Practice Management

By and large this is true.  You do not have to take my word for it.  Study after study states that the majority of lawyers are not happy with themselves, their professions, or their place in life.

The question is how to reverse this trend?

You have to organize your practice to bring you joy or at least contentment.  In short you have to contemplate seriously and deeply about how your practice is organized, how your life is really being spent, and how you enjoy life.  If one of your desires is to cultivate Easter Lilies hydroponically in used Elmer' Glue bottles under streams of wax paper in your backyard, then to hell with what other people think of you.  You might not be able to make a living at it, but you are not hurting anybody.  But, you cannot seem to accomplish it because you are exhausted from the commute every day, the 2500 billable hours you need to bill and collect a year, and you are broke because of the office staff, and building, and marketing, and ...  You get the message.  As for me, I do not know a Lily from Lantana, but I shut down the whole kit and kaboodle that was my outside office and I moved my big tookis home.  I quit working on the systemization of my office and started working on the systemization of myself.  You would be amaze what you can do once you do not have to drive hours every day, or spend your time managing staff, or writing checks to everybody under the sun.  If in the afternoon I want to veg out, go sit on my back patio and stare at the piney woods for a time I can do it and nobody is the wiser.  I do not have to answer to anybody for it.  I organized my practice around joy and contentment and that just makes you happier in your work.

You have got give yourself permission to be happy.  Hey -- news alert -- the practice of law can be stressful!   But, here is the problem.  When you work around and amongst a contingency, you have to go around pretending not to be happy.  You might say that sounds stupid, but is it?  When you are not by yourself you just naturally feel confined and worried about what others think and how to comport yourself.  It is hard to show you are happy when partners are having a meltdown because of earnings and overhead.  It is hard to show you are happy when staff are having conflicts and personal problems.  It is hard to show you are happy when you are suppose to be serious and appear serious in court.  It is hard to show you are happy when clients feel aggrieved.  You just cannot go skipping down the halls, whistling a happy tune and high-fiving everyone when everybody is acting so cold sober, funereal, serious and menacing around you. It is enough to get anybody down, and the long hours do not help.  When you feel restricted like this most of the time, you fall into a rut that will not allow you to just be happy.  That just wears you down.  When you eliminate most of those eyes from watching you, you can give yourself permission to be happy.  And, most of the time you will be happy when you can get a place where you can be yourself, and where you can be your cheerful, lighthearted and jovial self.  That is hard, hard, hard to do in a traditional practice environment without everyone thinking you not serious, unimportant or trivial.

You have got to quit asking yourself "what if".  What if I had done better in law school?  What if I had taken that summer internship?  What if I had not gone out on my own?  What if I had not stayed home with the kids in their early years?  What if I had decided to practice real estate instead?  That last one is my big question sometimes.  Woulda. Shoulda.  Coulda.  Questioning the direction you have taken is only going to make you miserable because, as my wife like to say, the grass always looks greener on the other side of the fence.  I like the way Erma Bombeck use to say it.  "The grass always looks greener over the septic tank".  That is probably more realistic.  It is not that we all do not question ourselves.  However, the problem is that we are questioning ourselves because our existing practices are not living up to our ambitions.  In short, you work too long, you work too hard, you pay out too much, your overhead is too high, you have too many management responsibilities, and you are not making enough money.  Doggonit!  It is enough to make anybody question themselves.  The answer to easing the "what ifs" is to make your practice more enjoyable and personally profitable (meaning not just high cash flow, but a high percentage of take home money).  This is easier to accomplish by adopting a Third Wave practice of law.  More time.  More money to keep.  More freedom.  Fewer headaches.  Less questioning of your decisions in life.

You have got to put your family and friends first.  Forget this quality time versus quantity of time argument.  How stupid is that?  Friends and family need you when they need you.  Be thankful that you have children, or a significant other, or friends that want to spend time with you away from work.  How many times have you had to rearrange plans or turn down an offer from a family member or a friend because you were chasing the almighty dollar -- meaning you were piled under in work.   This happen precisely because you have to generate these hours to earn enough money to pay the overhead.  You have sold you soul to the company store.  And, if you do take the time off then you are not comfortable because you are just brooding silently to yourself about all of the time you are wasting when you have work to do.  That is not fair to you and it is certainly not fair to your family and friends.  Yet, you cannot be more comfortable until you reduce your commitments and obligations at work.  You cannot do this until you take a meat ax to your overhead.

So I say quit being a miserable lawyer.  Start arranging your practice accordingly.