I did a podcast a while back with the American Bar Association Journal. The topic was “work/life balance.” You can listen to it here.
It was a weird experience – like living on another planet.
I was the sole male. The other panelists and the moderator were women. That’s fine, but somehow, faced with the topic of “work/life balance” everyone turned into Gloria Steinem circa 1971.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m a shrill, strident feminist committed to full equality for women, and I have no beef with Gloria Steinem.
But how is work/life balance in the legal world strictly a gender issue? Women are admitted to law schools, and graduate from them, like men. They go to the same law firms, make the same money and take the same abuse.
I have tangential experience with this stuff since I’m gay. When people talk about homophobia at Sullivan & Cromwell I roll my eyes. Homophobia wasn’t the issue. Humanophobia was the issue. Some of the partners and plenty of the associates were openly gay. Homo or hetero, male or female we were all in the same boat.
The unspoken “women’s lib” angle on the “work/life balance” at law firms is this: women give birth to children, and it’s impossible to raise a kid if you are a partner at a law firm, so women are less likely to become partners. If they did, they wouldn’t have time to raise a kid. It’s also impossible to meet anyone you want to have a kid with when you’re working 70-hour weeks.
These are incontrovertible facts of law firm life.
Plenty of male partners have kids. They become absentee fathers, and their kids never see them. Nothing new there. But a social stigma kicks in when your kid tells his friends he only sees mommy an hour a week.
You also have to find time to be pregnant. If you put it off until you make partner, you face fertility problems. That’s a fundamental bummer about being a woman who wants a kid – when you’re mentally prepared your body gives out. At sixteen, anyone can get pregnant. At 39, you can only get pregnant if you don’t want to. If you’re trying, it never happens.
The solution to all this is obvious – have a kid while you still can, and let your husband do the raising.
That’s more or less where the other panelists ended up, but only after spouting “women can have it all” slogans and fabricating visions of “part-time partners.” The law professors on the panel had no concept of law firm reality. The young lawyer running an internet-based T&E firm receded politely when I pointed out the obvious: plenty of women would rather stay at home with the kids than work at a firm. Hell, I’ve worked with couples where the husband and wife fight over who has to do law for a living. They’d both rather stay home and play with junior. Wouldn’t you?
A second yawning gulf between me and the other panelists came with their determination to defend law as a profession. They were “pro-law” and I was “anti-law.” That’s understandable, since the ABA Journal represents the official propaganda ministry for Law, Inc. Law professors need to herd eager young things into school – that’s how they earn big bucks. And the internet lady was trying to drum up business, too – she has loans to pay.
I’m not from that world. I’m a psychotherapist who cleans up the wreckage of young lives decimated by the law school/law firm machine.
Here’s a little scandal for you: at least 10 minutes of the podcast – the final 10 minutes, where I stopped sitting back feeling out of place and came out swinging – were deleted from the recording. You hear a fadeout as I’m about to come on.
What did you miss?
You guessed it – a whole lot of me talking about the reality of law firm life – and lawyer unemployment – including the fact that “work/life balance” is a myth for most lawyers because they work insane hours and hate their jobs.
In other words, a cool, clear blast of truth.
A headhunter called one of my clients last week. Familiar with the routine, she picked up for the heck of it, wondering how they’d manage to spin an obscure mid-level firm into a paradise where no one worked past 6 pm and the furniture was made of chocolate. The sales reptile on the phone didn’t disappoint.
“You’ll love this place – it’s a lifestyle firm. They only expect 2200 hours per year!”
My client had to smile at how far things have come. 2200 hours per year, with two weeks vacation equals 44 hours per week of billables. Which means you’re probably working a 50 hour week.
So that’s a “lifestyle” firm – you’re only there 10 hours per day. And that’s if you believe a headhunter. In real life you’d be there weekends, too.
My client told me another story, about a friend who woke up and realized she had to quit law – she was failing as a spouse, failing as a mother and failing as an attorney. She called it the “three failures theory.”
Then my client got up early one recent morning to crawl back into the office. On her way out the door she stepped – wearing new pumps – in a massive puddle of cat pee. That’s because, working 2200 hours or more per year, she hadn’t changed the kitty litter. That was her one household undertaking – her husband, who worked a normal job, did all the other chores. She screamed in frustration. Her husband came rushing to her rescue, asking why she hadn’t changed the litter. She lost her temper, yelled “I don’t have time for this crap!” and, of course, was late for a meeting at her firm.
