More on Work/Life Balance for Lawyers

I recently posted about work/life balance in “It’s more important than ever for lawyers to ‘Get a Life.’” Now, an update.

The ABA Journal Law News Now posted an online article entitled, “Are We Closing the Book on Work/Life Balance?” picking up on Jordan Furlong’s post on Law 21: The legacy of work-life balance.

Furlong notes that although work-life balance (or WLB) was ‘all the rage’ only a few short years ago, the economy may be signaling the end of the WLB movement. He says:

Most lawyers seeking WLB were really seeking an answer to the question: “Does a legal career have to be all-consuming and exhausting?” … 

The whole thing got wrapped up too often in buzzwords like “personal fulfillment,” “family time,” and WLB, but what it really came down to was lawyers’ rational response to market conditions. They had a chance to get more rewards for their time and effort — unfortunately, many of them chose those rewards in $160,000 annual packages.

…

Where proponents of “work-life balance” went off-track, to my mind, was that they argued the duty to ensure a satisfactory proportion between a lawyer’s work and the rest of her life was an institutional responsibility — that it was up to the law firm, basically. The  firms disagreed, and all they had to do was wait for the marketplace to turn their way to make that clear.

…

The thing is, “work-life balance” is a lawyer’s personal choice and responsibility. If money and “prestige” are that important to you, you’ll sign up to work 3,000 hours a year at a law firm, and you can reap the rewards and suffer the personal consequences accordingly.

Furlong goes on to say that one of the problems is that the ‘unspoken symbiosis between law schools and law firms – the law schools charge large sums for legal education but provide little or no practical training, resulting in newly-minted lawyers with large indebtedness but low skills. These lawyers are then hired by big firms who can offer high salaries that will allow students to make a dent in their loans, and provide training – often requiring endless hours of work.

I don’t believe that the most proponents of WLB looked at it as an entitlement that law firms were obligated to provide, or that a lucrative, prestigious legal career and a personally fulfilling life are mutually exclusive. What WLB seeks is for all lawyers – as a profession – to tackle the issues facing members of the profession. It is clear that the demands of the profession as it exists currently have resulted in an increase in lawyer dissatisfaction, alcoholism, depression and other ills.

For some lawyers, WLB has been wrongfully interpreted as an entitlement mentality or as a euphamism for laziness and an aversion to working hard or providing excellent client experience. I couldn’t disagree more, as I noted in my previous post. Indeed, WLB is all about being a professional and providing a professional level of service to clients, creating a lucrative legal career and a healthy personal life. A tall order? Perhaps, but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible – although many of the current ‘norms’ in the legal profession make it so.

Being harnessed to the billable hour, which reduces a lawyer’s value to the hours logged, rather than to the solutions and service provided to clients, is one such ‘norm’ that needs serious change. Billable hours are a rather unprofessional measure of worth – certainly not one that acknowleges lawyers as knowledge workers.

But as noted in many of the comments to Jordan’s post, WLB isn’t just a debate about billable hours and going home early. Lawyers need opportunities for professional growth and development, intellectual stimulation, collegiality, and personal time – and they need them not just for themselves, but for the good of the firms and clients, too.

As noted in my previous post on this issue, in order to be intellectually challenged, to come to work with your best foot forward and to provide your clients with the excellent service they deserve, you’ve got to have balance in your life. Healthy lawyers do better work for their clients and their firms. Lawyers who are supported personally and professionally by their firms will do better work for those firms and are likely to be more loyal to those firms. Stressed out, angry, unfulfilled lawyers who are battling personal issues at home (or worse, who are unable to develop strong personal relationships outside of the office) aren’t likely to be particularly effective.

In an article entitled, Situation re-evaluation:creating balance, author Kate DeBevois cites a 2009 study of over 50,000 global workers which indicates that employees who feel they have achieved work-life balance work, on average, 21 percent harder than employees who feel they have not achieved work-life balance.  And, as professional organizer and life coach Dorothy Breininger notes in the same article, “Where there’s difficulty in one area of life, chances are, it will show up in most areas of life.” 

While big firms may not be willing to make changes in this regard (particularly in this economy, when they feel their associates are just lucky to have jobs), clients may demand it. And firms that want to continue to attract top talent – both from law schools and laterally – will need to address these issues, since top talent will always have other options and opportunities. When clients defect in larger numbers to smaller firms and lawyers defect to smaller firms or solo practices – or even larger firms that are committed to innovation, creativity, professional development AND work/life balance, perhaps the big firms will finally see the light.

Furlong says, “What we were groping towards, under the banner of WLB, was the gnawing sense that most everyone starts their legal career behind the eight-ball for no particularly good reason.” But WLB issues are limited to younger lawyers. While the issues Furlong cites may be the WLB issues faced by newer lawyers in large firms, the majority of lawyers in the U.S. are solo practitioners or work in small firms. Work/life balance issues affect all lawyers, regardless of the length of their experience or the size of their practice.

Furlong concludes his post saying,  “There are still some serious institutional problems for our profession to resolve — dealing with them openly and effectively would be the kind of legacy “work-life balance” deserves.” Only too true – which is why it isn’t time to ‘close the book’ on work-life balance yet.

(Hat tip to Kevin Chern of Total Attorneys, for pointing out the DeBevois article).