More on work/life balance… Is it just a fad?

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I’ve run across two interesting blog posts recently that cast work/life balance as a fad or misnomer rather than as something that’s important to lawyers.

First, a recent post (no longer available) on Bruce MacEwen’s Adam Smith, Esq. blog quotes a 10-year old McKinsey study that places “acceptable pace and stress” as an important contributor to job satisfaction for only 1% of executives.  Here are the full stats cited for important contributors:

* firm’s values and culture (58%)
* freedom and autonomy (56%)
* exciting challenges (51%)
* a well-managed firm (50%)
* career advancement and growth (39%)
* respect for lifestyle (14%)
* job security (8%)
* acceptable pace and stress (1%)

Relying on these statistics, MacEwen disputes the conclusion of a Legal Week article (no longer available) that calls for firms to “[e]xplor[e] more flexible career options, develop[] lawyers and their capabilities and help[] them find the best way to make a full contribution to the firm that is in line with their broader lifestyle aspirations,” arguing that “flexibility and lifestyle are almost below the horizon.”

And then I found a post on Tom Collins’ MorePartnerIncome.com blog that argues that, “The Work/Life Balance Issue Continues to Damage the Legal Profession.” (no longer available) Collins’ post appears to have been triggered largely by the discussion resulting from blogger Denise Howell’s firing by Reed Shaw (for more on that story, see Howell’s post, Carolyn Elefant’s post, or any of the host of others that covered the firing that echoed around the blawg world) and thus seems to center on the need for a viable approach to “new mother issues” as opposed to questioning work/life balance more generally.  Without challenging any of Collins’ thoughts on the issues surrounding new mothers (notably, I must add, new mothers and not new parents, despite a comment that a lawyer who returns to practice after an absence cannot assume the seniority they would have had without the absence, regardless of gender), the following paragraphs struck me:

As it is at present, the “in” thing to do in media and among consultants, conference faculty, etc., is to portray the life of the attorney as an abandonment of family, friends, fun, and civic and religious obligations.  At the same time, we note and report the importance that all those facets of life have played for the successful professional in relationship building and rainmaking. 

The success of any “service” business or profession is measured by its service to others.  Client interest comes before self-interest.  That is why we call it a “service”.  The legal profession recognizes the service aspect in spades, charging you with the professional obligation to honor, at your own expense if necessary, the paramount interest of the client.

Successful service professionals, business executives, doctors, and investment bankers all find a way to have family, friends, and fun while also participating in civic and religious affairs.  Lawyering is no different from any of the above—lawyers do not carry a greater burden. Let’s stop pretending that they do.

Let’s turn this conversation around. On the one hand, let’s deal with the child raising years of lawyer-mothers; and on the other hand, let’s start celebrating the benefits of lawyering, including the satisfaction of service to others—of upholding “truth, justice and the American Way!”

It seems to me that when work/life balance is discussed, the conversation is very often preceded by an internal eye-rolling, a deep sigh, and the thought, “here we go again, another lawyer who isn’t willing to work hard and who just wants a free and easy ride to the good life.”  I think that attitude sells everyone short — the lawyers, the firms, and the clients.

Work/life balance, to my mind, is all about finding the balance that will work for each lawyer, finding (or creating) the firm or practice structure that will support that balance, and serving clients well and fully within the context of that balance.  “Balance” doesn’t necessarily mean that work takes on less importance or less time; it simply means that whereas one lawyer may be willing to work 80 hours a week, another is willing to work 60, and another is willing to work 40, and it’s necessary for those lawyers to speak up and find the practice setting that will support their aims.  That doesn’t mean they will work in the same firm, necessarily, nor does it mean they’ll have the same practices or the same financial rewards.  What it does mean is that the lawyer who is willing to work 40 hours shouldn’t put himself in a position that requires 80 hours — and vice versa.  And it also means that each of those lawyers needs to find a practice home that supports the hours he is willing to work.

We all make compromises daily.  Work/life balance calls for knowing and voluntary compromise, whether it’s choosing to be the lawyer who works 10+ hours every day of the week, choosing to set working hours as 5 AM to 4 PM and then 9 to 11 PM so that the hours between 4 and 9 are free for family, or choosing to practice law “part-time” — 35 or 40 hours a week — because other interests take higher priority.  Good lawyers, regardless of the hours they work, will always focus on client service and thus will put client needs ahead of their own when necessary, so long as the overall structure of their professional lives are suitable.  Client service need not, and must not, suffer because of work/life balance.