The theory of three had been fulfilled: failing as a spouse, failing as a kitty mommy, and failing as a lawyer.
It was time to get out.
Here’s my bottom line. Work/life balance is impossible so long as the billable hour remains the holy grail of law firm life. Working “only 2200 hours per year” makes it impossible to have a family or any sort of personal life.
Sorry. That’s the truth.
And that’s what I was saying in those missing 10 minutes of tape that got cut.
In years to come, you’ll be treated to a few hundred fresh hours of Richard Nixon’s disquisitions on the racial inferiority of blacks and Jews – but if the ABA Journal has its way, you’re never going to hear those last 10 minutes of why it sucks to be a lawyer.
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This piece is part of a series of columns presented 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 
Such a great post but what is the solution?
Having worked in law firms since 1996, there is a huge fear factor surrounding the hourly rate that to loosen the fastening is just plain impossible. And frankly with lawyers being creatures of habit if they have a system that sort of works then they are going to fight like hell to hang on to it.
My problem is that there is too much disparity between the bottom rung of the ladder and the top, which unfortunately drives a lot of this behaviour. If you capped this (this is one of Gary Hamel’s ideas for business with a multiple I think of 19) then perhaps there would not be so much pressure to keep on the treadmill. Also, if firm’s were not so darn expectant of x3, x4 or x5 income then it would mean that the pressure wasn’t there. However in a capitalist economy where most people work as wage slaves I fear that this behaviour is so endemic that it will never resolve itself. I am in the Seth Godin do Art camp and that is why I gave up my practising certificate to enlighten myself and others to a new way. Keep fighting the fight.
Regards
Julian
I’m under no illusions. I make hours for a living. A friend, who used to be in-house, cringed when I said this. He always hoped his attorneys were representing the client. As far as I’m concerned, that’s a by-product of the manufacture of hours. I get a bonus based on hours. A good 1900 will get me less money than a shitty 2500. That’s the system. A law firm is a high-falutin’ whorehouse. I’m just one of the whores.
Another great post on the reality of law firm “life.” The worst part about it — which you have very insightfully articulated in previous posts — is that the culture of large firms, combined with the psychology of the type of people (like me) who tend to work at large firms, leads associates to believe that somehow their failure at every aspect of their lives is somehow *their fault*. Now, out of it for three years, I realize that it wasn’t humanly possible for me to be and do everything that I was trying to be and do in the 24 hours allotted for human activity in one day. My efforts to do so basically destroyed my health — one day I found myself clutching my blackberry in the middle of my kitchen floor in the middle of the morning (gasp — the horror!) unable to remain consciousness for long enough to send an email telling someone to call an ambulance to come and scrape me up for sanitary disposal. My law firm’s reaction? No one seemed to recall the multiple times I skipped *two* straight nights of sleep due to work “emergencies,” or the many months when I billed at least 8 (and usually many more) hours every single day, including weekends, or the fact that up until my complete physical collapse I routinely responded to emails from clients and partners at any time of day or night, or the fact that I hadn’t taken more than three days off work in the past two years. No — they said I was “unreliable”. My unscheduled hospitalization apparently inconvenienced the partners I was working for at the time. Go figure. “Humanophobia” is a great coinage. In my experience big firms were not only incompatible with being a good wife, mother, or lawyer — they were incompatible with continuing to maintain basic bodily functions, the sine qua non of being a live human being at all.
What she said.
One of my last straws at a heinous firm was watching a young partner come in for a month, sick with worry about his hospitalized wife (and probably getting no sleep from caring for their little kids in their McMansion) and watching the senior partner who “only” wanted to work with that guy come unglued with his own worry – “if he has to visit his wife, who will do my work?” Wife is fine but tragically deluded husband still works at that firm.
There is a special place in Hell for senior partners like that. “Who will do my work?” WHO CARES? Do it yourself.
Here’s my issue. I’m female, no kids, full time – and I still don’t want to be squashed like a grape. It isn’t just the working mothers who deserve some bit of humanity, and too many “women’s” programs that I’ve seen from firms and the ABA seem focused only on maternity leave justice and working mom rights – EVERYONE deserves better, not just one gender for a limited number of years.
Thanks for posting this – I wondered what had been edited out. I tried to post a comment w/ABA Journal when they aired it, but I got moderated out.
