Some of you will know the origin of the title of this article. The rest of you will have to look it up.
These famous words convey the notion that when you are facing an existential crisis, you must devote yourself completely to the task of surviving. Other priorities become irrelevant.
Bob told me about his law firm exit interview with Joan from H.R. When Bob said that he was leaving due to the unreasonable workload, Joan was curious, because Bob was one of several associates who had left that department for the same reason. What surprised Joan was that in other departments, the associates were working many more hours, but no one was complaining, let alone quitting.
Coming on three years ago, I wrote about toxic productivity. Among my pithy comments were the following nuggets:
There was once a mid-sized law firm that wanted to develop a specialty in a niche area of litigation.
At the bottom level of that specialty, there were general commercial litigation lawyers who wrongly thought that they knew enough to be competent. One step above, there were lawyers with a decent reputation who gave good, creative, advice and achieved decent results most of the time. And then there were the Tier One superstars. Big reputations, high billings, and in demand for the most difficult assignments.
“So, tell me what you want, what you really, really want “
~ Spice Girls
Have you thought about what type of people law firms really, really, want to hire? I mean, after you drill down past the marketing and human resources departments, and contemplate the type of things that even the Partners are afraid to admit behind closed doors.
I recently attended a party in Toronto for my buddy Billy’s 70th birthday. It was a low-brow event at Dave & Busters, perfectly appropriate for a bunch of guys from what was, when we were young, a low-rent suburb of Montreal. Billy’s children and much beloved young grandchildren were also among the revellers.
Those of you who have read my stuff before may have seen my article titled, “Beyond Pizza and Yoga: Let’s Get Serious About Mental Health for Lawyers,” in which I advanced the theory that billable hour expectations, a dearth of mentoring, cultures of disrespect, and lack of transparency around career paths, all contribute to the mental health crisis in the profession.
When I was younger, and did not have a house or a family or need to fund my children’s education, or want to travel the world, I used to say that if I was a professional athlete who was awarded a contract for some multiple of $10,000,000, you would be able to measure the length of my career in games played, not years.
There is an old story about a young man who, after finally meeting the love of his life following years searching the globe for his one true soulmate, took his girlfriend’s hands in his own one starlit summer evening, stared deeply into her beautiful eyes, and whispered to her in a husky, excited voice: “since I met you, I can’t eat. I can’t drink. I can’t sleep… I’m completely broke.”
One of the values that drove me for a good long time was the importance of working hard and generating many billable hours.
I have concluded that there are three reasons that many lawyers work long hours. Some do it to serve their clients well. Others do it because they are workaholics. And finally, there are those who work all of the time because they are ambitious and they want to earn a lot of money. What all of these lawyers have in common is that they all believe that working hard will make them happy. It does not seem to work for many of them.