Nor should we regard work/life balance as being the ultimate measure of practice.  Of course other factors will matter.  But for lawyers, it has been, and perhaps still is, much more “politically correct” to desire those other factors — interesting work, advancing responsibility, increasing client contact, etc. — than to desire balance in the form of reduced or time-shifted working hours. The current attention to work/life balance makes the topic permissible to raise.

Bottom line… I do not think work/life balance is just a fad, nor do I think it signals a decline in lawyer commitment to practice or to client service.  I think it’s a call for more transparency in practice expectations on the part of both lawyers and their law firms, and a call for lawyers to pay closer attention to what they want in their careers and in their lives.

This quote sums it up, in my view — albeit in a most un-lawyerlike way:  “Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well-preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming, ‘WOW, what a ride!'”  The question, then, is what kind of ride will make your life satisfying?  Figure out the answer, and then figure out a way to get it.  That’s work/life balance in a nutshell.

Change your mind, change your practice(s).

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We cannot solve problems with the same level of consciousness that created them.
— Albert Einstein

This is one of my favorite quotes.  It is, at least for me, a truism that I must change my perspective, my way of thinking, my approach to a problem before I can possibly solve the problem.  Another great quote on this topic is, If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.  I understand that many 12-step programs use that statement to explain “insanity” in the context of the program.

What does the mean in the context of practicing law?  Plenty.  With regard to career advancement, if you’ve been taking the approach of being a reliable, industrious, somewhat reserved workerbee and you notice that you keep getting passed over for the big cases you’d like to work on, the answer probably isn’t to do more of the same and hope for a different result.  If you’re constantly running ragged, wondering how you can connect with your spouse and/or children in an hour or so at the beginning or end of each day, it’s a safe bet that you won’t shift your actions until and unless you shift your perspective.  Want a new job?  You’ll have to pull some time and attention away from what you’re doing now to make the time to launch a job search.  And if you believe that client development is something that you’ll begin “later,” you likely won’t recognize client development opportunities that may come your way — because chance favors the prepared mind.

To make a change requires stepping outside the situation long enough to identify a problem and then to make a mental shift that will help in solving that problem.  How the shift happens is individual to each person.  But creating and then using a shift relies on several basic principles.

1.  The shift must be authentic.  If your partner, your supervisor, your doctor, or anybody else tells you to make a change and you don’t buy into it, there will be no shift.  Remember the punchline to the joke asking how many psychiatrists are needed to change a lightbulb?  One, but the lightbulb has to really, really want to change.  No psychiatry here, but if you don’t really, really want to change (or at least really, really believe you need to change), chances are good that you’ll keep on doing the same old, same old.

2.  Maintaining the shift means keeping it in the forefront of your mind.  If you’re trying to make a habit of arranging lunch with one potential client a week, put that on your calendar where you see it daily.  If you’re trying to incorporate some stretching into your day so you don’t feel like you’re 90 years old when you hobble away from your desk at the end of the day, set an alarm that go off periodically.  If you’re wanting to improve your efficiency in the office, use time management tools that keep your eye on efficiency.  Holding onto a shift in perspective means keeping it in front of you visually and/or aurally, because it’s often all too easy to slide back to the old, familiar approach.

3.  Reaping the benefit of the shift requires action.  While it’s important to recognize a problem or a situation that can be improved, that’s empty if it’s a recognition without follow-through.  If you want more balance in your life, take some action, even if it’s small.  Claiming a 15-minute walk for yourself in the afternoon will not only provide some balance but also will remind you that you’re seeking balance.  (Put it in your calendar and keep that commitment, too!)

4.  It’s easier to maintain a shift, and to design and implement the actions that the shift calls for, with support.  Tell your spouse that you need to set aside 3 hours on Saturday morning to catch up on work.  Tell your secretary that you plan to eat lunch away from your desk one day this week.  Work with a coach to provide accountability as you set out on your client development plans.  If you decide you’re going to make a change, you probably have about a 40% chance of succeeding.  If you decide to make a change, tell someone what you’re going to do, and commit to doing it by a certain deadline, you have about a 95% chance of succeeding.

