Preventing Burnout and Promoting Effectiveness for Attorneys

For a group of professionals who touch every facet of American society, lawyers definitely get a lot of flak! May 6 kicks off National Lawyer Well-Being Week, and I’ve partnered with different types of lovely lawyers in different ways over the course of my career. 

So let me give back a little in honor of lawyer well-being!

When I was a financial planner, I worked quite often with estate planning attorneys. I remember one client who split her time between Washington and California, and when I went to do her financial plan I was utterly puzzled by her estate documents establishing the trust & so forth. 

I got permission from the client to contact her and told her I was preparing the financial plan and had some questions about the estate plan. Once the attorney determined that I was from California, she laughed and let me know why it looked so unusual to me (WA and CA have very different probate laws. Fortunately for WA residents.)

As a CDFA professional, I worked mostly with family law attorneys. I discovered that most of them are extremely dedicated to their work, and those who aren’t dedicated tend to avoid family law at all costs.

Currently, as a productivity consultant, I collaborate with trademark and business attorneys. I can also help pretty much any kind of lawyer who feels like they’re working long hours to stay profitable. (The good news is you don’t have to!)

Step away from self-immolating dumpster fires as clients

I think many attorneys know this, but honestly It’s pretty funny (at least to me) that during Lawyer Well-Being week there’s a trial in NYC featuring a former occupant of the Oval Office who is well-known for being a difficult client.

For one thing, he enjoys stiffing his service providers when it comes to their fees. He did this when he was a slumlord in New York with his father, he cheated vendors and contractors in his failed business ventures, and he did it while he was in the White House. 

Apparently, now he wakes up from his courtroom naps and is angry at his lawyer for not being more “aggressive” in the courtroom towards the judge and jury. Despite the fact that he’s been found in contempt of court for the attacks he himself made. 

He has an image he wants to project and he thinks his lawyer should also act like a mob boss or some kind of tough guy. The problem, of course, is that if the lawyer tries to appease him, he could be breaking the law.

No reputable law firm will touch the former occupant anymore, especially due to his reputation as a cheap and difficult client. If no one else will touch a client with a 10-foot pole, you probably shouldn’t either. 

(This is similar to what some financial advisors face when they’re building a practice: they want to get paying clients but the ones they find at first can be very difficult to deal with. I once refused to introduce an acquaintance of mine to the company where I worked because I knew she’d be a nightmare to deal with as a client.)

As far as I can tell, the lawyer handling his case has ingested a sufficient quantity of Flavor-Aid and is now reaping the consequences. You have to be objective when taking on clients. 

Finding focus time to be more productive

All knowledge professionals and business owners have tasks that are really hard on the brain, no matter how smart you are. When you think about humans as a species, we didn’t have documents to prepare or review (or both) on the African savannah. 

No case law to study, no tax code rules and regs to deal with. I know CPAs and accountants handle taxes, but certain lawyers need to know the tax code inside and out as well.

As a result, these things are taxing (see what I did there) to the brain. It’s really hard to refocus and get back to the arcane legal argument that you were working on if you get interrupted.

That’s why boundaries around who and what is permitted to interrupt you and when are so critical for attorneys. Open-door policies can keep you distracted so it’s hard to focus, which makes everything take longer than it should. Email notifications, whether they’re pop-ups in the corner of your screen or audible, can pull you out of focus easily.

Like other business owners, lawyers who’ve hung out their own shingle can get caught up in the work they’re doing for clients and then find they don’t have time to work ON their business, whatever that might look like for them. Just another reason to make sure that you have time to focus on your work for at least a couple of hours each day.

Door closed, all notifications disabled, and whatever else you might need to be able to focus on important work, whether it’s IN or ON your business. 

“Time out” actually helps you be more productive in the workplace

The idea of giving yourself (and your brain) a break is often a new idea to my audience when I’m talking about productivity. There’s a lot of toxic productivity in popular culture that makes it sound like we should all be waking up at oh dark thirty, working for 14 hours straight, and grinding work out every second of every minute of every day.

The human brain doesn’t work like that. It’s not a computer. In many ways it’s much more powerful than a computer is, though there are things that computers do very well. However, computers don’t necessarily need breaks and rest whereas the human brain REQUIRES those things in order to perform well.

Self-care, or what I prefer to call “recharging”, is not a reward, or an option, or a luxury. It is a mandatory requirement to keep your brain functioning well.

Trying to grind it out for 14 hours, especially when you’re dealing with minutiae as so many attorneys do, is a recipe for exhaustion and burnout. Not to mention mistakes you’ll make that you need to correct the next day. Hopefully before the client sees them.

Working smarter means accepting that your brain isn’t a computer and giving it the unproductive things it needs for top performance: sleep, breaks during the workday to allow your brain to reset, nutrition, physical movement/exercise, time with loved ones (brains need to be social, even introvert brains), and fun activities that don’t involve work.

That may seem counterintuitive, but by giving your brain (which is your biggest asset) the resources it needs to achieve at a high level, you can actually be more productive at work. A nourished, rested brain is a productive one. 

A brain that hasn’t had enough rest, oxygenated blood flow from movement, nutrition, and fun social activities is a tired, error-prone one. Give yours a break and some boundaries so you don’t burn out.

Recap (tl;dr)

Fire your dumpster fire client before he immolates you (or avoid him in the first place) and manage your brain and boundaries for top performance.

I’m not a lawyer myself, but I know what some of the problems are for an attorney who’s building her own business. If you feel like you’re hitting a profit plateau or you’re on the road to burnout, I can help you remove productivity blocks to allow your profit to flow freely. Message me for your free consultation to see if we’re a good fit to work together.