Beyond Biglaw: Embracing Stress
How we cope with stress is an important part of how well we manage our careers and find contentment with our practices.
It is a little strange to discuss stress in a column, considering the security-related goings-on very close to my home, but life must go on. Especially in the face of those who would want to disrupt our ability to work, serve clients, and contribute to our communities. I have no interest in making further comments on geopolitical events or the stress that those events may cause us to feel. Rather, I want to focus on the role of stress in a lawyer’s career, and why successful lawyers seem to embrace, rather than run away from, stress as a means to coax greater performance out of themselves.
As an initial matter, I want to distinguish between stress and anxiety. Someone who does not like speaking in public may get anxious when called to do so. That anxiety may or may not be lessened depending on the nature of the speaking appearance. So someone who is generally anxious about public speaking may feel less so when asked to do so in a less fraught situation, such as in front of their child’s first-grade class. That same person may feel more anxious if called to speak before a group of visiting executives as part of an important piece of corporate outreach. In contrast to anxiety, which can vary from person to person and depending on the situation, we can use a working definition of stress as anything that causes us to feel pressure to perform or respond in a certain way.
The general consensus is that many lawyers lead stressful lives. Whether it is the pressures of handling deals, the emotional toll of counseling broken families in a matrimonial dispute, or the general demands of life as a litigator, stress is an ever-present condiment on the sandwich meat that is a lawyer’s life. At the same time, lawyers are generally considered to have plenty of experience managing stress, due to their having survived law school, the bar exam, and even today’s broken job market for recent graduates. In fact, many clients prize having a lawyer who knows how to deflect and redirect the client’s own stress from whatever legal predicament they find themselves in. Despite the practice lawyers have at dealing with constant stress, however, we also know that the constant stress has broken many a lawyer as well.
Is The Future Of Law Distributed? Lessons From The Tech Adoption Curve
While there is no shortage of scientific literature aimed at cataloging the physical damage that stress can cause, there is also research suggesting that stress can actually be good for us — at least in terms of bringing out our best performance. In fact, just being told that stress is good for you has been correlated with better test performance, for example. As with anything else, however, how we process stress makes all the difference. If stress is something that creates or exacerbates anxious feelings, our performance is likely to suffer. For this reason, successful lawyers place a premium on preparation, as a mechanism to avoid the anxiety-inducing aspects of stress. We all know that when we feel in control, for example, anxiety is lessened. Preparation provides that sense of control, and helps us channel stress in a positive way.
In my experience, successful lawyers embrace stress, and channel it towards increasing their motivation to deliver a good result for the client. Litigation is fun, for example, precisely because it can be stressful, which stokes our competitive fires and makes victory all the sweeter. Experience also helps make stress feel more manageable, precisely because it reduces the anxiety of the unknown, and allows us to draw on our successful navigation of similar prior challenges in our practice. In short, stress can provide the fuel that allows us to treat each matter as critically important, and thereby devote our best efforts to resolving that matter successfully.
Put another way, feeling stress shows that we care. I would submit that the lawyer who no longer or never finds any part of his practice stressful has likely checked out emotionally from the practice of law, or is incompetent. Clients want lawyers who care, especially about their interests. At the same time, clients want assurance that their lawyers will not crack under the stress of a particular situation. For that reason, it is very important for lawyers to be aware of their own stress levels, and recognize whether stress in another area of their life threatens their professional judgment. While not all stress is bad, not all stress is productive either.
Ultimately, how we cope with stress is an important part of how well we manage our careers and find contentment with our practices. At any given point in our careers our stress levels can vary, sometimes widely. Accordingly, we need to know both what our personal stress tolerances are, and also be aware of when those tolerances are in danger of being exceeded. It can also be very helpful to have a trusted colleague or family member who can act as a safety valve and let us know when it appears that we are suffering due to too much stress. While successful lawyers learn to embrace stress, no one wants to be swallowed by the hug either.
Sponsored
Early Adopters Of Legal AI Gaining Competitive Edge In Marketplace
The Business Case For AI At Your Law Firm
Navigating Financial Success by Avoiding Common Pitfalls and Maximizing Firm Performance
Early Adopters Of Legal AI Gaining Competitive Edge In Marketplace
Please feel free to send comments or questions to me at gkroub@kskiplaw.com or via Twitter: @gkroub. Any topic suggestions or thoughts are most welcome.
Gaston Kroub lives in Brooklyn and is a founding partner of Kroub, Silbersher & Kolmykov PLLC, an intellectual property litigation boutique. The firm’s practice focuses on intellectual property litigation and related counseling, with a strong focus on patent matters. You can reach him at gkroub@kskiplaw.com or follow him on Twitter: @gkroub.
Sponsored
Is The Future Of Law Distributed? Lessons From The Tech Adoption Curve
