Drinking, Small Law Firms

SmallLaw Problem Drinking

Not that this is something to aspire to, but it's much easier to be an alcoholic in a small law firm.

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It has been estimated that one in five attorneys is a problem drinker.  Some studies have shown the rate of alcoholism in the legal profession to be as high as 24%, which for those of you who don’t do so well at math, is almost one in four. Pressure to please clients, pressure to bill hours, and the adversarial nature of the work are just a few reasons attorneys drink. And long hours: the average lawyer works 60-80 hours a week, and people who work 50+ hours a week are three times more likely to abuse alcohol than those who work less.

But why else do attorneys drink? Same reason everyone else does: when done right, it’s fun! Everyone has some fond memory from college of that night when you and your friends got torn up and danced on a bar or vandalized a house or sang Journey at 3 a.m. in the lobby of a dorm. Some of us have more than a few of those memories, and some of us have no memory at all of more than a few nights! And the more ambitious of us didn’t limit such delights to our college years.

Also, if you’re a problem drinker, you probably have a bunch of other problems to contend with anyway, so you might as well add one more. And did you read the part about having no memory? If you drink enough, you may not even care about your other problems. Yay! Win-win, right?

What if you’re in Biglaw? Some say it’s easy to be a functional alcoholic in Biglaw. But say you want to be a non-functional alcoholic. If that’s your goal, I think Biglaw sucks. Why? Because you have to be in the office all the time. All the time. Have to be accountable. Billing hours. If a partner can’t find you, he’s going to demand your assistant finds you. Who may start asking around, and then pretty soon all your fellow associates will be walking around, sticking their heads in each other’s offices, asking, “Where’s Gary?” (Assuming your name happens to be Gary.)

Importantly, if you’re thinking about joining Biglaw and you aspire to problem drinking, be aware there’s no calling in sick in Biglaw. One morning my administrative assistant called me at home after I had had a particularly boozy date the night before, and in my impaired state, I wasn’t quite quick enough to come up with a plausible excuse for spending the day sleeping it off, so I had to tell her I was on my way in. Shame, shame. I missed my state government days, when part of the package was having a certain number of sick days, and when you used them, there were no questions asked. In all my years in Biglaw, I was only able to call in sick once, and it was [**spoiler alert**] after I had quit drinking. (I ate an entire large spicy supreme pizza 30 minutes after running 15 miles, and it incapacitated me for something like 18 hours.) The partners were kind of okay with me not coming into the office, but were most decidedly not okay with me not being able to work that day. So had I been problem drinking from home, I still would have been expected to do whatever it was I was supposed to be doing that day.

Now let’s look at SmallLaw. If you are in charge of your own practice, nobody can tell you you have to be somewhere. Trust me: nobody whose paychecks you sign is going to demand you come into the office. In fact, they’re probably happiest when you’re not there, so they’re not about to check up on you. Clients may have work that needs to be done and often have egos that need stroking, but if you’re off the grid you can always later claim something came up with another client. Perfect for problem drinking. You can have a three-day weekend every weekend if you have a high enough billing rate and a low enough overhead. Then you won’t have to worry about coming in hungover on a Friday anymore, since on Fridays you won’t be coming in at all! Pretty awesome, right?

If you’re a litigator, there are a lot of kinda-have-to-be-there court appointments, but then after a trial you can vanish like 151 lit aflame. Especially after a win. Lots of days off in a row is wonderful for problem drinkers. I grew up around airline pilots, and some of them would have 10 days off before their next flight so they’d go on a nine-day bender. Nine-day bender!! A friend of mine told me he once woke up after a two-day bender two states over from where he started. (And this was in the Midwest, where waking up two states away is a bit more challenging than in the Northeast.) Where on earth would you wake up after a nine-day bender?? I’m almost curious enough to try it.

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If you only remember one thing from this column, remember this: people who haven’t made the effort to experience SmallLaw as a raging alcoholic have really missed out.

Like me. I quit drinking five years ago today, if you’re reading this on September 11. Sadly, it’s really taken away a lot. No more looking into an empty wallet trying to figure out what happened to all those twenties. No more late nights in the neighborhood watering hole, spending 30 minutes looking at my Blackberry wondering if my reply to a Hong Kong client is sober-looking enough to hit send. (No more Blackberries, but that’s another story.) No more waking up with candy wrappers and empty potato chip bags around me and being confused as to how they got there. And no more singing Journey at 3 a.m., out loud in public anyway.

A few years ago I was in a bar and grill in D.C., and the kid sitting next to me said: “Okay, I don’t know you, but you’re not drinking, you’re having an eggplant pizza, and you’re wearing a suit. I hope when I grow up I don’t become you.” Who can blame him…

Gary J. Ross opened his own practice, Jackson Ross PLLC, in 2013 after several years in Biglaw and the federal government. Gary handles corporate and compliance matters for investment funds, small businesses, and non-profits, occasionally dabbling in litigation. You can reach Gary by email at Gary.Ross@JacksonRossLaw.com.

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