THE ONTARIO LAWYERS’ ASSISTANCE PROGRAM

Living Well While Living Large (Firm)

What is it about working in a large law firm that induces many otherwise well-balanced, sensible people to shunt to the side most generally accepted necessities of the average human?  There’s a widely accepted ethos amongst large firm counsel, at least in public, that they’re all grown-ups and understand and even welcome the challenge and sacrifice that comes with large firm practice.  In public, they’ll scoff at ‘New Age’ notions of work/life balance or self-care and tell you that if you can’t take the heat, get out of the boardroom.

In private, however, when partners and fellow associates are out of ear-shot – perhaps at home with a sympathetic spouse or on the telephone with a staff member at the Ontario Lawyers’ Assistance Program - more and more lawyers voice an alternate view.  

The Current Landscape

The practice of law carries with it unique challenges, regardless of the venue.  Most counsel endure:

• billing and collection pressures,
• legal adversaries out for blood,
• competition amongst associates,
• the constant pressure to remain on top of the ever-evolving jurisprudential landscape and above all,
• extreme time pressures.

A recent Canadian Bar Association-Ipsos Reid survey found that 68% of those lawyers they surveyed stated that they have difficulty achieving a balance between their professional and personal lives, with time demands, according to 84% of them, being the greatest challenge.  In another survey, nearly half (48.1%) of supervised lawyers from all practice sectors agreed with the statement: “I feel stressed and fatigued most of the time.”  In large firm environments, this is often exponentially so.  At the admitted risk of over-generalization, most large firms expect of their associates and partners, billing hours, work performance and work time demands on a super-human scale.

To be sure, work/life balance is a subjective game.  Two associates, working at precisely the same pace, may have diametrically opposing opinions of the work they’re doing and what type of ‘life’ that represents.  There exist a significant number of legal practitioners who simply love the work and can’t get enough of it.  Long hours at the office mean doing more of what fuels them.  Others, however, scratch and claw their way through each day.  They can’t wait to get their work done so that they can finally have a moment’s peace – a respite from the grind.  Undoubtedly, the majority of large firm counsel find themselves somewhere in the spectrum between these two poles.

Where You Stand Depends Upon Who You Are

Finding balance in work and life does not involve implementation of a formula of global application.  The only common aspect in everyone’s experience of balance is the utter lack of commonality.  Each person must strike that individuated balance based upon their unique values, preferences, needs and goals.

So where are you on the work/life spectrum?  What values do you bring to the table?  At your core, what’s most important to you?  When you look back at your life and career at age 80, what will that person think of the life you’re now living?  This last question, often referred to as the Future Self exercise, is a telling one.  Lawyers generally find themselves where they are, on a treadmill to somewhere, not entirely conscious of the purpose or ultimate goal of the whole exercise.  A quick way to spring into consciousness about the road you’re on is to check in with your Future Self.  What most people find when they visualize a conversation with that person is that the Future Self has a more expansive, less judgmental view of the purpose in their lives and what truly is fulfilling to them.  One lawyer’s Future Self may tell her to give herself a break and not be so hard on herself.  They may give her a perspective on the relative importance of money versus spiritual or social pursuits.  Warren Buffett, the second wealthiest person in the world, recently told an audience of university students that to him, the true measure of success is the number of people who genuinely care about and respect you when you near the end of your life.

Another lawyer’s Future Self may look at the current associate, working long hours on complex, challenging projects with passion and verve, and reflect on how that pursuit will stand that lawyer in good stead at the end of a long, rewarding career.  The key is that when one strips away the immediate concerns of face time in the office or this month’s billable hours goal, one can more clearly see the true motivation for their trajectory in life.  They can take a longer view, more attuned to who they are and how they want their professional and personal life to unfold.

Ultimately, the key piece of the puzzle lies in knowing yourself.  It strikes some as ridiculous to suggest that a person would not know him or herself.  Who else would know what makes them tick, what excites them, what scares them, what fulfills them, if not themselves?  Furthermore, lawyers are some of the brightest and most creative and accomplished members of our society.  If anyone has the requisite brain power necessary for self-awareness, it’s lawyers.  And yet, when you ask people about the lawyers they know – family members, friends, high school or university classmates, etc. – aside from almost universally being impressed with the accomplishment of becoming a lawyer, those non-lawyers reveal how so many of the legal practitioners they know are unhappy or even unwell. 

This is especially so when large firm counsel are the subject, and ultimately, it is the firm and not just the associate that suffers.  Catalyst Canada, in its recent report on flexibility in Canadian law firms, found that 62% of female associates and 47% of male associates stated an intention to stay with their current firms for five years or less.  Further, both women and men reported the same leading factor in choosing to leave their current firm for a new one:  An environment more supportive of family and personal commitments, as well as more control over their work schedules.  They found that associates with positive perceptions of their firms’ work-life cultures intended to stay with those firms for a longer period of time.  On the other hand, when a firm invests time and money in new associates, only to have them leave at the very time that they are about to reap profits for that firm, the cost is measurable.  Catalyst calculated that the average total cost to a firm of an associate’s departure is $315,000.00.  Clearly, the firms that heed these retention warnings not only foster a healthier work environment, but a healthier bottom line as well.

What You Can Do

In the end, no matter the work environment, associates seeking less stress and more balance and fulfillment can, on their own, take steps to attain this goal.  And the options available are as varied as the types of people utilizing them.  Some of most widely accepted suggestions include:

• eating a well-balanced diet
• not skipping meals
• drinking lots of water
• engaging in regular aerobic activity
• practicing relaxation techniques such as meditation and deep breathing (When you’re under stress, before speaking, take three deep breaths and then exhale.  Deep breathing can be like a ‘reset’ button.)
• reducing or eliminating the use and/or abuse of alcohol, tobacco/nicotine or caffeine
• monitoring the use of prescription drugs to guard against either physical or psychological dependence.
• getting sufficient sleep and rest to allow the body to recuperate.
• learning to say ‘No!” to demands that are too much and knowing where that line is.
• doing something nice for someone else on a daily basis without them knowing about it and without expectation of reward.
• maintaining a gratitude journal or some other regular reminder of the good things in one’s life (Lawyers tend to focus on the negative.  In fact, many are paid to be pessimistic).
• taking regular vacations
• maintaining a strong and active family and social network with frequent interaction
• pursuit of interests and hobbies

Having now read the above list, you’re invited to read it again with new eyes.  Desensitization is an integral part of the human mind’s survival mechanism.  It protects us from overwhelm and over-stimulation.  However, desensitization can also have the deleterious impact of numbing us to obvious truths.  We see so many self-help lists that we stop truly taking in the content.  So, you’re invited to read this list again, for the first time, and really internalize those suggestions that may resonate with you in your life.

Legal Profession Assistance Conference (LPAC) |Commission on Lawyer Assistance Programs (CoLAP) | Lawyers Assistance Program of British Columbia (BCLAP) | Nova Scotia Lawyers Assistance Program (NSLAP) | Law Society of Upper Canada (LSUC) | The Lawyers Assistance Program (LINK) | The Alberta Lawyers Assistance Program | Lawyers Concerned for Lawyers (Saskatchewan) | The Lawyers Professional Indemnity Company (LawPRO) | Law Practice Consulting