In-House Counsel

The Road Not Taken: Margin Call

Your work at work is a constant, but the margin is where you can create your own joy.

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happy face smiley face quality of lifeWhere I work, we are obsessed with margin. We ask the same questions multiple times a day: “What’s the margin on that?” and “How much margin did you realize?” We evaluate the value of businesses on this number. Livelihoods are made and lost because of margin. Margin is where we find the difference between success and failure.

Likewise, with our careers, it is what is on the margins that makes our day-to-day existence miserable, tolerable, or enjoyable. The actual work is generally unremarkable, and probably similar in nature and scope across industries and employers. Only occasionally in a legal career can a lawyer change the type of work he does (ask any lawyer who has been practicing for a few years whether he can make the move from litigation to transactional work — the answer is usually “no”). Whether through a cultural change, or a complete job change, the aspect of the job we have the most control over is the margin. The scope of a lawsuit can vary, but the exercise of drafting discovery responses doesn’t vary too much; contracts can differ in scope, but contract drafting isn’t going to change from something tedious to something fun and creative because of that change in scope; and appellate briefs will always have a different trial history to summarize, but writing the brief will be a standard experience. The substance of our jobs isn’t going to be what makes us love our careers. Sure, some people may find more fulfillment in perfecting details than others, and some people may find interacting with other people, whether clients or opposing parties, necessary to feeling like they have made a difference — and those are important aspects of career fulfillment — but they aren’t as immediately impactful as what sits in the margin of the job.

What do I mean by the “margin of the job”? I mean everything that is part of the job that isn’t the job itself: salary, bonuses, billable hour requirements, facetime obligations (whether said or unsaid), organizational culture, a boss that builds you up or tears you down, colleagues you trust, don’t trust, or don’t care about, up-to-date systems that allow you to find documents when you need them, assignments that are interesting or routine, flexibility to work from home, all of these ancillary things that are not actually part of your actual job but are the likely sources of joy, fulfillment, anxiety, or depression about your job.

As law students, we are not taught how to identify what will be important to us in creating a fulfilling career. Furthermore, as legal employment has contracted over the past few years, many lawyers, young and seasoned, feel they can’t be picky about jobs. These days, most people can’t be so picky as to turn down a job because it doesn’t meet their criteria for “fulfillment.” We don’t feel we have the luxury to ask “what’s the margin?” for a job because the only margin we care about is how much we will be paid. The privileged among us may also care about whether an opportunity brings professional prestige with it as well. This leaves us with scores of attorneys who don’t know what can fulfill them through work except for money and prestige.

The stereotype that prestige and money are the most important aspects of a legal career exists for a reason. We are fed this belief from before we enter law school and usually realize how wrong it is after either realizing we would not get either money or prestige from the job, or, even more devastating, after we are granted access to the money and prestige club only to realize that membership to the club is not the life-fulfilling panacea you thought it would be.  

So, what is a lawyer to do? Sit in her office, hating her job, hating what her life has become because she feels disengaged at work, ignored at home, and hopeless at existing? Absolutely not. Law school didn’t teach us how to identify what makes the difference between success and failure in our lives, and a legal career is by its nature a consuming part of our lives, but that doesn’t mean you can’t do it now. What are the things that could make you happier, more engaged, more enthusiastic about what tomorrow can bring? Write those things down. All of them. Then, think about which items on your list could bring about the greatest change in your experience with the smallest transition. In other words, can you make small changes for big results? If so, do it. If you can’t make the change, can you figure out what needs to happen to make that change happen?

Margin is important. It’s the space on the side of the paper that makes things look neat and uniform; it provides space for hole punches; it’s how money is made; it is what makes the difference between winning and losing. Your work at work is a constant, but the margin is where you can create your own joy.

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Celeste Harrison Forst has practiced in small and mid-sized firms and is now in-house at a large manufacturing and technology company where she receives daily hugs from her colleagues. You can reach Celeste directly at C.harrisonforst@gmail.com.

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