Biglaw, Midsize Firms / Regional Firms, Small Law Firms

Reinventing The Law Business: What Actually Is Work-Life Balance?

It's an exercise in futility, or worse, to try to achieve a goal that everyone defines in different ways.

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Bruce Stachenfeld

Bruce Stachenfeld

I keep hearing about “work-life balance.” I hear it all the time. It is respected – cherished – lauded – and overall held up as some sort of Holy Grail goal, and especially in the legal field. Witness the struggles of Biglaw firms touting their newfound respect for “work-life balance” in trying to recruit millennials. And witness smaller firms touting “work life balance” as a recruiting advantage over Biglaw, which is famous for not having “work-life balance”.

But before jumping into this debate, could we take a step back and see if we can even define what we are talking about? Indeed, it is very dangerous when a goal that is not properly defined becomes something that “should be” attained by a law firm. Let me delve here a bit……

First of all what is this mysterious “work-life balance”? Does it mean:

  • Nine to five Monday through Friday?
  • Hard work one week and next week off?
  • Work five years hard to start a career then easy after that?
  • Kill yourself to make partner and then easy after that?
  • Mommy track or, now, daddy track?
  • Non-stressful work?
  • You get to decide when you work and not clients or others?
  • You work less hard when you have kids at home but harder when they are gone?
  • You work super-hard to achieve a goal, because that is cool, but otherwise you hang loose?
  • Different things for different people?

Or 100 other things that I haven’t thought of?

To make the question more interesting, does the same person have a different view of work-life balance at different times in her day, in her week, in her month, in her year, in her career, in her life?

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My personal work-life balance is that I love what I do and I work crazy hard (probably over 70 hours every week). But it doesn’t feel like work to me because I love what I do so much. I am pretty happy almost all the time so I think my work-life balance is just peachy; however, most people think I am completely nuts and crazily “unbalanced.”

So what do we do now? Do we just chuck this goal as a waste of time? Not so fast. There is something else going on here, which is a lot deeper and of great importance, to be sure. I think what people are really talking about when they say the words “work-life balance” is that they want meaning in their jobs.

Is it possible to see the excitement in working literally around the clock to achieve an amazing goal? And is it possible to see the fulfillment in not having your job take over your life? In my opinion, each is completely reasonable depending on the goal, the person, the timing, the frequency, etc. Is it really fair to say that the latter or the former is the “right goal,” when it is only the goal for some people and not others?

So I don’t think a well-run law firm dumps the idea of work-life balance; instead, I think possibly a reframing of the issue is in order, which, quite simply, is whether our jobs are giving us meaningfulness in life and, if not, how we change things to do exactly that.

If you are reading this far, the first step for a law firm is to get out on the table what people really want in order to find meaning in their jobs. I suspect there is an enormous variation (as I outlined above). I would try to get this information anonymously for the most part, as I think people might be embarrassed to be truthful publicly. Does anyone want to stand up and admit that she wants to work around the clock and she just loves it! Or does anyone want to stand up and admit that he really just doesn’t want to work that hard?

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Once that information is on the table, there are all sorts of ways to achieve an initiative at a law firm. These include committees, task forces, third-party consultants, managing partner edicts, management committee policies, etc.

But one thing is obvious to me, and that it is an exercise in futility, or worse, to try to achieve a goal that everyone defines in different ways.

Bruce Stachenfeld is the managing partner of Duval & Stachenfeld LLP, an approximately 70-lawyer law firm based in midtown Manhattan. The firm is known as “The Pure Play in Real Estate Law” because all of its practice areas are focused around real estate. With more than 50 full-time real estate lawyers, the firm is one of the largest real estate law practices in New York City. You can contact Bruce by email at thehedgehoglawyer@gmail.com. Bruce also writes The Real Estate Philosopher™, which contains applications of Bruce’s eclectic, insightful, and outside-the-box thinking to the real estate world. If you would like to read previous articles or subscribe, please click here.

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