What is it about lawyers and vacations? Like the old saying about long-horn cattle and a Texas fence – they just don’t get along so good. It’s like a physical aversion.
I worked with a client recently who was planning, in utter frustration, to quit his medium-size firm in a medium-size American city. The partner was lecturing him about his billable hours, but business was dead slow so there was nothing to bill for. The lawyer found out later that all his peers were simply billing for work that hadn’t been done yet, on the theory that they’d be laid off by the time the proverbial cow-patty and the fan were joined in unison.
He couldn’t bring himself to fake his time records to that degree, so he was stomping mad, announcing in stentorian tones that this was it, he was quitting. I urged him to stick around and see if he couldn’t get laid off with everyone else, so he could at least receive unemployment. No, he insisted – he needed out now.
Well, I reasoned, then why not take some vacation, so you can cool off and kill time simultaneously?
That was unthinkable.
It turned out he hadn’t had a vacation in 8 months – and that vacation was for 3 days.
Yes. THREE DAYS. Actually five, he said, since he took the weekend, too.
He took the weekend.
His objection to taking a vacation now? He wasn’t going out like that, on a sour note. That wouldn’t be right.
So. Quitting in a huff was okay. But taking any of his accumulated vacation time when the firm was so slow there was nothing for anyone to do and everyone was faking their hours? Inconceivable.
Flash forward six weeks. He didn’t quit. Instead he managed to convince a partner to dump a bunch of work on him, and actually managed to approach the insane billable hours requirement for last month. Now he’s totally exhausted, and his fellow junior associates are complaining he’s hogging the work.
How about a vacation? I suggested.
No way. He’d just made his hours – how could he take a vacation now?
But isn’t that the whole idea? That you’ve earned some time off?
He looked at me like I’d gone mad. If he took vacation now, all the other associates would get his work and he wouldn’t be able to make his hours. Besides, if he took vacation, he’d have to work twice as hard.
Why? I asked. If you’re off for two weeks of the month, you’re only expected to work half as many hours, right?
Wrong. It doesn’t work that way. You still have to make your hours for that month, even if you take a vacation. You just have to pull double-shifts.
Doesn’t that defeat the whole point of taking a vacation?
He shrugged me off, exasperated. I didn’t get it.
In the twisted mind of a lawyer, taking a vacation is simply bad. To take a vacation when the firm is slow rubs the unthinkable in their face – that the firm is slow. When things are busy? Well, then you’re not pulling your weight, are you?
Of course, you can’t simply “take” a vacation at a law firm – you have to clear it with the partner. At my client’s firm, the standard response was: “this isn’t a good time.”
There is no good time.
One memory from Sullivan & Cromwell that’s still etched into my brain after all these years is from my first vacation. I took a week to fly to England for New Year’s and visit my old friend, Liz.
I arrived in Oxford exhausted and frazzled and settled into a comfy chair by the gas fire. Liz went to the kitchen to make a pot of tea. I heard the phone ring.
A moment later Liz re-appeared, looking puzzled.
“There’s a terribly rude American woman on the phone who says she needs to speak with you right away.”
It was a senior associate from S&C. I’d been at Liz’ place for approximately 5 minutes. The associate berated me for some screw-up in a side agreement I’d worked on. It wasn’t clear that it was my fault, and there wasn’t anything I could do about it in England at 9 pm on Sunday night. But she needed to vent, so she called.
That’s all behind me now. I’m a psychotherapist, and I take vacations.
For those of you who have written in wondering what’s become of The People’s Therapist – the answer is I’m taking a break. In-house counseling will return in all its glory to AboveTheLaw.com in September.
Until then, I’m enjoying some long weekends, working on a book project, and seeing my usual weekly caseload. For the first two weeks of August I’ll be on my annual pilgrimage to Northeast Vermont, the land of dirt roads and pristine forests, where I’ll hunker down in a cabin that’s been in a friend’s family for decades. There’s no internet, no cell phone reception, no running water – nothing but serenity and a wood stove and a clear, deep pond. The cabin has one working rotary phone, but you’ll have to let it ring for a good long while – we’ll probably be out canoeing, or curled up with our dachshund on a hammock strung between two birch trees. I plan to read a stack of books, listen to plenty of Duke Ellington and fill my mind with ideas.
