Practice Management

We came home early from the Lake Highland area of the Texas Hill Country because my wife became ill.  Not from the area but from some bug she picked up.  Having not gone shopping, my youngest daughter, P.J., and I went to get some Chinese food for lunch before we went grocery shopping.  Her fortune cookie read - Balance is more than simply not falling over.

Now I usually find fortune cookies quaint at best.  I certainly would not plan my life around them.  After all, I remember when I was young that someone came out with misfortune cookies.  But, this fortune I thought was apropos.

And, here is why.  Work-life balance in the practice of law is more than your ability to stay on the high wire for a longer period of time.  It is not your ability to just survive while working through the commute and in the office tower, and away from those other things and people that are important to you.  It is more than not falling on your face.  It is the art of reaching a state of placidness, tranquility, serenity or, I guess, a calmness in life.  It is the point at which you can find untroubledness.

Kids.  Family. Work.  Obligations.  You spend so much time at work, or going to work, or coming home from work, that you feel remorseful for not spending time with your family.  After all, caring for them is more than money.  And, if you do not get that there is something loose.  Then, if you are spending so much time with your family you suffer from a sense of delinquency for neglecting your work.  Throw your parents, your church, your hobbies into this mix and you can and do feel moments of blame, reprehension, dereliction, sin, wickedness and shame.  Oh, you might keep it all bottled up inside, but we have all been there and we know.

Then your actions cause you to feel neglected too, and you sometimes then act out in ways that are truly hurtful, deleterious and baneful.  You sleep with your staff or colleague.  You gain too much weight.  You lose too much weight.  You gamble.  You smoke.  You spend money unwisely on luxury cars and boats and offices and junkets and things in general that do not benefit anybody buy you.  You go boot over tea kettle in debt.  The vices are many and plentiful, but they all emanate from what is really a lack of balance.

But, somehow you think it is all okay.  You think all-in-all your life is in balance because you are still standing.  You have not fallen over.  You are moving forward fast, but your legs are keeping up.  You fail to see, however, that you are getting further and further away from those that should truly matter.  Yes, you are still standing, but where is the balance in that.

At some point some lawyers cannot let go of this life, revolutionize their practices, and work toward a more perfect balance for a lot of reasons.  Denial is part of it.  Superstition plays a big part.  They have not fallen on their face doing what they are doing, so they cannot change.  They have just grown accustom to being destructive.  They have simply grown use to the venom.  It makes them sick, but they no longer have a fear of it because death or complete paralysis is not longer immediate.