What is work/life balance? Take the long-term view.

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I was talking with someone recently about finding balance, and she had some interesting comments.  In essence, she’s stressed out about meeting her responsibilities in the various areas of her life, and she feels guilt on top of that stress because she’s out of “balance.”  Easy to understand, since we’re all supposed to be in balance these days.  But, what is balance?  More specifically, what is work/life balance?

We talk about balance as if it’s a concrete object or a well-defined state of being.  People ask, “Am I in balance,” much as a woman might wonder whether she’s pregnant.  Yes or no.  I think that view is limited, limiting, and essentially unhelpful.

Balance is better understood as flow, in my opinion.  For instance, I’m building my business right now.  It’s been my full-time occupation for about six months, and I’ve spent a disproportionate amount of time during that six months on my business.  Since I’ve made the choice to pass up a variety of recreational activities — everything from going to the movies to taking a spa vacation with a friend — it would be easy to conclude that I’m “out of balance.”

As I look at it, though, I’m working to create something.  That takes a lot of time, effort, and energy.  But once it’s created and sustainable, I’ll be able to refocus some of my energy elsewhere.  There’s a tipping point that divides creation from existence; Newton’s First Law tells us that objects in motion tend to stay in motion; and so once I am satisfied that my business is ticking along on its own, I’ll be able to shift the creative energy from that endeavor to something else — probably R&R for a while.  I’ve identified that point, so I know what I’m looking for, and when I get there chances are good that my work time will decrease somewhat, to a maintenance/slow growth level as opposed to creation.

The same is true for a lawyer who’s in trial, who’s preparing SEC filings, who’s working to get a big deal closed.  It isn’t reasonable to say that we’ll work only X number of hours a day, no matter what — at least, not if we seek to be responsible professionals.  At times, we need a period of (relatively) short-term extreme productivity, sustained by adequate self-care and followed by a period of replenishment.

I advocate using an Absolute Yes list to ensure balance.  List your top 3-5 priorities for whatever amount of time you choose.  I like to copy the list and put in places where I’ll see it frequently: in my calendar, taped to my visor in my car, in a desk drawer, etc.  The list serves two functions.  First, when a decision comes up, if the activity I’m considering doesn’t serve one of my Absolute Yes items, that means it’s almost certainly a NO, and I’ll pass.  And second, the list reminds me to pay some attention to each priority.  If I’ve gone too long — a few days, a week — without touching on one of my listed priorities, I make a special effort to include something related to that priority in my schedule.

With this system, balance is measured over the space of days and weeks, not in 24-hour blocks.  It’s also a recognition that if a particular work-related item is the top priority, it’s ok for that item to take the lion’s share of time for a while.  Although I’d love to suggest that we should all balance our work/family/self-care responsibilities each and every day, that’s just a recipe for frustration for most professionals.  Take the long-term view instead.

Associates want communication from law firms; who’s responsible for professional development?

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A recent survey by the American Lawyer (no longer available) indicates that law firm associates are frustrated by the perceived lack of communication from law firm partners and management.  Problem topics include everything from finances to an associate’s development and advancement to the context for assignments.

Clearly, some firms have more problems with communication than others, as indicated by one associate’s plea just to be notified when new lawyers join the firm, something that is routine at most firms.

Three paragraphs stuck out to me:

If partners are too busy to critique the day-to-day work of their younger colleagues, then they’re even less likely to offer advice on career development, associates say. Associates who aggressively seek out this advice can find an unreceptive audience. One Proskauer Rose midlevel brought to her last semiannual review a wish list that included requests for more writing and deposition experience and a mentor for business development skills.

“They kind of laughed and said, ‘You shouldn’t be worried about [these things]’ at my level. It was frustrating: It was like talking to dead air,” she says.

That kind of response seems to exacerbate the us-versus-them mentality at firms. “Partners don’t care about our development as long as we keep billing the hours expected; much like the printers and the computers, the associates just serve a function,” grumbles another Proskauer associate. Proskauer chairman Fagin says he’s aware of and concerned about these complaints: “The fact that any of our associates feel that way is something that is troublesome to us,” he says.

This thread is partially a return to some topics I’ve recently discussed, so I won’t harp on those.  But a new thread emerges: who’s responsible for an associate’s professional development?

I had a conversation with a 2nd year associate recently, in which he conveyed his concern that other associates at his level were advancing more quickly than he was.  We explored that worry, and I agreed that it seemed to be true based on the facts he told me.  So I asked how he would like to develop his practice.  “Practice?”   He laughed.  “I don’t need to develop a practice, I already work in a law firm!”  Although perhaps that way of thinking would have carried the day in years past (perhaps), it certainly won’t suffice now.  Whereas firms used to hire associates and provide mentoring, expecting to grow them into partners, today’s partners are (for the most part) simply too busy to take new lawyers under their wing.

The path of least resistance now is to accept the work that comes, maybe to ask for work in a particular area, but essentially to be a worker bee.  That doesn’t cut it.  Instead, young associates need to focus on collecting the skills they need to develop the practice they want.  I hope this will seem so obvious as to be silly to many readers, but a lawyer has his own practice whether he’s an associate with the largest firm or a sole pracitioner.  It’s the lawyer’s responsibility to ensure that his practice is developing as he wants it to (i.e., don’t sit quietly by and take real estate matter after real estate matter if you really want to do securities work) and to go after the experiences and skills that will permit that development to continue.

How does a young associate manage to accomplish this?  She needs a mentor, a collaborator, someone who can provide guidance and request accountability.  A professional mentor is ideal, as is a coach who is experienced in practice.  (While coaches who are not lawyers can serve well for certain needs, it’s my bias — perhaps as a former practitioner myself — that a non-lawyer coach is less useful for this kind of task.  Your mileage may vary.)

Who’s working to help you succeed in your professional development?