This is exactly why I founded Practicing on Purpose LLC – one can’t sustain 60-80 hour workweeks indefinitely. This is not just an issue of work/life balance (which implies sacrifices are necessary on one side or the other for “success”). I could go on and on about how firms can do better (for a summary, read my appendix in _Lawyers as Peacemakers_ by J. Kim Wright, an ABA Flagship book that is definitely not propaganda for current law culture).
I heard a different message from the women on your podcast – I heard the self-defeating “You can’t have it all” call that we think we’re doing a favor trying to teach younger women. You reference the 3-time failures – but whose definition of success are these women using? Whose definition of “all?” Finding out what that “all” is, is the first step toward achieving it, and that’s something that goes further back than law school. Law schools could do a lot more to help. And that’s the second reason I do what I do.
Again, thanks for the post telling us what we missed. And thanks for the work you do with lawyers and recovering lawyers.
Balance exists, it exists if you are ok earning alot less money than your colleagues and realizing that where you are in your job is likely where you will stay until your kids get older and you have more time & energy to devote to work. Lets face it, its not just the 2200 billable hours, its 2000+ hours + the marketing/client development meetings, dinners, entertaining and trips out of town that take up the time and don’t count towards any of those billable hours. The practice of law is no longer be a good lawyer, its how much profit are you bringing in & that takes more hours and cuts into more of your home life than practicing law. And to really develop it you have to start early and pour it on in years 7-12 which usually coincides when women are in their prime years for having kids.
Men may face the same problems in a sense but don’t have to deal with being pregnant for 9 mos and all the joys & sickness associated or the issues coming back off maternity leave completely sleep deprived dealing with a newborn. Without a question it sets you back – have a few kids and those years pass by quick & your productivity is affected.
So balance? Have it all? Sure, just depends on what your definition of it is.
What a great post Will. I wish I could hear those missing 10 minutes of you talking. Good on you for having the guts to speak the truth about the realities of law firm life. I would have loved to see the other panelist squirm while you told it like it really is. I am one of those triple failures (failure as a mom, spouse and lawyer) and worked at a firm where people made fun of me for leaving at 6:30 pm everyday to pick my child up from daycare. Women partners were either childfree or had nannies raising their kids and were resentful of my childcare obligations. I was disappointed that the other women didn’t support each other in our endeavors to find the elusive work-life balance. They’d tried to strip themselves of the traditionally female role of mother/nurturer in their efforts to trudge the path to the top, and they expected the same of all of the other women attorneys. Being an involved parent was mocked, not supported.
I finally had the courage to pull the plug and am now at home with my two kids and am thriving in my new role as a committed and involved mom. I couldn’t be happier that I’ve left the law behind me. Thank you for being a voice that validates the decision that I’ve made.
Did you contact the ABA to protest or let them know that you’d out them for erasing and/or misrepresenting your work? If not, you should.
I agree with much of what you have said here. My only real objection is that you have stuck to the traditional notion of work-life balance as a gender issue – with one passing reference to a personal life. Work-life balance seems to be code for family time. I’m not married, but I have as much of a right to that balance as anyone else, and my personal time is no less valuable simply because I am single. The reality is, this is a world many of us choose to be in and the billable hour is something that is not going away in the near future. So rather than simply saying “run away” or “get out” – how about some strategies for dealing with the issue, and how about expanding the dialogue to include the broader issue of work-life, i.e., taking care of yourself in the environment whether or not you have a family?
I am one of those rare people apparently – I love being an attorney. My career will not be spent in big law, but it is where I am at the moment. It seems a common thread to many of your recent posts has been to simply leave the practice of law. I don’t find that particularly useful. Some of your earlier posts – about reviews, about how the culture of law firms creates certain patterns of behavior – have been incredibly valuable. There have been more than a few times in the past where I have read a post and thought, ok, it’s not just me, or where I have been able to look at the dynamics at play in a different way. I look forward to more posts to help me understand the world I am, the people with whom I work, and ways that I can continue to take care of myself without simply giving up.
I totally agree with Lulubelle. I totally respect men and women who decide they want to have a lifelong spouse/partner/companion and raise children and this is the most obvious form of work-life balance. BUT, single people NEED work life balance. Not every woman wants to settle down and have a family and just because she doesn’t do so doesn’t mean she wants to spend all her life inside the office. The same for single men. Gay or straight.
Work/life balance issues are truly gender and marital status blind. Most people today seem to make the unfortunate mistake of viewing these issues as primarily a married woman issue which is completely wrong.