What shift do you need to improve your practice and your life?

The other side of work/life balance

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Generally, when anyone discusses work/life balance in the context of lawyering, the assumption is that the focus is on the “life” part of the balance, because the “work” part comes with the turf.  That’s usually quite true.  But today, I’d like to examine the “work” part of the equation.

“[The law] is a jealous mistress, and requires a long and constant courtship. It is not to be won by trifling favors, but by lavish homage.”  The Value and Importance of Legal Studies – Joseph Story, (1779-1845)

This quote is well-known for a reason: it’s true.  The law isn’t a 40-hour a week job (at least, not for most practicing attorneys).  I’m sure scores of writers have observed that our work is called a legal “practice” for a reason: we become good lawyers through practice, through trial and error (and, one hopes, correction), and through mentorship.

Many lawyers will tell you that their quickest professional growth occurred when they were working on a case or a deal that required hours upon hours, when their focus was riveted on work, when they saw sunrise and sunset from their office windows.  Periods like that reinforce the truth that we have to work in the law to get skilled at it.  There are no shortcuts.

Aside from those periods that occur in almost every lawyer’s life when life becomes work, there’s a balance to be found between work and non-work, and the price for getting out of balance is equally high regardless of which way the imbalance tips.  To succeed in the law, it’s necessary to put in plenty of billable time.

On an average day, most people’s billing limit is somewhere in the range of 10 hours — and that’s for more senior attorneys who are able to maximize the billiable time yield from time spent in the office.  (Brand new lawyers may have a ratio of nonbillable hours to billable hour of as much as 3:1.)  Some increase in that limit is possible, whether it’s by ensuring a good night’s rest before every working day, by eating mostly lean proteins and fruits and vegetables, or by training the body through regular exercise — all tactics to increase energy.  Exceeding your limitations on hours worked on a routine basis will result in reduced efficiency, so it’s a losing proposition long-term.  The answers is to learn to be efficient and energetic in the office, so you can make the most of your hours there.

How’s your balance today?

New lawyer skill: Commit to setting aside time for yourself.

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Although I’ve titled this as a new lawyer skill, it’s applicable to all of us.  One of the challenges in creating work/life balance lies in the fact that it doesn’t just happen.  It must be created.  And, once created, it must be protected.  Zealously.

One of the fastest routes to balance is to block out some time for yourself every single week.  I’d suggest at least an hour two or three times a week, but everyone has a personal minimum that needs to be maintained.  What’s this personal time for?  Anything other than work.  Remember that gym membership?  This is when you can actually use it.  Or get a massage, visit a museum, browse the bookstore, or have lunch with a friend.  This is [a part of] the time that will make you a well-rounded, interesting human being rather than a worker-bee “human doing.”

The tricky part lies in protecting this time.  So often, we make commitments to ourselves and break them when something else comes up.  The key to getting the benefit of these self-appointments is to regard them as being as important as an appointment you make with someone else.  Yes, sometimes you will have to cancel them.  But if you find yourself canceling on more than a rare occasion, I’d suggest that you aren’t really making an appointment; rather, you’re making a plan that will fold if anything better comes up, or if someone else asks you to do something work related.  Getting the benefit requires making the commitment.

Pull out your calendar, your PDA, whatever you use to keep track of your time and schedule some time for yourself.  RIGHT NOW.  Waiting until you know what demands may be coming your way won’t make it easier to do, it’ll make it less likely.  Although spending time away from your work-related commitments may feel strange in the beginning, commit to trying it for 6 weeks and see what happens.  I predict you’ll feel more relaxed and find renewed energy for your work.

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.

More on loyalty (or the lack thereof) between associate and firm

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Associate retention continues to be a hot topic, especially as law firms seek ways to hold tight to the associates they’ve attracted at least in part by paying top dollar… and as associates eye the rising pay scales.

