If You Care About Work-Life Balance, You're A Bad Person

What gotten into this guy's bonnet? He pretty much thinks all you people are whining crybabies and he's going to tell you so.

I think Harrison Barnes woke up on the wrong side of the bed.

That’s the best explanation I can come up with for this nearly 3000-word screed against lawyers with the audacity to want a family. His words dripping with bile, the LawCrossing and BCG Attorney Search head excoriates the “work-life balance” mantra for infecting the legal profession and calls out lawyers who want out of their Biglaw jobs as little more than quitters doomed to live out their days on the wrong side of the proverbial tracks. It’s an odd marketing choice for a guy who runs a business based on lawyers who want out of their Biglaw jobs.

What exactly is the point of LawCrossing other than sating the appetite of Biglaw lawyers to dream of chucking their jobs for a better one?

Let’s be clear, there are certainly a lot of people who talk about “work-life balance” who are just whiners. The trick is in the word “balance.” If you think “balance” means a 9 to 5 job and no working on the weekends, then the law isn’t really for you. But much like Justice Stewart’s observations on porn, there is an ill-defined tipping point. It’s somewhere shy of 3500-hour years.

Barnes thinks this is loser talk.

It’s that tired legal industry machismo thing all over again. More so than any other occupation, lawyers are expected to work 24/7 and like it. Families and fun are for the weak. Man up! Barnes lays this tripe on thick, but make no mistake, it’s all propaganda:

While certain legal practices are more demanding than others, if you want to be a professional with the profound responsibility of handling other peoples’ problems and affecting how their lives end up – you sure as hell better be committed to what you are doing.

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This whole “won’t someone please think of the clients” schtick is so disingenuous. Professional commitment is not mutually exclusive with seeking a balanced life. Tons of lawyers lead enjoyable lives. Very few Biglaw lawyers do. That’s the distinction. The problem with the Biglaw workload is not that lawyers are tempted to blow off professional commitments to the client, it’s that they have too many clients. It’s not uncommon to log a full 13 hours serving one client only to look over at your desk to find the next 6 hours worth of work serving your other clients. Most lawyers who talk about work-life balance aren’t trying to short-change a particular client, they’re advocating for more sane work allocation. When someone echoes this “commitment to clients” garbage when talking about workload, they’re trying to con you into thinking that the only way to serve a client is to keep that client’s matter as understaffed as possible. The firm’s margin comes in forcing one lawyer to do the work of three and when anyone dares question this business model, they’re accused of not caring about the client. Neat trick.

Once you strip away the sanctimonious frill, Barnes is making a good point that young lawyers who agitate for more “balance” are usually marked for expulsion. Not because they’re not committed professionals, but because they’re not committed Biglaw associates. As much as firms may want to obscure it, the profession itself and the business of Biglaw are not the same. If you’re not helping the firm maximize its profit — regardless of professional commitments — you’re not the ideal cog in that machine and the firm can and should go out and replace you. Sad but true.

However, there’s a real disservice in feeding the effort to obscure the economics of Biglaw. Not only does it reinforce the stupid Green Lantern theory of the market (the only barrier to success is “not wanting it enough”), but it conflates professional and ethical considerations with a business model — and a business model that could subordinate client service to maximizing profit by forcing bleary-eyed Johnny to review the agreement after 25 hours on the clock when distributing the work to a team would actually serve the client better. That’s a dangerous place for the profession to sit, which is why it’s important to have frank discussions about staffing and hours without all this “professional commitment” façade.

Then Barnes kicks it into another gear when he begins the scare tactics for anyone who dares defect from the Work First model, recounting some stories of Biglaw lawyers who took sabbaticals from their practice and wanted his help looking for a new gig. To say that Barnes has no time to help those people is an understatement:

ARE YOU KIDDING ME? Game over. Good bye. HAVE A NICE LIFE!

These people NEVER, NEVER, NEVER are likely to be hired by a large law firm ever again. No matter how well it is spun. It does not, will not, and cannot possibly work.

It’s not because these people are not brilliant and interesting. It is simply because these people were not 115% committed to working in a large law firm and practicing law.

Law firms have tons of choices of people they can hire. Lots and lots and lots of committed people want to work there. Anything that shows a lack of commitment is very bad.

Why would a law firm take a risk? Why would they want their clients to take this risk with this person? The person is not committed.

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Actually, it’s because Biglaw is a pyramid scheme and there’s never a good reason to bring in a 5th year who’s been out of the game when there’s someone on staff already who can do the job cheaper. The whole design of the system is to hire a ton of low-level people and weed them out. An additional 5th year associate at a Biglaw firm is as useful as a screen door on a submarine.

Again, “commitment” is secondary to cynical business realities. Why is it a personal character flaw that the market doesn’t need laterals at some levels? Could Barnes be deflecting a personal hiring slump by blaming the candidates rather than the market?

Now comes the coup de grace of Biglaw-centrism — characterizing everyone outside a big firm as a failure.

I often hear this line from attorneys that leave a big law firm: “I looked at the lives the partners were leading and did not want to be like them. That is why I left.”

GREAT DECISION! Now you are living in a small apartment, do not make enough money to support a family and do not have a job. Meanwhile… that partner you did not want to be like is doing important work, has a job and is providing for her family and at least working and contributing to society. You stuck by that decision and how brilliant and smart it was!

Most of the people I know who willingly left Biglaw went to work in-house at a client or into government work. Certainly not people draped in tattered rags begging on the street corner. That said, neither of those career paths necessarily earn a fat referral check for a law firm recruiter. Maybe that’s the real message lurking between the lines here — that Barnes is getting sick and tired of some otherwise ideal candidates eschewing lateral placement for a new path. Because this is “jilted lover” level bitterness.

Or maybe he just woke up on the wrong side of the bed. And then cursed himself for his lack of commitment.

The #1 Attorney Career Killer that Attorneys Are Never Taught [BCG Attorney Search]