Thanks for publishing this article. At the end of the day, life is a matter of choices and some people will choose to pursue this path for a variety of reasons but younger people need to understand that there is no such thing as work/life balance if you want to be truly successful in a big law firm in the United States today.
This is such an important point that I’m going to comment again in agreement – everyone deserves a life, and we have to decouple “work/life balance and satisfaction” from maternity leave and working mom issues. That explicity states that you only get balance and a life if you are 1) one gender and 2) only for as long as the kids are little. Baloney – everyone needs a life.
I went to a local balance/satisfaction seminar once and heard two speakers who I fear are correct. One thought that we’d never see respect for balance and humane lives until young men started to make career choices based on lifestyle (because as a “women’s issue” it can be marginalized to “those lazy people”). Another thought that there will always be Type A work-identity-driven fools, and as long as there are, there will be professional services and other firms to employ them – so if you are not a workaholic, get out or live on the bottom of the ladder. I suspect that both are correct.
That is so fucked up that the 10 minutes of tape is missing. I *think* I heard them the day you first posted it. So shady.
Lulubelle, I have been a lawyer for 21 years and have yet to meet anyone who loves being an attorney, so you are a rare bird in indeed! I do agree with you that any Biglaw attempts to address work/life balance issues extends only to those associates who have families, and single people are thrown to the wolves.
The problem with being a lawyer isn’t only about the billable hour. It’s about being in a service industry, always being on call, always worrying about the consequences of making a mistake, always being on the “cost” side of the business and not the income/revenue side, if you’re inhouse, and of being nothing more than a billing machine, if you’re in private practice. It’s stress, stress and more stress. Vacations spoiled. Relationships ruined. Friendships lost.
When you’re single, it becomes easier to let the job hijack you, to think that you love what you’re doing because you have clients who need you, colleagues who value your advice, blah blah blah. The fact is, when you finally do come to your senses and leave, you realize you were fooling yourself all along and wasting the best years of your life.
I think The People’s Therapist is doing a tremendous service for people, and wish it had been around when I was a law student or young associate.
Excellent article! Its all a numbers/ dollars game. Gender has almost no bearing on life/work balance here. If fact, I would posit that billable hour is fairly equitable. You bill x amount of hours, you get this many $$ in return. If you don’t want to work the hours, then don’t… but don’t complain that you aren’t earning the $$. Firm’s make money by having lawyers bill hours, that is the product. Want fewer hours for more money: demand a raise, start your own firm, or start a union.
(This post is coming from an attorney who works at a small firm — and stops work at 6pm everyday — whose wife works at a big firm and doesn’t get home until 9pm each night, on a good day. )
Here’s a “cool, clear blast of truth” for everyone. Let’s start talking plain talk. Being a lawyer is hard. Being a partner is hard. Maintaining a marriage is hard. Being a parent is REALLY hard. I don’t think any of that — or even all of them at once — are as hard as working three minimum wage jobs and trying to keep a family together, or being a parent who moves to another country so s/he can send money home, or working a family farm.
Thinking I’m crazy? Don’t. I’m that partner. The biglaw, working mother. And I truly do scoff at 2200 hours a year. Try 3000, plus client development. And I do know my kids. And I have had sex with my husband in the last week – last 24 hours even!
It’s not easy. Yeah, sometimes I think I’m going to go crazy. Sometimes I cry, get angry, ponder retirement. In other words, I have human emotions and when things are hard, I know they’re hard. At the same time, when things are great, I know they’re great, and I have plenty of time to enjoy the amazing experiences my biglaw career has made possible for me. I have time to hug my children, go on ridiculous vacations, help my clients and challenge my mind in a way most people will never do. What I don’t have time to do is sit around feeling sorry for myself. (I also don’t have time to speak on navel-gazing ABA panels, which may say something about why they are so negative.)
So why don’t I feel sorry for myself? Because my grandmother was that farm mom, with 7 kids, 250 cows and assorted sheep, chickens and cats to take care of. No one will convince me I work harder than she did — but she was the most fulfilled woman I knew as a child. Because in my pro bono work I have met those moms who have no means, minimal education, but every bit as tough a work ethic as me – and, I’m willing to bet, a tougher life, working multiple jobs, trying to figure out child care they can’t afford, and often sending money to family members who are even less fortunate than they are. We’re all — lawyers and non-lawyers — just trying to get through the day, and if our heads are screwed on straight we are going to be able to admit to life’s frustrations and also rejoice in all of life’s victories. For me, my victories are pretty sweet.