Arnie Herz of Legal Sanity has posted an interesting discussion (no longer available) on the disengaged employee, using a lot of buzzwords to suggest, I think, that legal employers need to focus on leadership development and employer/employee relationships.  He cites several reports for support, including a Deloitte report entitled, It’s 2008: Do You Know Where Your Talent Is? (no longer available)

I find it interesting that relationship seems to be in vogue now, and I wonder whether the trend will continue.  Are we moving toward a softer, gentler business environment?  And if so, what will be the effect of the softness on the business?  Is this just the current version of Emotional Intelligence?  I suppose only time will tell.  What I do know for sure, though, is that genuine interest is what will help the legal profession.  Lawyers need to be genuinely interested — invested, even — in their clients’ aims.  Associates need to be genuinely interested in the goals of their law firms.  Partners need to be genuinely interested in the associates’ development and their goals.

And money… Associate loyalty can’t be bought.  Although it’s less often discussed, neither can partner loyalty — as is illustrated by the large number of partners who now jump from one firm to another (and perhaps back), something that would have been anathema only a few years ago.  It’s possible to purchase a widget, to purchase a set amount of a lawyer’s time.  But retention requires much more.

Underpromise and overdeliver

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One of the most critical parts of establishing a career, as well as finding work/life balance, is conducting oneself in a way that lets others know they can rely on your word.  We’ve all had the experience of counting on someone to carry through on a promise and discovering that they didn’t.  Even when there’s a great reason, the next time we have an opportunity to count on them, we may well choose not to, or to build in a backup plan just in case.  Being a professional requires on-time delivery; life requires flexibility.  So how to manage?

Underpromise.  Overdeliver.  Every time.

If you’re asked when a memo will be ready, figure out what’s a reasonable amount of time, add some breathing room, and deliver before you say you will.  If you mention an article that might be helpful to someone and they respond, don’t stop there — send a copy to them.  (This is a good networking skill, too.)  If a more senior lawyer asks for the stack of cases referenced in a memo, go the extra mile: create a table of contents, including a few words about the key proposition of each case, so it’s easy to see what’s in the stack and why.

It’s about time and presentation.  Excel in both.

Now, the caveat: know when it’s appropriate to surpass a request and when it isn’t.  If someone wants bullet points as an outline for a telephone hearing with the court, writing out narrative paragraphs won’t be helpful.  Always use common sense to figure out what would be useful, and be sure to make your evaluation using the “Platinum Rule”: do unto others as they would have you do unto them.

And if you’re wondering why this has anything to do with work/life balance, think about this.  Suppose an associate works from home a couple of days a week.  Wouldn’t you feel comfortable with this only if you know that associate will deliver every time and will meet (and probably exceed) your expectations?

This level of professionalism opens doors.  It establishes a reputation that will serve you well.

More on (some) partners’ view of work/life balance

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I recently posted about the negative view that some partners have of associates seeking work/life balance and suggested that perhaps transparency in employment is one answer to ensuring that those who want a “balanced” lifestyle (whatever that may mean) are able to find it in law firms composed of other lifestyle-focused lawyers.  I wondered whether that’s an overly rosy view.  Perhaps not.

An article from the Wall Street Journal (no longer available) discusses the perks and drains of working in a large law firm, stating that big-firm associate attrition is at record levels.  The story goes on to report a law student’s experience in interviewing with Cesar Alvarez, president of Greenberg Traurig:

Last fall, Cesar L. Alvarez, president of Greenberg Traurig, was interviewing a student at an Ivy League law school. The interview was just beginning when the student asked Mr. Alvarez to tell him what the “lifestyle would be like” at the firm.

The student didn’t get a “call-back” interview. “I told him that if he’s going to work at a large law firm, that mind-set isn’t going to get you very far,” recalls Mr. Alvarez, who is based in the firm’s Miami office. In his opinion, the question reflected the attitude of more and more young lawyers. “A generation ago, nobody would have asked that question, even if they’d thought of it. But there is a difference in people coming out of law school now.”

That’s transparency.  Granted, I would not have suggested the student ask that question early on (at the on-campus interview or when the interview was “just beginning”), nor would I have suggested that he ask it of the firm’s president.  But, assuming it was a conscious decision, the student evidently wanted to know about lifestyle as a litmus test on the firm; Mr. Alvarez’s response suggests that the question itself is a litmus test on the student.

