In law, you have heard that the pressure is never-ending. The pressure is intense, the time is long, and the requests of clients and partners never appear to end. It is not a surprise that lawyer burnout is a massive issue. You did not spend years of your life studying and taking the bar exam to be exhausted and miserable every day. You desire a challenging profession, not a way to wear out.
I’ve been in the thick of it. Having worked as a paralegal for four years and a junior associate for a year, I have realized that the concept of work-life balance is just a joke in our profession. But I have also come to understand that you can also make actual boundaries and learn how to maintain your energies. This article tells about the easy, practical modifications that do make a difference and talks about what you can do immediately in order to defend your peace and your career.
Why Law is a Burnout Trap (And What We Miss)
The fact is, we must tell the truth: the legal profession is designed to make you feel stressed. It is not the quantity of work or the number of hours but the nature.
The Billable Hour Trap
This is the big one. Time is the measure of your worth. When you have to be paid by the number of hours you clock, there is always the temptation to get more hours. Resting feels like failing. However, here is my reality as a paralegal observing the failure of so many associates aiming to meet a sky-high billable with his or her eyes shut: the pursuit of a high-level goal will always result in poor quality work and complete burnout.
Once I began practicing, I no longer concentrated on the number of hours. I was more concerned with the quality of the hours instead. I got to know that one even hour of creative and productive drafting is equivalent to three hours of frantic, sleep-deprived work at night. The pressure to be always on is something that you can begin pushing back against.
The Client and Partner Demands
Clients are usually experiencing some of the worst moments in their lives. They require solutions right now. Spouses want you to provide an excellent product within a limited time. This gives you the feeling of guilt when you fail to reply to an email at 10 PM.
This is where your subjective intuition comes out. Being a paralegal, I witnessed partners rewarding the associates who produced good work and not necessarily the ones who were up at midnight. Meeting expectations is best achieved by setting realistic expectations yourself and not trying to be a machine.
Practical Tip 1: Scheduling to Protect Your Focus (The Deep Work Block)
The first tip in preventing burnout is to manage your calendar. You must change the way you react to your day and start to design it.
Block the “Deep Work” Time
Drafting a brief, reviewing major discovery, or outlining an argument are the most consequential activities that demand intense concentration. These are also those things that are frequently relegated to small, immediate things.
How it works: Check your calendar. Identify your ideal time of the day (I have 9 AM to 11 AM) and schedule it. Put a check mark on this block as a Busy or Focus Time. Switch off emails and cell phone notifications. It is your high-value work commitment. Let anything come between this time. It is in this way that I have trained myself out of the paralegal practice of being available at all times to carry out a quick job and into the lawyer practice of producing quality work.
Batch Your Smaller Tasks
Email, voicemails, and file organization are required, but they distract your concentration and consume your energy. You should not check your mail every five minutes:
- First in the morning (in the actual emergency).
- Right before lunch.
- An hour before you log off.
You do all your little chores simultaneously, and therefore, you are no longer mentally moving back and forth, which causes tiredness.
Practical Tip 2: The Art of the Automated Boundary
One of the greatest contributors to legal burnout is technology, which can be utilized as a balance. You must ensure that the technology works in your favor as opposed to the reverse.
Set a “Digital Sunset” Rule
Select a time, e.g., 7:00 PM, when work email apps will leave your phone. I began the practice a few months ago. It felt scary at first, but it changed everything. In case of a real-life emergency, the client will call. Assuming that they were just sending an e-mail, it could wait until morning.
Personal Action: I literally delete the work email application icon on my phone’s home screen every night and place it in a folder. It is a physical gesture that sends a message to my brain: the work day is over.
Use Delayed Send
When you have a deadline to meet and you are working late, do not send immediately. When emails appear at 11:30 PM to partners and colleagues, there is an expectation (however unspoken) that all partners and colleagues should be working at that time.
Use the feature of “delayed send” or “schedule send” with your email program. All your late-night work would be delivered at 7:30 AM the following day. This would make your schedule realistic, and no one will feel that he or she is forced to maintain such late late-night habit.
