Law Firms: 12 Health and Safety Risks Outside the Office
Law firms tend to have a reasonable office risk assessment. Display screens, fire, first aid, the archive room.
The difficulty is that a substantial part of the work does not happen there. Fee earners attend client premises, courts, prisons, hospitals and people's homes, often alone, sometimes in emotionally charged circumstances, and usually without anybody in the firm knowing precisely where they are.
Those activities are part of the firm's undertaking, which means the duties travel with them. Twelve of them.
1. The duty follows the work, not the building
Start with the legal position, because it settles the scope.
Section 3 of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 requires an employer to conduct its undertaking so that persons not in its employment are not exposed to risk, and the duty to employees under section 2 is not confined to premises the firm controls.
So a solicitor attending a client's home is at work, and the firm's arrangements have to reach that far. An assessment covering only the office has assessed a minority of the exposure.
2. Client premises visits
Commercial and property work takes people to offices, industrial premises, retail units, development sites and vacant buildings.
The firm does not control those environments and cannot assess each one individually. What it can do is set the ground rules: what to ask the host in advance, what induction to expect on arrival, what personal protective equipment may be required, and the standing position that anybody may decline to enter somewhere that appears unsafe.
Regulation 11 of the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 requires employers sharing a workplace to cooperate and coordinate, which is the basis for expecting a host to brief your people.
3. Home visits
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The highest-risk category in most firms, and the least assessed.
Private client, family, probate, Court of Protection and personal injury work all take people into homes: unknown occupants, unknown animals, unknown conditions, frequently alone, and sometimes in circumstances where the visit itself is unwelcome to somebody present.
The controls are practical: an assessment of the client and circumstances before the visit, a second person where indicated, a check-in arrangement, a stated position that the fee earner may leave at any point, and a way of recording concerns that follows the matter rather than sitting in one person's memory.
4. Vacant, derelict and disputed property
Property, probate and dispute work produces visits to buildings nobody is maintaining.
These are exactly the buildings with defective flooring, no lighting, no working services, potential asbestos disturbance and sometimes unauthorised occupation. A visit to a vacant property should be treated as a different activity from a visit to an occupied one.
5. Courts, tribunals and hearing centres
Lower risk physically, and with their own features.
Long days, unpredictable finishing times, travel at either end, limited facilities, and occasionally hostile contact with opponents, defendants or their families in shared public spaces and around entrances.
The exposure that matters most is the combination of a late finish and a long drive home, which is covered below.
6. Prisons and secure settings
Criminal, immigration and prison law work brings its own rules.
The setting is controlled, which helps, and the risks are specific: searching and entry procedures, restrictions on what may be taken in, the possibility of being locked in an interview room, and contact with people who may be distressed or unwell.
Firms should be clear about what their people may and may not do alone, and about how a problem inside would be escalated.
7. Hospitals, care settings and mental health units
Common in personal injury, clinical negligence and Court of Protection work.
Infection control rules, restricted movement, distressed relatives, and clients whose capacity or condition affects the interaction. Staff should know the host's rules before arriving rather than discovering them at reception.
8. Driving and travel between
The activity with the highest statistical risk in most professional firms.
Travel to and between appointments is work, including where people use their own cars. That brings licence, insurance for business use, vehicle condition, journey planning and, above all, fatigue.
The pattern to watch is the one in point five: a hearing that overruns, followed by a two-hour drive, at the end of an early start.
9. Lone working, and whether anybody would notice
The control that ties the previous seven together.
HSE's guidance on lone working sets out the approach, and the test for a firm is uncomfortable: if somebody attending a client at four o'clock did not return or make contact, how long would it be before anybody noticed, and who would act?
For many firms the honest answer is the following morning, or whenever a colleague happened to wonder. A diary entry is not a check-in arrangement.
10. Violence, aggression and distressed clients
Foreseeable in this work, which makes it assessable.
Family breakdown, bereavement, loss of liberty, loss of a home, dismissal and litigation between neighbours or business partners all bring people to a firm at the worst point in their lives. A proportion of that arrives as aggression toward the fee earner, in person, by phone and by email.