The trick, of course, is whether transparency exists on the other end of the spectrum.  It’s far less risky to avoid focusing on lifestyle needs or desires during the interview, but the pain comes when the workload and hours required exceed what the associate expects.  (But do note that the article quotes Claude Millman, a Proskauer Rose partner, as being honest with lifestyle-conscious associates about the increasing client demands that comes with advancing seniority.)

And, as usual, the answer almost certainly lies in how the question is posed.  If work/life balance is billing 1300 hours annually, not many firms are going to be supportive.  If it’s billing 1800 or 2000 or 2100, that may be different.  The devil is in the details.

Work/life balance: the partners’ perspective

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The May 2006 ABA Journal is full of interesting articles.  The most fascinating to me is titled “The Great Divide: Partners and Associates Are at Odds over Opposing Approaches to Work, Play and the Practice of Law.”  Unfortunately, the article is not (yet?) available online.  Get to your closest law library, if you aren’t an ABA member, and read this article.

Its thesis is that many partners believe there’s a generational conflict between themselves and young associates — Gen Y.  An unnamed partner at a New York-based national firm says that few young associates remain in the office after 5 PM, that few are motivated to work hard, that associates don’t appreciate the training and opportunities (not to mention high salaries) that firms shower on them.  Karen Turner McWilliams, of Reston, Virginia, is quoted as saying, “When I was coming up, associates did anything and everything they could to appease the partners.  That is no longer the case. . . . They really have bought into this work-life balance phenomenon that is pervading all industries.  So they are not willing to work as late, be on call, work weekends.  That is the mentality . . . It’s really not a bad thing.  I honestly can see both sides of the argument.”

Wow.  (I have to add that those comments don’t in any way reflect my experience.)

On the flip side, the article also describes young associates’ observation that unflagging enthusiasm for work is too often rewarded with layoffs or early retirement.  Accordingly, associates want to have a rounded life rather than being willing to work all hours for a higher profit-per-partner ratio, particularly now that partnership is a less certain reward and of less certain value than in the past.  Peter Ellis, an associate in the Chicago office of a large, international firm, argues that his peers do work hard in the office and that they carry work with them via BlackBerry, cell phone, and laptop when they’re away from the office.

What’s most striking to me in this story is the disconnect in viewpoints.  Of course, absent that schism, there would be no story.  But there must be at least a grain of truth to the descriptions — and they do in fact ring true.

In considering the merits of the two positions, I’m left with a quandry: is practice an either/or?  Is it a choice between being a 24/7 drone or being a work/life balance spoutin’ slacker?  And how do we measure this stuff, anyway?  Money, generally produced by billables, is the traditional measurement, but that seems to predetermine the conclusion since anything that reduces the number of hours that could otherwise be realized is detrimental under that scheme.

Perhaps there’s a tipping point between hefty-but-healthy hours and income and the hefty-but-unhealthy path to burnout.  Perhaps that’s where we’re headed.  In 1994, then-Chief Justice Rehnquist said that average billables in the 1960s were about 1450 per year as compared with an average of 2000 annual billable hours in the 1990s.  As always, the devil is in the details.  Is the tipping point 2050 average annual billable hours?  (Evidently not!)  Is it 2400?  Who gets to decide?

I’d submit that each group of lawyers, i.e. each firm, as well as each individual lawyer gets to decide and that in fact, we’re all deciding right now.  (And for the purposes of this discussion, my comments are limited to lawyers in private practice.)  If a lawyer is deciding between Firm A, which pays a high salary and has a mandatory minimum of 2000 billables, and Firm B, which pays an exhorbitant salary and has an unwritten goal of 2500 billables — doesn’t the lawyer get to decide?  She won’t be forced to either firm, though of course the weight of her law school debt may exert substantial pressure.  She has the ability to decide what she wants her work/life balance to look like, and as long as the hours in the work part of the equation is at least as high as the partners of her chosen firm expect, it’ll work.  (And if they are higher than expected, higher than her colleagues, the system will adapt or she will choose to leave for a firm with a commensurately higher pay scale or better opportunity in some other way.)

