Health and happiness are the foundation for lawyer work-life balance. Make sure you’re eating well, exercising, relaxing, and having fun. Decompressing after a day of work is more important than you think.
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Health and happiness are the foundation for lawyer work-life balance. Make sure you’re eating well, exercising, relaxing, and having fun. Decompressing after a day of work is more important than you think. Reach out to an “accountabilabuddy.”
Without balance, you’re likely to experience the following consequences: Fatigue. Productivity and clarity dwindle with a lack of proper sleep. As an attorney, those are two things you can’t stand to lose. Lost time. Time spent with loved ones is precious. So is time spent working on your novel, relaxing, traveling, or enjoying a good meal.
Stress is known to have a serious impact on your physical and emotional health. Creating a lawyer work-life balance that works for you is the first step towards better managing your stress. As you develop the right balance, remember to leave room for healthy sleep and calm downtime.
Without balance, you’re likely to experience the following consequences: Fatigue. Productivity and clarity dwindle with a lack of proper sleep. As an attorney, those are two things you can’t stand to lose. Lost time. Time spent with loved ones is precious.
Work-life balance is the perceived equilibrium between work and personal life. Many professionals work longer hours than they should.
It is never easy as a lawyer. But don’t be afraid, you can manage it. The work-life balance for lawyers is different from what is for other professions. Our greatest enemies at work are always the deadlines. In that sense, you need to have a clear schedule to help you achieve a work-life balance. If the law firm gives you enough time to get the task done, you can do it. Otherwise, it would help if you found a different job.
The reason is to become a good lawyer. It would help if you worked hard. You want to put in long hours and have a look at very hard. You want to examine hundreds of books and practice for hours on cease.
The nature of law requires lawyers to work long hours and handle high-stress levels. 69% of lawyers are dissatisfied with their jobs.
However, if you are a criminal defense lawyer, you can have a more balanced life.
Here at Lawyerist, we believe in healthy law firms. Balance is at the heart of it all. Without it, you risk your mental health and general wellbeing.
Stress is known to have a serious impact on your physical and emotional health. Creating a lawyer work-life balance that works for you is the first step towards better managing your stress.
Stress, anxiety, and burnout are a good leader’s kryptonite—you must do what you can to prevent them.
Don’t bring your laptop to the couch. Instead, set up a designated workspace you only use during your work hours. If you can , choose a space that has a door or other physical barrier that allows to you physically shut out work when it’s time to quit for the day. This will help you switch from work mode to home mode.
Take care of yourself. Health and happiness are the foundation for lawyer work-life balance. Make sure you’re eating well, exercising, relaxing, and having fun. Decompressing after a day of work is more important than you think. Reach out to an “accountabilabuddy.”.
Avoid using your phone or other electronics at least a half-hour before bed. The light of electronic devices can delay your body’s internal clock and suppress the release of the sleep-inducing hormone melatonin. So, turn it off.
A calm office is a productive office. Whether you’re a solo attorney or the leader of a small firm, there are a few things you can do to inspires calmness within your surroundings.
The problem is that law school embeds a “no boundaries” mindset about the practice of law. Big exam tomorrow? Big load of assignments? Work until the wee hours, pull all-nighters and take amphetamines to keep going. Then go out for some celebratory, stress-relieving drinks afterward. Associates in large firms know that mentality continues into practice. Thrown an overwhelming load of work on a short deadline? Work until the wee hours, pull all-nighters, start missing family time and personal time, and go out for a drink after work to relax. Well, “That’s just what it takes to succeed in the practice of law.”
Successful attorneys never hesitate to make a “capital investment” in people or technology because the goal is a long-term payoff of happier clients and better, more expedited work. And they never stop the quest for a better market focus and a better client base.
Successful lawyers learn new ways to operate their firms so they can keep building their practices while having (or recovering) a life.
Link Christin recently posted a fine article titled “Shoot for a Realistic Work-Life Balance in 2018.” While he does a nice job presenting practical steps you can take right now, when many firms are “shifting away from unhealthy work models,” I want to examine the root causes of these harmful models and present a process for building a more successful law firm and successful life.
But as the practice grows, the typical response is simply, “I have more work to do, so I have to work harder.” So, the attorney keeps working harder, adds a couple of staff, and now has both more work to do and more people to try to manage. Unfortunately, the attorney typically has no managerial skills, nor a plan for growth, except to “work harder, work longer.”
In most larger firms, associates are still working in a kind of extended boot camp, where it’s “let’s see who can survive the pressure.”. But for many, the alternative — starting their own firm — can be a nastier edition of the same game. Struggling to make a living.
Unfortunately, the attorney typically has no managerial skills , nor a plan for growth, except to “work harder, work longer.”. Soon, working nights and weekends becomes the norm, along with waking up at night worrying about what didn’t get done, and getting calls from irritated clients.
Don’t leave work checking your emails, or on the phone to the client, or listing all the documents you need to get through when you get home. Unless you establish boundaries, co-workers will think it’s perfectly acceptable to contact you at 11pm on a Sunday.
Asking for help doesn’t make you weak. It can facilitate problem-solving and formulate more effective ways of dealing with issues. There are people within your team, or more widely within your firm, whose job it is to delegate tasks and ensure that everyone has a manageable workload—but they can’t help if you don’t communicate with them.
Although it can be tempting to say yes to everything—especially as a junior lawyer—there will be times when you know that you can’t possibly take on any more tasks. It’s better to be honest about this than to say yes and let somebody down further along.
Following on from this, completing a countrywide project isn’t going to be achievable in a single working day. It’s important to set realistic targets.
Instead of procrastinating, set targets for yourself: work for an hour and a half, have a short break, then move on to the next task. It will break up your day and you’ll become more productive.
Stop thinking about how your intern forgot to set the bibliography’s cases in italics in the summer of 2016. If it isn’t furthering your career, just let it go.
Set aside time every day after work to do something you love, or something that relaxes you. Take that ten-minute tea break or read that chapter you’ve been meaning to. It’ll boost your mood.