Weathering the Storm of Law Practice

Sometimes practicing law feels like being in the middle of a tornado. The swirl catches us up and takes over our lives. Every client has an emergency. We feel pulled in all directions. Our to-do list stretches out the door and down the street…if we’ve had time to make a to-do list. If not, piles of paper loom from the desk, threatening malpractice if we don’t dig through them and see what’s there. Our email inboxes are backed up. Everyone expects an answer to an email within 15 minutes. Nothing gets done without a deadline and we try for extensions at every opportunity. Pink message slips rain on us and all of them marked “urgent”. We know we’ve missed our son’s last three ballgames and that we really need to make it home on time today. But there’s a board meeting for the non-profit and we’re going over the new by-laws at this meeting. Thinking about a vacation is out of the question with so much backlog—the last “vacation” was actually a work-related conference.

Then some woo-woo business consultant starts talking about meditation and yoga and how exercise makes a difference with stress. Our malpractice carrier reminds us that most grievances stem from neglecting our clients and calling them back promptly is most important.

We could laugh if we weren’t about to cry. We can't find time to have a real lunch on most days so how could we possibly fit in another thing. Meditate for twenty minutes? We’d fall asleep. We work long hours and we still don’t get all the work done. We have to get the work done to earn the money we need to maintain our lifestyle and please our families. We don’t even have time to even think about what is important to us; we’re too busy providing for everyone else.

Sound like a familiar swirl? Is your life out of control? How do you regain control and design your life and your law practice in a way that reflects what YOU think is important? How do you stop the tornado from spinning??? 

In my thirty years of being a lawyer, I’ve dealt with the swirl. In my twenty years of coaching, I’ve helped many others calm the tornado. I understand that it is easier to describe a solution than to implement it. I hope these steps can help.

Make the commitment to taking control of your life. You are the only one who can take control of your life. Realize that it won’t happen overnight. You didn’t get in the mess you’re in overnight and you won’t get out overnight.

Choose one or two activities to start with. If you try to change everything at once, you’re almost certain to fail. You can’t and shouldn’t run a marathon without training and you can’t and shouldn’t expect yourself to gain control of your office, life, calendar, and everything else without some practice either. You are going to have to build some muscle. If you were already good at this, you wouldn’t have the problem.

Begin by taking control of one corner of your world. For many lawyers, a good place to start is to fire one or two of your worst clients. You know who they are. You avoid their phone calls. You get a sick feeling in the pit of your stomach just thinking about having to work for them. When you see THAT name on your appointment book, you want to crawl under your desk and hide. Some of them aren’t even paying their bills. They’re malpractice claims and grievances ready to pounce at any moment. How much energy is an undesirable client taking from your life? What else could you use that energy for? Wouldn’t that client be better served by a lawyer who actually wants to work for them? If you’ve never fired a client, you might be surprised at how freeing it can be.

Another possibility is to take control of your life by getting off the wheel for a day or two. Take no calls or appointments. Lock yourself in your office and do nothing but catch up on the things you’ve been avoiding. MAKE that To Do list so you’re no longer afraid of what dangers the amorphous pile of papers is hiding from you. Schedule these catch-up days periodically.

Or, if you are really adventurous, you could schedule a real vacation. You’d be surprised at how much work can get done the week before you are going out of town! Often, things you’ve neglected for months will get handled before you leave town (and if you stayed in town, it would still be hanging around your desk.)

If you’re into making your fantasies come true, schedule the catch-up week and reward yourself with a vacation at the end. That may not happen if you are just beginning this journey of taking control of your life but it is something to plan for the future.

Put your commitment into existence. Create reminders, structures, and systems to support you in keeping your commitment. Make sure your reminders don’t just get swallowed with the rest of your overwhelming to do list. Do something that interrupts your usual reasons for NOT doing what you know you ought to be doing. Match your structure to the commitment. If you’re taking on the commitment of exercising every day, join a gym or get better yet get a personal trainer and make regular appointments. If you choose to take a vacation, reserve the dates in your daily calendar. Send a letter to the court if you need to communicate your lack of availability for those dates. Get travel information about your destination and place an appealing picture of the beach, mountains, or city on your desk. Take mini-vacations at your desk by looking at the pictures and thinking about what you’ll do, where you’ll go.