See you in September. Meanwhile…take a vacation. Please. Even lawyers can learn to relax if they try hard enough.
Your soul requires billable hours, too.
[This piece is part of a series of columns created by The People’s Therapist in cooperation with AboveTheLaw.com. My thanks to ATL for their help with the creation of this series.]
If you enjoy these columns, please check out The People’s Therapist’s new book.
The People's Therapist 
Excellent. All I can say is, thank you for these posts. I took a proper vacation this spring for the first time in *years*. It was wonderful. But I also understand the warped firm environments that make it exceedingly difficult to get away. I also think part of the problem is the perfectionist, obsessive mindset that legal work (especially high-volume mind-numbing legal work) cultivates. It can be hard to let it go completely for a couple of weeks. Plus, a lot of lawyers are pleasers and have trouble asserting their individual, non-work-related needs and desires.
Pleasers. No doubt. I generally feel like I’m 11 years old and my dad is mad at me. “Dad” can be anyone. I feel like a douche sometimes.
We’re also fairly stuck on the idea that we’re the only ones who can do “it” (whatever “it” is) and that’s fed by our clients, bosses, whoever.
For instance whenever I’m out of the office I start getting anxious if I can’t call in or if they can’t reach me, if I haven’t checked my email in a little while (on a computer, my blackberry is terrible for documents and I can’t edit them!) and etc…
But 99.9% of the time I’m out of the office FOR WORK! So I’m working, but I’m feeling bad because I’m not in the office working..why? There are 10 other attorneys in my group, although we all travel a fair bit, there’s usually 3-5 in the office at any given time. What can I do that they can’t???
NOTHING.
How much does that matter??
Not in the slightest.
This spring I took three weeks off and traveled around SE Asia with some college friends. By the time I got back to work, I couldn’t remember my password to log on to my computer. I had to do a week’s worth of planning before I could even think about asking for that much time off. It helped that I put together a plan to finish up as many projects as possible and planned for all of the things that could have come up while I was gone. So, it was more a conversation about “I’d like this time off. And here’s a plan to make sure that everything gets done.” It was the best decision I’ve made in a long, long time.
I just took a 2 week vacation. It was the first time in 2 years I’d taken more than 3 days off. Work sent me emails nonstop when I was on vacation. When I got back, no one I worked with asked me how it was or even welcomed me back. I’ve also stopped receiving assignments of any substance. Despite all this, it was the best thing I could have ever done. As bad as my firm’s reaction was, I felt happier then ever and feel like my path forward is the clearest its ever been.
What I have seen seems a bit different…had a top law firm friend who took off 3 weeks for his brother’s wedding (helping with the planning, etc.) and he didn’t seem to have a problem. I also typically see him almost every weekend, and nobody is calling and berating him, let alone even contacting him about work.
On weekdays as well…I even have gotten out at the same time as him for drinks/after work dinner, and I work for the gov….just seems like, as with any private sector industry (adverstising, marketing), as crunch time comes, you will be over-worked and under-relaxed…but your article makes it sound like this level of frenetic demand is 24 hours/day. Every job has ups and downs.
Ahhh Dr., I envy you and your time off. I also work in a law firm, but as a legal assistant. I have even less “right” to take time off. I have never been permitted more than 5 days off at a time; however, as I write this, the partner of the firm (and my immediate boss) is in Europe for 2+ weeks, spending the better part of every evening barking orders through Wifi and his Blackberry. Maybe I’d rather stay in the office?
Wonderful blog, by the way!
It took me years to figure out that I actually *needed* time to chill out. Now I make it part of my routine.
Have a great vacation!
Haha! I can relate to the non existent work and the inability to take time off. It’s amazing how we can spend hours in the office when there is practically nothing to do (although happily we haven’t got into the practice of padding yet). Still we stay in the office way past the “official” leaving time of 5.30pm for no reason whatsoever other than the thought “we can’t possibly leave at half five?!” and because no one else is leaving (even though no one has anything to do) So we stay another hour shuffling papers (or reading law/psychology blogs ;)) when we could go home and have a life… *sigh*
Found your site, and it’s quite good. Another reason lawyers don’t take vacation is that the work seems twice as bad when they get back. It’s one thing to sort of roll along with your billables and pretend that’s the world, but when you leave for a week you’re confronted with an alternate reality. And it’s hard to break from that non-billable reality to the billable reality.