HSE's guidance on violence at work covers verbal abuse and threats as well as assault. The controls are the ones covered elsewhere in this series: a way to summon help, a clear exit in meeting rooms, a stated right to end an interaction, and support afterwards.
From 30 October 2026 this sharpens. The Employment Rights Act 2025 introduces liability for third-party harassment of employees where the employer has not taken all reasonable steps to prevent it, covering harassment related to any relevant protected characteristic. Clients and opposing parties are third parties.
11. Deal closings, trials and sustained peak periods
The risk that affects the largest number of people.
Transaction closings, trial preparation and filing deadlines produce sustained periods of long hours, overnight working and cancelled leave. That is assessable under regulation 3, which requires assessment of risks to health, and health includes mental health.
Two specifics worth planning rather than absorbing: what happens to somebody's journey home at two in the morning, and whether the recovery period after a closing is real or theoretical.
12. Junior fee earners and trainees
The population most exposed and least able to decline.
Trainees and junior solicitors are frequently sent to the home visits, the vacant properties, the distant hearings and the overnight closings, and are the least likely to say that something felt unsafe or that they are too tired to drive.
The fix is not a policy. It is supervision, an explicit statement of what they should not do alone, and a partner who has visibly backed somebody who withdrew from a situation.
The 12, in short
| Risk | The control that matters |
|---|---|
| Duty follows the work | Assess activities, not just the office |
| Client premises | Ground rules and the right to decline entry |
| Home visits | Pre-visit assessment, check-in, right to leave |
| Vacant property | Treated as a distinct activity |
| Courts | The late finish and the drive after it |
| Prisons | Clear rules on what is done alone |
| Hospitals and care settings | Host rules known before arrival |
| Driving | Journey planning and fatigue |
| Lone working | Would anybody notice, and who acts |
| Violence | Summon help, exits, right to end contact |
| Peak periods | Journey home and real recovery |
| Juniors | Supervision and visible backing |
Rows nine and twelve are the two to test first. The first is a question with an uncomfortable answer in most firms; the second determines whether any of the other controls are actually usable by the people who need them.
What this means for the firm's arrangements
Three practical changes, none of them large.
Assess by activity. One assessment for home visits, one for site and vacant property attendance, one for secure settings, rather than a single document about the office.
Build the check-in. Something that produces an escalation when contact does not happen, with a named person on the other end. This is the single highest-value control in a professional firm and it usually costs nothing.
Make declining safe. Any control that depends on a junior fee earner overriding a client expectation will fail unless the firm has demonstrated it will support that decision.
Holding assessments, check-in arrangements and incident records in one register is where health and safety consultants and software are worth more together than either alone, and periodic health and safety audits reveal how much of the work falls outside the assessments the firm holds.
For international and multi-office firms
Two considerations.
Duties differ sharply by jurisdiction. This series has documented frameworks that prescribe appointments, documents, qualified authors and lone working provisions with no British equivalent, and psychosocial duties that reach working hours and workload directly in France, Sweden, Denmark, Australia and several Latin American jurisdictions.
Secondments and cross-border matters move people between regimes. A fee earner seconded to a client, or working for a period from another office, is covered by that jurisdiction's arrangements, not by the home firm's policy alone.
Our global health and safety consultants establish what each office requires, and our international health and safety consultants keep that current as the firm grows.
Where Arinite fits
Arinite assesses the work as it is actually done, which in a law firm means the visits, the hearings, the closings and the journeys rather than the desks. We support 1,500+ businesses across 50+ countries and protect 100,000+ employees, with 95%+ client retention over 15+ years.
Our health and safety consultants work extensively with legal, insurance and professional services organisations, and our DSE assessment and fire risk assessment work covers the office side that most firms already have in hand.
If somebody in your firm attended a client's home last week and nobody in the office knew where they were, a free gap analysis is the right place to start.
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Written by
Arinite Health & Safety Consultants
Health & Safety Expert at Arinite