By all means, people who do not enjoy practicing law or want a different experience should opt out of the law firm track. I’m all for that – among other things, the law firm business model depends on it. But Will’s meme that “working ‘only 2200 hours per year’ makes it impossible to have a family or any sort of personal life” is every bit as untruthful and damaging to young lawyers’ psyches as anything a law firm might say during law school recruiting.
One thing we agree on – it’s not a gender issue. It’s a human issue. This human figured out a way to succeed as a good spouse, parent and lawyer . . . and the men can do it too.
And you like it and aren’t haunted by how the 3000+ hours a year are wasting time in your life that you’ll never get back to do something interesting and meaningful? Well, good for you – that seems kind of strange and unhealthy to me, but good for you.
Your grandmother was probably fulfilled because there was something about the kids, cows, dogs and cats etc. that spoke to her values – something other than making billable hours.
I think part of my success in a law firm is that somewhere in my late 20s I developed the ability to mentally say “fuck you” to the people who snidely tried to make me feel like less of a person. There’s no reason to argue with those people, and you probably have to find a way to get along with them on some level – but more and more, I feel that nothing someone else says will upset my internal sense of equilibrium. Obviously some opinions matter. I care what my husband, kids, family, true friends, etc., think about me. And I need people to buy my workproduct (and need to feel a sense of pride) so I care what people think about my work. Beyond things like that, there is an amazing freedom in just letting go of the bullshit.
Seriously, if there are secrets to my success in biglaw, that is one, and I tell it to associates I mentor. If you are feeling like you can’t succeed at everything, for goodness sake don’t internalize implied criticism that doesn’t really matter. It works in so many situations:
— associate dealing with snide partners
— junior partner dealing with snide senior partners
— senior partner dealing with unreasonable clients
— working mom dealing with insane upper east side stay at home moms
— me dealing with you.
I have worked 2200 hours. Unlike most people, I write down start times and stop times. And put in about 200-400 hours of non-billable time a year, usually because of partners.
And you’re wrong. Either you are extraordinarily bad at math (do you write down stop and start times? I seriously doubt it, based on the partners I worked with) or you have no concept of what it is like to have a family life.
My dad worked ~45 hour weeks as an engineer. Not billable hours, actual hours. And he had tons of time with us. Billing 2200 hours, even though I often work at home, I am not at my own home nearly as much as he was. I barely date or socialize, I don’t go to the gym anymore, my apartment is a mess.
This is not sustainable. And I have seen the hard chargers like you after very little sleep. Just like me, you’re roughly 1/3 as effective after sleep deprivation as you would be if you just went home and slept.
I am so tired of procrastinating type a’s who don’t record their start and stop times and who bill for travel all the time telling me that billing 3000 or even 2200 allows you to have a life. You are just plain wrong.
And btw, I have done hard physical work for 50-60 hour weeks. I’m ex-military, and let me tell you, sleep dep. when you’re doing physical work is way less taxing than sleep dep. when you’re doing intellectual work.
Don’t drink this person’s koolaid. Seriously.
This is why law firms are the way they are: Because someone in charge is always going to step in and tell you (or at least imply) that if it’s too hard, you suck.
The flogging will continue until morale improves.
If it’s too hard, go do something else with your life. More to the point, if you don’t like it, go do something you do like. You shouldn’t need permission or validation – but you’ve got mine anyway.
But I am sick of people saying it’s impossible to have my job and still have a life. That’s an irresponsible generalization. Some people really love being a lawyer. If someone had told me it was impossible the first time I hit a rough spot as an associate, I might have given up — and I think I would have been just as unhappy as you seem to be now. Make your own life choices, but it’s wrong to tell people something is impossible just because it’s hard.
Having It All – I take back my observation that your love of law seems odd – you make some very good points and seem to be succeeding because you are sane.
And I agree, you have to be able to mentally say “fuck you” – that’s how I’ve survived for the most part. Look at the person, see how mentally ill they really are, and write them off. One senior guy in my group RELISHES the disasters and failures of others – he crows with joy for weeks when someone is flattened by life, a team loses, someone has an accident. Yeah, I’m really going to care about his opinion….
Here is my problem – the work is tedious and exhausting. Everything legal I’ve ever done is tedious and exhausting. I do great work and it kills me because I can feel my soul and intellect dying.
How do you get past tha that – do you actually like what you do (I don’t mean to be snotty, some people really do but then about 98% of the rest just do their jobs as responsible professionals but don’t actually “enjoy” PI, employment litigation, tax planning, M&A etc.).
