An Important Discussion on Setting Boundaries

Hello Everyone and Happy Spring! In furtherance of our wellness theme, I’d like to focus this penultimate column of my presidency on the last topic to be covered in this year’s rollout of the work of our Attorney Wellness Task Force. So far, we’ve covered the physical settings in which we work, the continuing need to tackle biases in our profession and the pros and cons of the billable hour. The last topic in this series on how we can make our work lives better goes directly to the heart of something I’m sure we all struggle with. That is, how we define and set boundaries in our professional lives—a topic that will be covered in an April CLE, from a report authored by Natalie Panzera and the Honorable Karen Beltran.

Their report opens with a vital question—whether professional stressors lead to “quiet quitting,” a phenomenon that has been plaguing many professions, particularly in the wake of COVID where many people found themselves reexamining their personal and professional lives, and in many ways redefining those things that are most important to them. Our work is certainly one of those things, but it’s not the only thing. This begs the question: in a profession where service is everything, when, if ever, is it ok to say no, or at least not right now?

It’s a difficult question, and it’s compounded by the fact that it feels like (and in many ways it is the reality that) the demands of our profession continue to grow. Where technology was in theory supposed to make our lives easier, the unintended consequence is that it has the opposite effect. When I started practicing law (to level-set, this was 1998), cell phones were in their infancy in terms of everyone using and having one, and it was certainly a pre-Blackberry and pre-iPhone world. That meant that you worked in the office, made your calls over the office landline, did what was necessary to finish out the day, and then when you got home, you were able to unplug. This was because there was neither the capability nor the expectation that you were going to continue your workday when you arrived at home after leaving work.

The report on boundaries explains that the reason for quiet quitting is that work is not the most important thing in people’s lives. Many have started to realize that they want freedom to pursue other endeavors aside from their work. Yet, ours is a profession that can tend to penalize people for wanting to have a life outside of work, because when we are unplugged it means we cannot instantly respond to the needs of a client. To be clear, responding to our clients is part of the lifeblood of our profession, but until recently, clients themselves didn’t necessarily expect their lawyers to be “on” and ready to service them every hour of every day.

The problem then becomes that good lawyers get burned out. When this happens to good lawyers who are also the ones in charge of their practices, the effect trickles down because younger employees don’t feel cared about or feel that they don’t have enough development opportunities. This naturally leads to the question of what role boundaries can play in preventing burnout from happening to avoid a deteriorating trend of mental health issues in our profession?

As with everything else, we need to reexamine those norms in our profession which could be causing a deleterious effect. The billable hour is a good place to start (see my last column for much more on that) in that it encourages and rewards the quantity of work performed, but not always necessarily the quality. The messaging is simple—those who work more do better, and this incentivizes us to be available 24/7 not only for client service purposes, but because it means we’ll make more money by working more. The long-term impacts of requiring lawyers to sustain long hours for every year of their profession cannot be ignored. It’s the type of stress that causes good people to leave the profession because it doesn’t feel like there is a comfortable middle ground.

Boundaries can be key to avoiding burnout. The way to get there (at least as a starting point) is to ensure that the workplace models clear communication and that fair and reasonable expectations are negotiated and understood. This applies to the employee-employer relationship, and to some extent, we must learn to apply it to our clients without creating an atmosphere where the clients feel neglected. All of this is of course easier said than done, but I have found that clients learn to respect boundaries when you set them. To be clear, to be successful, our clients really need to know that we will make ourselves available for them as needed, but we can also gently set expectations with clients so that they understand and respect the boundaries we set.

Many clients will understand and respect that not every turnaround of work product is going to be within 24 hours and not every email can be responded to within the half hour. Clients also need to understand that because we are human, with friends, families and non-work responsibilities, there are times when we may not be able to be available (a message that always lands softer when the client knows they can call on a colleague if they can’t get you).

To be clear, none of this is easy. As professionals we need to figure out how to walk the line between being responsive and attentive to the demands of the job, while also being able to unplug and recharge, without sacrificing your client’s faith that you’ll be there when needed. I’d like to commend Natalie Panzera and Judge Beltran for taking the topic on. I hope that you’ll all join us for their virtual lunchtime CLE on April (date and time to be announced). It’s an important topic, and it presents the opportunity for one more conversation to bring us closer to the goal of figuring out how to be healthier and happier in our profession.