Getting Control of Your Hours
The central career issue of our day is finding meaningful work which leaves time for our personal lives. Professionals who charge for their time know this firsthand. In the legal profession, where the pressure to bill more hours has never been greater, this is particularly true.
Following your interests is good career planning. But most of us have multiple interests. If you have the choice, choose work that is more predictable. In law, stay away from high stakes litigation where you will be subjected to unpredictable deadlines. Avoid becoming a high powered “deal lawyer” who works on large mergers and acquisitions, IPO’s or other highly time sensitive transactions. Stay away from entrepreneurial clients who want everything to happen yesterday. Instead, choose to focus on work that has more predictable deadlines. In corporate practice, that might mean securities compliance or bank lending. In real estate, that might mean leasing work. If you do choose to spend part of your time on “interesting” litigation matters, make sure you balance out your work with other matters that are less time sensitive (e.g. appellate work.)
2. Early in your career, be a “yes” person and do great work.
If you demonstrate early in your career that you are ready, willing and able to sacrifice nights and weekends for the sake of the firm, you will have a lot more leverage to say “no” when you are more senior. Your ability to say no later on will also increase if you earn the reputation for doing great work.
3. Build strong partner and client relationships.
Taking the time to build your relationships with partners and clients will also give you move leverage in the future. If you have good relationships, you will find it easier to ask a partner or a client if he or she really needs something by the following day.
4. Find a firm where the culture supports outside interests.
Believe it or not, firm cultures do vary. While work/life balance is hardest to achieve at large law firms, there are some small and mid-sized law firms that do high quality work but still manage to allow partners and associates to pursue personal interests. Of course you have to do a lot of homework to find these firms; but they do exist. Talk to associates and ask them what they do outside of work. Find out whether partners are at the office after 7 p.m. on a regular basis.
5. Learn some time management skills and learn to delegate.
I left this one for last because time management does not solve the underlying problem if you simply have too much work to do. On the other hand, managing your time and learning to delegate more effectively can help you to make better use of the limited time that you do have for work.
Labels: work life balance, work/life balance
posted by Stephen Seckler, Esq. at 8:14 AM
3 Comments:
Hi Stephen, excellent advice
I'm not a Legal Eagle, but I think the core suggestions are equally valid for any profession or business, and the 5 keys to success.
Stephen,
The idea of considering time demands before engaging in a career has great merit.
Balancing the excitement of a prestige opportunity against the desire to live your own life is a review that should be made early.
I disagree with the idea that being a "yes" person early in your legal carrer helps with getting control of your hours. I see what you are saying: Invest additional time short-term, for returns in the long run.
First. I disagree that the premise of investing time early for later rewards works. The most apparent problem is that by being a "yes" person, you build expectations to those in charge that you'll always be a "yes" person, which makes changing later more difficult and less realistic. Also, I think that if you act as a "yes" person just as a way to free time later, that you can change your core personality to the point where you are a "yes" person and work/life is not as important. Similarly, I believe that work/life balance is a way of life that must be developed through practice, because it's counter to what we've been taught. Work/life is not a light switch that can be flipped on and off at will. So, you have to be constantly practicing at saying "no" so that you can eventually become good at it.
Second. Even if the idea works (i.e. you can earn more work life balance later in life by being a yes person), I disagree that sacrificing your time in the short run is a good idea. Being able to spend time with your family, friends, or doing a favorite hobby is an incredibly valuable thing. The options are limited (which is the sad part of the legal profession) but work/life balance should be regularly availble to all attorneys, young and old.
At a fundamental level, your suggestion hits on one of my biggest problems with the private legal profession. That there are bosses who regularly expect their associates to be a "yes" person. And by "yes" person, we're not talking about being a helpful, competent, and respectful employee. We're talking about agreeing to the demands of the partner, even when those demands are incredibly heavy and uncomfortable (mostly really long hours with a lot of stress and demands) Historically it's the norm in the legal profession, but comparing it to 99.9% of the working world, asking your employee to work nights and weekends is a pretty crappy thing to do. The idea that you have to submit yourself to unreasonable demands so that you can later dish it out is unappealing.
My two cents. You can see that I'm jaded.
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