I’m sorry, but I call BS on “Having It All’s” posts. I’ve been both the associate/mother/wife billing insane hours AND the woman working two and three jobs to support my family, and law firm life is much, much harder.
I notice that “Having it All” doesn’t mention what her husband does. Is he a stay at home father? If so, that makes her life immeasurably easier, and probably keeps her children sane – but it still doesn’t mean that it’s possible for her to bill 3,000 hours, do client development and all of the non-billable work expected of partners, and still have the “life” outside of her firm that she depicts.
For one thing, no-one – and I do mean no-one – can function at the level expected of a partner for a full 3,000 billable hours. (Bill Clinton is famous for claiming that he got by on a ridiculously low number of hours of sleep – but if you look at b-tape of him at functions, he’s constantly nodding off in public. I’m not kidding – roll tape and see for yourselves).
My mentor at a top-5 firm – a partner senior enough to know the ropes but junior enough to know that billing expectations had changed drastically since he started practicing – firmly believed that anyone who billed over 2,400 was either a) committing malpractice in some way, because tiredness/overwork/too many cases made it impossible to function, or b) padding their hours in some way – not necessarily intending to be dishonest, but billing a 16 minute call as half an hour, rounding everything up instead of rounding down, keeping track of hours on paper and then being overly “generous” when entering them into the time system. The only way he could see 3,000 hours being even a remote possibility was for partners who traveled several weeks a month on business, for clients who allowed billing for travel time.
And his kids certainly knew his name, but at least he was willing to admit that he was not able to be everywhere and do everything he wanted. For that matter, every other partner I’ve ever talked to about work/life balance – and I’ve spoken to a lot, both male and female – has said the same thing – which is what makes me so suspicious of “Having It All’s” claims.
Bottom line: if you need to bill 3,000 hours to be a partner, someone or something is getting short-changed, and it’s not your job.
Your kids may know you, but that doesn’t really say anything about the quality of your relationship with them. You can’t possibly – particularly if you have more than one child – make it to all the school plays, go on class trips, help with homework, read bedtime stories, and do all of the other basics of parenting on that schedule. It’s simply not believable, even granting that you’re a partner and have more control over your schedule than an associate does.
On those fabulous vacations, you’ve got to be glued to your cell phone and BlackBerry if you’re truly billing those hours – and sorry, but that’s not a “vacation,” nor is it restful in any way. So you’re in paradise for a week – if you’re on your electronic devices, you may as well be in Hoboken as far as most people are concerned.
And sex with your husband within the last week – ok. Clap. Hooray. Sex can be perfunctory and over in 5 minutes. I’d rather spend a couple of hours on that than on client work. It’s certainly better for my relationship. Oh, and we’re able to spend a couple of hours on it consecutively, and more than once a week.
For me, the sacrifices involved in Big Law life weren’t worth it. I saw the effect it was having on my kids, my relationship, and my life. (And for anyone wondering whether they’re the only ones who think Big Law work is uninteresting – you’re not, and it is – particularly for junior associates).
Can I drop money for anything I want now? No. But I can still have what I want if I plan for it – for example, we don’t have a car, or cable tv, because other things are more important to us. We just got back from a fabulous 3 week family vacation in India – try taking 3 consecutive weeks off if you’re an associate at a law firm! – but we didn’t stay in 4 star hotels and saved for that trip for several years.
Do I spend $35,000 per year for private schools? Nope. But my son is at probably “the” best boys high school in the country, for free, something he achieved through his own hard work. And he was able to do the things that contributed to that success…once his mother was available to him after leaving the rat race. He prefers me working two lower-paying jobs than being on-call (and usually at work) 24/7/365 – I have more time for him.
In fact, he has sworn since pre-school that he will never be a lawyer because it’s not a “sensible” job, because you don’t get to see your kids. At 4, he told us he’d rather we lived in a studio apartment and have his mom around more than have his own bedroom.
Oh, and no – my partner doesn’t make huge money, either. But we know what our priorities are. We’d rather be able to actually meet friends for dinner at a diner than have to cancel reservations at Daniel or Per Se at the last minute because of a client demand. We take a big trip maybe once every three years, not several times a year, and we have to save for it.
I don’t have a business card from a “top” that makes everyone swoon when I hand it out – but you know what? That little piece of paper didn’t define me even when I had it, and I sure don’t miss it now. “Having It All” may be the one exception to the general rule – though I obviously think she’s not – but having a meaningful life is much easier outside of Big Law.
