PT-LawMom

One of the things that my years in the legal field have taught me is that the people who have a successful work/life balance set boundaries firmly and often, although they know to ramp up when client needs demand it. Life at the Bar had a great post last week reviewing specific steps to achieving successful work/life balance. I really enjoy reading her blog and others because I think it’s crucial to plan ahead as much as possible. If you want balance, you have to pick a practice area that will allow for it. You have to try to figure out how much you’re willing to sacrifice to get where you want to be and know those boundaries going in. It’s just like any career - if you do a great job, they reward you with more work. This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t work hard and make sacrifices. But you should work hard at the right things and make the right sacrifices. That’s why I think it’s crucial to network with attorneys in your potential practice area who will tell you what they would do or not do and how they might have done things differently.

At my last firm, one of my associates practiced in a niche area of law and one of the firm’s largest clients only wanted him on their matters. Thing is, the associate wanted to practice yoga. A lot! So he came in at 8 and left by 6 to teach yoga several nights/week. This was unheard of, although in reality most of the other attorneys rolled in at 9:30/10 and left between 8 p.m. - 1 a.m. so it’s not much different except for the face time thing. Anyway, several years before my associate had tried to leave the firm and go to a government job. It didn’t work out and he came back, but negotiated with the managing partner to work these kinds of hours in exchange for being available when the big client needed him. Yes, he still had to push back some but he had established his worth and that really helped. Now he’s Of Counsel at the firm and still very involved in yoga, humanitarian work, and raising a young son with his wife. He’s a great role model.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 30th, 2007 at 5:51 am and is filed under Work/Life Balance . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.