Practice Management

I went to Mass early this morning and very much enjoyed it.  It made me feel better, and that is good.  I have not had the best couple of weeks.  I cannot get any work completed because I have come to suspect most lawyers are not really working, or if they are their staffs are not working, or certainly their clients are not working.  The promises of Easter might be fulfilled, but the World has been closed for business for the last couple of weeks leading up to Easter as many in the United States believe that Easter is a time for vacation, I guess.

It is the secular Easter, that much like the secular Christmas, shares the same name but does not mean the same thing, as I suspect the same is true with the Jewish Passover.  It is less a time of observance than it is a time for most of the country to engage in some self-absorbed wing-ding for a week or so.  It really does not have much to do with sanctification, devotion, inscription or praise, as much as it has everything to do with self-centeredness, sloth, and rapaciousness, among others things.

It is really, I thing, a left over influence of the Second Wave where there is not so much a work-life balance or blending, but rather a series of drudge, skivvy, toil and slog, followed by personal feasting, leave, disregard, neglect, and slovenliness.  And, it is funny how we all run to crowd the door at the same time to do the latter.  It leaves the business world in chaos and our clients and cases in limbo.  We are really bipolar in our work and personal life habits, when it is so unnecessary.  Our personal lives do not need feast and famine.  We need balance and a blending - a truce if you will - with our business lives.

After Mass every week, and especially so after Easter Mass, I just look in amazement as to how almost everybody bolts for the door after the final blessing.  God forbid that they might not get to IHop before everybody else.  The door way and later the parking lot gets so congested that nobody can move.  Aggravation and anger ensue.  I have always said that you do not want to step in front of a car full of Catholics trying to get out of the parking lot after Mass.  They will flat run over you because they, like too many of us, leave Christian charity and values at the pew from which they just fled.  I just have a seat next to my girlfriend every week and let the brannigan and insurrection pass.  I read, I meditate.  I just have a nice conversation with my wife, and the two of us just let the hysteria fade before we get up, because in 10 minutes the slaughter is over.

But, I tend to analogize this phenomena to the Second Wave order of our work lives as lawyers and in law firms.  We cram ourselves into the offices and firms for a very short time.  We immerse ourselves for a shorter time, and then we flee to  the crowded door, the crowded parking lot, the crowded highway, only to forsake all that we espoused not a hour before.

Forget our religious lives for a moment.  The bipolarity of our professional and home lives are pretty bad.  And, how enjoyable is it really to cram the entire family, push them through the crowded door of life caused by the mass madness and feverishness to recreate knowing that your work is being neglected?

I am not sure what the answer is to this, but I am certain it is not Christmas and it is not Easter -- or the secular equivalent of them. It is trying to achieve a work-live balance or blending as opposed a life of feasting and purging.

Easter is the most important religious feast in the Christian liturgical year.  It is not a couple hours to loath or to take away from your personal excursions.  It is believed by the Christians to be the resurrection of Jesus, which Christians believe occurred on the third day after his crucifixion.  It is linked to the Jewish Passover. It is not a holiday in which you are instructed to leave your practices.

Happy Easter.  Now on Monday, when you take off your black socks, Bermuda shorts, Hawaiian shirts, sunglasses and try to pretend that you really worked the last two weeks, can you return my calls, look at your files and cases, and send me my settlement checks.  That would be nice.