This year marks my 37th year as an attorney and I have loved every minute of it. I have enjoyed marriage, child-rearing, friendships, hobbies, travel, community involvement, religious practice, and plenty of “down-time” — “me” time — that is usually spent curled up with a good book or rolling on the floor with dogs. I would do it all again, exactly the same way, in a heart-beat.
I was able to create and sustain this full-bodied, rich and varied life because I was employed as a government lawyer. First as a prosecutor, later as a specialist in municipal employment, construction and water law, I worked 8:30 to 4:30, five days a week, with four weeks of vacation a year. I did not make $700 thousand a year; I made $110. But my accountant recently did some calculations and told me that my fixed-amount pension, which kicked in when I was 55, is the equivalent of having prudently invested more than $2 million over the course of my government service career.
I take on faith that my choice to spend my career in government must have meant some trade-offs, but I have no idea what those might have been. Most of my cases, particularly in the last 20 years after I left criminal prosecution, were against “Big Law,” so it can’t be that I missed out on the intellectual challenges and rigor that I could have found billing 2200 hours a year. And, over a course of a decade, I was the lead attorney in a collection of cases with potential exposure in excess of $300 million, so it doesn’t seem likely to me that I missed out on opportunities to affirm my competence in significant meaningful work. I worked with nice, interesting people, many of whom are still my friends, now six years out and away.
I can’t take any credit for having found myself in the right place to have a great career while enjoying a great life. That was strictly by accident. But I am grateful for having had the wisdom to recognize the value, even back in the 70’s and 80’s, of a work-place that had bigger concerns than fees or income. We grappled with public policy, with how the world should work, and had no interest in how much money corporations were moving back and forth across the table. My colleagues and I knew we had bigger fish to fry and we felt ennobled by our mission.
Wish I could do it all over again, or any given minute of it.
Yep – people are killing themselves to get government jobs. This is exactly why. But nowadays there are about 500 applicants for every open slot at the SEC, FTC and other alphabet agencies.
Thanks for writing in. It’s great to hear from a happy lawyer. Prosecutors always seem to be happy – and government lawyers, too. You hit the sweet spot. Kudos.
With what I know now, 11 years in, I would have gone into a gov job – law firm lawyers are unhappy and you know that your life has no purpose. Why were we such fools to think that firms were either better, or desirable at all?
excellent post and yes, gov’t jobs are the Holy Grail of work/life balance for attorneys. I submitted a post below regarding private law practice and how you can achieve work/life balance there too (although we don’t get the pension!! haha).
I agree with your sentiment entirely. I have a very rich and happy life, making $110K a year. I’m 32 and I’ve been in practice for 7 years, just starting out with a family. But no matter where life and my career take me, I’ve learned early on to keep that elusive work/life balance #1. Salary is way down on the list.
“[P]lenty of women would rather stay at home with the kids than work at a firm. Hell, I’ve worked with couples where the husband and wife fight over who has to do law for a living. They’d both rather stay home and play with junior. Wouldn’t you?”
Amen to that. Why is it such a taboo to acknowledge that having a successful career is not necessarily the high road to a meaningful life?
I worked as a lawyer for six years, and before I went to law school I never anticipated how incompatible practicing law and having a family could be. I bought into all that feminist “you can have it all” mumbo jumbo, but the truth is it’s just not possible without falling short on something. Sure, have kids, but have someone else raise them, at least most of the time. Rack up those hours to become a partner (or just to keep your job as an associate), but forget about doing other things that enrich your life like reading for pleasure and learning new non-legal skills. That’s not the life I wanted. You can have my career, but I’ll take my fertility.
Having It All – give me a break. Do you actually think we are buying your BS? I am a 10th year female senior litigation associate at a regional firm. I’m sorry, there is just no way that any partner can bill 3,000 hours a year + marketing, have a life, happy kids, a happy husband, a good sex life, and be sane. You are obviously one of those partners who feels comfortable billing the client 5 hours for something it took you a .2 to do. There is a male partner doing the same thing at my office. Here’s an example: I wrote a brilliant ten-page opposition to a motion to dismiss —seriously, it was perfection. After I sent the draft, this partner sent me an e-mail back literally 10 minutes later, saying how awesome it was, no changes —file away! Wouldn’t you know, I happened to stumble across the bill in the file a few weeks later –this partner billed 3.5 hours for “reviewing and editing” said motion. You know, the one he spent about 10 minutes looking at (if he even looked at it at all). When this partner was an associate, he was often given accolades for the “23 hour days” he billed to clients. What? Seriously? Give me a f((*#ing break. But, nobody cares because its all about the $$$$$.