Tell someone else what you’re doing and that you need help. Make promises to someone who is going to hold you to your word. Unfortunately, many of us are known for our broken promises to those closest to us. This is an opportunity to start cleaning that up bit by bit by making promises you will actually keep. Yes, it may be unpleasant to be reminded that you promised you’d be home for dinner three times this week and it is Friday and you haven’t come home early even one night. Share your disappointment, admit your failure, and adjust your promise. Maybe three times is too many. Try promising one night until you can count on being there for one dinner then try for two the next week. We lawyers don’t like to ask for help or admit we don’t know it all. Failure is not an option for lawyers. We tend to resent anyone who tries to tell us what to do. But, when our lives are really out of control, we do need the help. Swallow your pride and accept it.

If you absolutely can’t use your staff or a member of your family to help you with getting control, you might want to consider hiring a coach to support you in the challenges. A coach can help you create goals and break down your projects into small manageable tasks. Coaches hold you accountable for your promises and, because you’re paying for their support, sometimes you are more likely to listen. Coaches who are also lawyers will understand the challenges you’re facing and can work with you to overcome them.

Don’t just prioritize. Get clear about what is important to you and get rid of tasks that aren’t. Does your daily schedule reflect what is most important to you? Or are you just putting one foot in front of the other, doing what someone else thinks is most important? That sick feeling you get in the pit of your stomach is information—you’re doing something out of integrity for you….either you’re not doing something you ought to do or you’re doing something you ought not to do.

Identify your values and commitments. What are your five most important values? What commitments are most important to you? How does your day reflect those values and commitments? There’s a poster that says something like “How are you using your precious life?” Does your day reflect what is most important?

Begin to align your actions with your values. Live congruently. Listen to your body and the quiet voice that lets you know what is most important to you, not what you think you should do, not what you feel obligated to do, but what is in integrity for you. Learn to say no when someone asks you to do something that is not a match for how you really want to be spending your time. Every time you DON’T act in congruence with your values, you shut down a part of your Self.

It takes practice to live a life of complete integrity, especially when you find it hard to even get home in time for dinner. As your actions align more and more consistently with your values, your life and your law practice will begin to change and you will find your life and practice aligning with what is important to you. It will become harder for you to do things that aren’t in integrity. This may lead to a dramatic increase in your quality of life and may lead to major changes that were unpredictable.

Which is scarier: a miserable status quo or a major life change?

Design your practice to support your values. Hate public speaking? Don’t be a litigator. Love client counseling? Don’t limit your practice to legal research and writing. What if you hate conflict? Is there a place in the law for peace-making? Yes, there is. Check out my other writings, including two books about lawyers who have taken the peacemaking path.

Expect failures…they are inevitable. We lawyers aren’t good at failure. We often became over-achievers because we couldn’t stand to fail. However, it is inevitable that we will fail at living 100% according to our values and purpose. It is important that we don’t give up just because we sometimes fail. Take a deep breath. Check your structures to see what went wrong, shore them up, and move on.

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J. Kim Wright, J.D. [https://jkimwright.com/] has a very full plate of activities that absolutely delight her and only occasionally overwhelm her. Kim’s career has been focused on humanistic, relational approaches in law. From collaborative divorce practice to restorative justice to values-based contracts (and many others), she has practiced, pioneered, and promoted innovative models and ideas. These approaches have collectively come to be known as Integrative Law.

 Kim is a coach, consultant, trainer, and leader and the author of two foundational books for the global Integrative Law movement. (Both books were published by the American Bar Association) and a contributor to The Best Lawyer You Can Be: A Guide to Physical, Mental, Emotional, and Spiritual Wellness by Stewart Levine (ABA Law Practice Management, 2018.)  She was named as one of the first ABA’s Legal Rebels, “finding new ways to practice law, represent their clients, adjudicate cases and train the next generation of lawyers.”