When the Heat Becomes Unbearable, Make Lemonade

Don't let the heat get to you. Stay cool and lateral.

“Hot enough for you?”

“Boy, sure is hot!”

And on and on.

I have a desire to fulfill a Bryan Cranston-like dark fantasy when people say those phrases. Yes, it is hot enough for me, thank you, and I am now waiting with chewed fingernails to see if our benefit concert for tomorrow afternoon will be rained out due to the oncoming cold front. I also received some good news/bad news on a pro bono case I am working, and my wife is starting to get a bit touchy about my lack of focus on all things domestic. It has been one of those weeks, when all should be celebratory and positive, but the muck keeps dragging me down. But as is my practice, I keep plugging along. Just keep swimming…

I wrote about grabbing the canoe when all goes to heck, but the usual state of things is just too much to do with too little time. Litigators feel this pang in the stomach muscles almost constantly, and for that, I am glad to be rid of that side of my practice. I do not miss the seemingly never ending subconscious residence of the knowledge that some brief is due on a date certain. The feeling that pervades a litigator’s mind like a cancer metastasizing throughout your psyche until it is a permanent resident. Some folks thrive on that feeling, it made me crazy. Literally.

I have learned that I do much better on a relatively set schedule, with predictability of time constraints and all that goes with transactional work. I gained this awareness when things simply got too hot in the kitchen at a past law firm. I wondered to myself if I was alone with the pressure, and I looked with admiration at the others in my department who took it in stride. I wondered if something was wrong with me, or if I just didn’t “get it.” Turns out, I was fighting against myself, and upon deep self-reflection, I realized that I just did not like what I was doing, who I was doing it for, and I needed a change. I was given an opportunity to look for work elsewhere (that’s code for “get out”) and though that struggle was a horrible, no good, very bad time in my life, I landed softy as they say.

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Now, years after the fact, I have the self-awareness to deal with such issues as pressure and politics. Some people are born with an innate talent to tell someone to eff themselves; in a respectful manner of course. And others have the skills to keep themselves from getting burned in the pressure cooker of law practice. Folks like me, well, the light bulb can take a bit of switching on and off before it all makes sense.

If any of you are feeling somewhat overwhelmed, or way under water, you are in no way alone. There are innumerable sources of angst in the profession these days. I get letter after letter asking me how I made the jump from firms to in-house, how I transitioned from litigation to transactional, and what my opinion is of clerking after several years at a firm. My answers are detailed to focus on the particular writer, but the general theme is that if you are unhappy — and not just because you’re on your umpteenth doc review in so many years, but truly unhappy (like, where you can’t stand the thought of going to work again) you have to try to make a jump. And the key to this “jump” is to do it before you are forced to. If you think there is pressure to find a job out of school, try doing it when you’re a fifth or sixth year and you are judged to be “past” lateraling. When you are on the trapeze you are safely floating back and forth. But when you find the courage to let go, you truly fly. Stay cool, and watch out for those storms.

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