While changing jobs is traumatic enough, clearly the stress is only compounded by three months of enforced gardening leave. For many lawyers, being unable to swan about an open-plan office as if you own more than your precise equity share of the place and fire off thunderous emails to trembling underlings can induce severe withdrawal symptoms, even causing some to pursue interests outside work – surely the first sign of a complete mental breakdown.
The travails of gardening leave were brought home with particular poignancy by one general counsel at a recent meeting with a Diary spy. “It was a tough time,” he admitted, to murmurs of sympathy from said hack, whose sense of irony had itself temporarily taken a leave of absence.
