space to switch off properly without feeling guilty for it. Because no matter how experienced or capable someone is, nobody can operate permanently in “urgent mode” forever.

And I think that’s the reality many people in the profession are finally starting to acknowledge: burnout in IP doesn’t happen because people are weak or incapable. It happens because the work is mentally demanding, the pressure is constant, and somewhere along the way, many of us forgot how to stop working even when the day is technically over.

But culturally, the profession still has a habit of treating permanent stress as professionalism. And maybe it’s time we admitted something as an industry:

If your entire workforce is answering emails while on holiday, waking up and going to sleep thinking about deadlines, and describing a “quiet week” as only having 120 unread emails…

…people might be just a tiny bit burnt out.