So here I sit. I’m likely to be a Senior Associate forever (well, until I get put out to pasture) because I always just barely make my hours, even though I feel like I am constantly working. But, I’m honest to the very core —hardworking, smart, and a really good lawyer. It is so sad that I will never make partner because of these same qualities. Instead, I sacrifice my home life, my sanity, and my own happiness, all because leaving the law makes me a “failure” and I’m stuck. After all the hard work I’ve put in, the missed vacations, the neverending nights, the time away from my kids, the Partners call me “uncommitted to the practice of law.” Isn’t that swell?
When are clients going to wake up to this game? Why isn’t someone writing a blog about how clients are being f(**eck by BIGLAW partners? I actually have a client from Europe who will only deal with women associates (and specifically requests not to work with male partners). Yet another example of how the European mindset is ahead of this Country by at least 50 years.
P.S. I’m just waiting for the day I get fired so I can turn that ass of a Partner into the bar for fraudulent billing.
Yes, I know, “its” should be “it’s.” Whoops.
Geez! I’m not a lawyer but some folks advised me to go to law school when I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life after college. They said it would give me ‘flexibility’ and let me do lots of different things. Yep. Really glad I decided not to take their advice.
If you don’t go into biglaw, it can give you flexibility. So, if you want to work in-house, or on the business side of things, or in small law, you won’t have (as many of) these problems.
The issue is, if you go to a highly ranked school, you come out with lots of debt, so a lot of times biglaw is the safest choice. Also, many new lawyers lack the ability to live austerely enough to pay down the debt–I pulled it off after two years in the public sector, and one in biglaw, but lots of people don’t do that.
Anonymouse is absolutely right. I am a senior associate at a small-midsize firm in Philly (approx. 25 attorneys) and I bill 2000 hours a year. I bill around 40 hours/week, actual man hours of around 50-55/week. I’m making $110k, 32 years old.
Point is, you can make 6 figures (I started at $65K at 25 out of law school) and still have a life. I may never make $200K/year or even $160K/year but I don’t need to. My wife and I (she is an interior designer) are almost done with our student loans and just bought a house. We have plenty of money to save for retirement and enjoy our lives. Being able to have a healthy marriage, looking forward to kids, and living close to my family is worth more than an extra $40K a year. I mean, sometimes lawyers get greedy/crazy over an extra few bucks. Is my life going to be RADICALLY different making $160K versus $110K…I don’t think so.
My point is, you actually CAN be a lawyer and have a life. But you actually can’t “have it all” (see my post below…the numbers don’t lie). You just need to decide what you want and prioritize it. I would implore any young lawyer/law student here to put $$$ low on that list. You’ll make a good salary…many times more than the average salary. Don’t sell your soul for a slightly higher salary.
“Having It All” (HIA) is either lying or committing billing fraud. Why do I get the feeling HIA is some BIGlaw’s recruiting department?
You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to figure out the math. Let’s just assume that the ONLY work HIA does is billing 3000 hours/year (and that HIA isn’t padding hours):
1. 3000 hours/50 working weeks = 60 billable hours/5 days = 12hrs per day.
2. Let’s say 1 hour for lunch, and 2 15-minute breaks for bathroom, etc.
3. That is 13 1/2 hours per day.
4. Let’s say HIA gets in at 7am. If she works at 100% efficiency (billing every minute of every day to a client, don’t sneeze or have a personal thought on anything other than work) with no commute, she’s not done work until 8:30pm every night.
With an hour commute each way, she’s up at 5:30am to shower/get ready for work, out the door by 6am. She returns home at 9:30pm. This is out the door before most/all of the house is up and home long after Johnny and Sally are back from their soccer games.
For this post, I’m going to assume that client dev. only happens on the weekends. If it happens during the week, HIA needs to either get into the office a lot earlier or leave a lot later or both.
So…
5. 1 day per week of client development.
6. This leaves HIA with Sunday to be a Mom, a wife, and a human being.
Of course, this hypothetical excludes the little snafus real life throws at you: sickness, traffic, etc. and completely ignores leisure activities outside of those 2-weeks of “vacation”.
If that is “having it all”, then “Having It All” can keep it. I am mentally saying “fuck you” to that lie/life.
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