So then, isn’t the answer to have a completely open legal market, in which sweatshops admit to being sweatshops?  In which other firms establish their goals and identify which goals are truly aspirational and which are required?  In which candidates for employment say upfront that they’re unwilling to work weekends or to bring work home?  Ideally, I think that’s a part of the answer.  But the world doesn’t work that way.  And so we’re left with unstated expectations, the more senior lawyers’ sense of having stretched themselves in ways that the new crowd is unwilling to do — they don’t make ’em like they used to, you know — and younger lawyers torn between the siren song of more money, more more more, and the quieter but (at least for some) more fulfilling vision of a life.

And of course the intangibles remain: what value do younger lawyers place on training?  Mentoring?  An apprentice-style start to their career?  What value do more senior lawyers place on these same aspects?  And what’s the financial bottom line?  Not to mention the role of technology, though I do hope the article is dead wrong in reporting observations that senior lawyers don’t believe it’s possible to be working without being physically present in the office.

More answers than questions.  But the one answer that emerges crystal clear: it is incumbent upon each lawyer to know why he’s decided to practice law.  If it’s money, that’ll dictate one branch on the career path.  If it’s social justice, that’ll be another.  If it’s to help people, refinement is necessary to crystallize exactly what that means.  But without these markers, the young associate stands all too high a chance of ending up in a practice setting that can’t and won’t meet his vision for his career.  And then, the least damaging result will be a disconnect between his perspective and his senior partner’s.

In defense of law firms

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I woke up very early this morning, still thinking about the Young Lawyer’s Conundrum (article no longer available) I posted about yesterday and Schiltz’s concept that lawyers who go to law firms will end up engaging in unethical practice — indeed, living unethical lives — because of the law firm culture that pushes endlessly for more money, more billing, dangling the alluring lifestyle that no lawyer ever really has time to enjoy.  And now, here it is well past midnight, and I’m still thinking about it.  With the recognition that Schiltz almost certainly doesn’t mean all law firms have a money-lust culture or that all lawyers who work at law firm with such a culture end up in such a sorry state, I disagree.

Because I believe that perspective is built on past experience, at least to some degree, let me note that I worked in a BigLaw firm for almost 6 years.  A stepchild office, not particularly beloved by the Empire, but BigLaw nonetheless.  Overall, it was a great experience for me, and certainly a learning experience.  And when I left, I went to a mid-sized boutique firm.  Again, a strong learning experience.

There’s a perception that BigLaw lawyers are soulless creatures, rummaging about for more hours in which to cram work, leaving divorce and lonely children in the wake of what ordinary people would call a personal life, what these sad attorneys call a distraction.  But most of the BigLaw people I knew — partners and associates — had marriages about as happy as the rest of us.  They’d leave at 4 sometimes to catch a child’s softball game; they’d take vacations and be essentially unreachable for days on end.  True enough, they’d make up the time by working early mornings and late nights, and it’s certain that they billed an impressive number of hours each year.  But they’d live their lives.  I observed the same thing in the midsized firm.

No doubt the pressure on these lawyers is intense.  No doubt that billing targets (managing “unoptimized time,” in FirmSpeak) continue to rise.  But plenty of evidence exists to prove that not all lawyers get caught in the money/time vise.  Some choose to, like the firm legends who bill 3000-3500 hours a year every year.  Some happen to get trapped, like an excellent lawyer I worked with for a time who did such good work that partners felt he was indispensable on each of his cases, leading him to make super-elite frequent flyer status (over 100K miles) by late February and to leave the firm that spring when he realized that he was too often limited to seeing his family at the airport between trips.  The great majority work hard, really hard, and strive to find some sort of work/life balance that allows them to play as hard as they work.

So why am I defending law firms?  I suppose, at the end of the day, I’m not: I’m defending the individuals who associate and form law firms.  For every firm out there with attributes at all similar to those described in John Grisham’s novels, I’d be willing to bet there are literally hundreds that bear no such resemblance.  Sure, some lawyers become unethical, become people who pad bills and lie whenever it’s expedient to do so… But most simply work harder, play harder, and look for legitimate ways to make some sense out of life at the bar.

That’s why the profession survives even as law itself becomes more and more a business.  And that’s where lawyers are seeking to redefine their practices and habits in view of their values, trying to bring their personal and professional lives together into a single, sustainable, satisfying existence.