Practical Tip 3: Physical and Mental Health Checkpoints
A long case cannot be won when you are always on empty. A bad lawyer is burned out. Self-care is not a luxury; it is a professional responsibility to take care of your body and mind.
Move Your Body (Micro-Breaks)
You do not have to train to run a marathon. All you have to do is root out the protracted periods of sitting. In my paralegal training, I was taught to spend hours staring at screens, but my first year in law school compelled me to stop.
Try this: Stand up after every 90 minutes and walk for five minutes. Go to the farthest bathroom, go around the floor, or go up the stairs. These little jolts of action clear the fog that accumulates when you are so much engaged. A change of blood circulation leaves you sharper on resuming your seat.
Guard Your Sleep
The complex information is processed by your brain when you are asleep. Lack of sleep will not contribute to making you more productive; it will make you slow and prone to errors. You would never inform a jury that you did it not because you were tired, and thus you cannot afford to risk the same when drafting your documents.
Strive to achieve seven and eight hours of sound sleep per night. Place an alarm clock. Switch off the television an hour before going to sleep. A late night is not always avoidable; however, it must only be an exception rather than the rule.
Practical Tip 4: Communicate Boundaries (The Firm “No”)
Boundaries can only be achieved by articulating them. The only line that people will respect is one that is drawn with a permanent marker as opposed to a pencil.
Set Client Expectations Early
On your initial interaction with a new client, you have to discuss communication. Do not wait till there is a problem.
What to say: Three times a day, I check my email. In case of any real crisis, call my assistant or use the emergency line. Otherwise, a response would be received within 24 hours during business hours.
Such a single sentence gives the client an idea of what to anticipate. It makes you look professional and organized and removes the burden of constant checking on your shoulders.
Practice Saying “No” or “Later”
This is particularly true among the junior lawyers. Work will be delegated, and it is tempting to say yes to everything. And by saying yes to something, you say no to your sleep, your lunch break, or even the quality of work you are already doing.
A partner should not simply agree when he/she give you a new and huge task. Ask two key questions:
- According to my current workload, which of my ongoing projects should be given less priority?
- What is the actual deadline of this, or does it allow any flexibility?
This changes the issue from only your stress to a mutual scheduling issue. It demonstrates that you are not disorganized, and at least you respect the priorities of the firm.
Long-Term Defense Against Total Exhaustion
A weekend of good rest will not heal burnout. It takes long-term and hard work, and a shift in the way you look at your profession.
Build a Trusted Team and Delegate
As you climb the ladder in your career, you need to know how to be dependent on others. This is among the most difficult aspects of being a paralegal to a lawyer. You become accustomed to doing everything by yourself.
Train to give out responsibilities to paralegals and assistants. Give clear directives and move out. Faith in your team leaves your time to work on the high-level strategy that no other person can perform. You cannot win the war when you are still fretting about the tiniest battles.
Find Joy Outside the Office
When being a lawyer is your whole self, the stress at the office is the stress of your whole life. You require things that make you happy, which have nothing to do with statutes or case law.
Find a hobby you love. Go hiking, participate in a book club, volunteer, or begin learning to cook. These activities can be viewed as a very important reset button. They make you remember that you are not an item on the balance sheet of a firm; you are a complete person. You are more energized and have a better view when you are in the office, when you are satisfied with things outside of work.
Use Your Support System
Talk to other people. Locate a mentor, a therapist, or a friend who is also a law student. They are cognizant of the special demands of the work. Stress is a good recipe for burnout. By swapping your worries, you will be able to realize that you are not the only one and that the issues are not beyond control.
Final Word: Protecting Your Career
The legal profession is a difficult one, yet it is also rewarding. The most successful lawyers are those who survive, and you cannot survive without burning out within the initial few years. These measures, such as blocking focus time, establishing digital boundaries, exercising your body, and talking clearly, are not concerned with avoiding anything. They are concerned with working smarter so that you can be in this field long-term.
Start with just one tip today. Perhaps it is a turn-off of email notifications, or perhaps it is a block of two hours of deep work tomorrow morning. Be consistent. This is your profession, and your health is your most valuable asset ever. Protect it.
I also write regularly on Medium. If you’d like to explore more of my work, you can read my articles there.
