Lawyer Careers - Attorney Careers - Work Life Balance - Burned Out

The easiest way for a lawyer to obtain new clients and boost revenues is to receive referrals from other lawyers. Yet many attorneys finding pursuing referrals from other lawyers either too unpleasant or too time-consuming.

That's where LawRex.com comes in. Using the power of the Internet to create "viral" networks, LawRex can automatically increase your legal referral network to hundreds -- even thousands -- of lawyers. Lawyers who refer cases to attorneys just like you every day.

Visit www.LawRex.com today and discover how our network can provide you with an efficient and effective forum to exchange referrals.

For those wondering what drives professionals such as investment bankers, management consultants, lawyers and other "high octane" professionals who seem to thrive on long hours, constant travel, and high-pressured environments, the magazine Fast Company offers this article exploring the world of the "extreme job."

Read the article

On Wednesday, JD Bliss and its "Attorney Work Life Balance Calculator" were featured on the Wall Street Journal's Law Blog, which covers "law and business and the business of law." See the post about JD Bliss here.

The blog's lead writer is Peter Lattman who formerly worked on Wall Street and as a litigator at a New York law firm. The blog also includes contributions from reporters and editors at The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Newswires.

It’s no secret that there are many unhappy lawyers (over 70% of all attorneys according to the ABA). We often dream of alternative careers, but few of us make a move because, let’s face it, we have little clue about what else we might be good at or what else we might enjoy.

Enter VocationVacations®, which gives professionals the opportunity to "test-drive" the career of their dreams -- without having to leave their existing jobs.  Under the guidance of an expert mentor, VocationVacations clients have spent one to ten days trying out careers as diverse as:

Learn more about how VocationVacations can help you test an alternative career.

A new blog -- Associate Marketing Mentor -- has been launched by legal marketing guru Larry Bodine and his colleague Mike Cummings to help law firm associates develop business development and marketing skills. Among the blog's early posts is a helpful checklist for first through seventh year associates summarizing the various business development initiatives and marketing tasks that associates should undertake at each class level.

Our view is that reguarly devoting time to marketing and business development can help junior associates mitigate some of the tedium that otherwise accompanies the "thankless" tasks typically assigned to them, and otherwise add some "entrepreneurial excitement" to their practice of law.

Go placidly amid the noise and haste,
and remember what peace there may be in silence.
As far as possible without surrender
be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly;
and listen to others,
even the dull and the ignorant;
they too have their story.

The Project for Attorney Retention has recently made available a number of new reports covering work life balance and part-time work policies. They include the following:

"It's important to realize that balance is not about having more free time; it's about living a fuller, richer life that is more enjoyable and more significant. It means putting work in perspective as one of the many things that you do and aspire to be great at, but not the thing that defines who you are. Balance doesn't necessarily mean working fewer hours—everyone, including the CEO, works for others and responds to demands beyond their control—but balance does mean gaining control over when, where and how work is done.

Attorneys interested in measuring the impact of firm billable hour requirements on their personal life should check out our new Work Life Balance Calculator. Briefly, the calculator lets you:

1. Select a billable hour target
2. Specify when you arrive at and leave the office each day
3. Add up how much time you spend on nonbillable tasks
4. See how many hours you need to spend in the office each week to meet your billable hour target.

You can use the results generated by the calculator to:

• Better manage your time
• Fit "non-negotiable" blocks of personal time into your schedule
• Serve as a visual aid to help your spouse or significant other better understand the time demands you face at work.

• values individual initiative.
• provides genuine autonomy.
• moves profit and loss responsibility as far down in the organizational structure as possible.
• aggressively structures compensation to reward individual initiative.
• assumes that individuals are willing to take compensation risks in favor of exceptional compensation opportunities that will be realized with the success of the business.

For those struggling to understand the kinds of environments in which they would thrive, and those in which they won't, taking this test is a good step in the direction of self-exploration.

Attorneys and law firms interested in work life balance issues will want to download the report on work life balance at law firms recently published by Catalyst, the leading research and advisory organization working with businesses and the professions to expand opportunities for women at work.

Entitled Beyond a Reasonable Doubt: Building the Business Case for Flexibility, the report is based on a survey of 1,439 attorneys (638 women and 801 men) at 100 Canadian law firms. The survey covered attorneys' experiences managing their work and personal responsibilities, their perceptions of the working environment at their firms, their attitudes towards the use of flexible work arrangements, and intentions to stay at their existing firm. Additionally, four larger Canadian firms voluntarily participated in a more detailed analytical study designed to more precisely capture the financial and other costs of associate departures.

Some of the interesting findings:

• 84% of women attorneys, and 66% of men attorneys, cited "an environment more supportive of my family and personal commitments" as an important or very important consideration to leave their current firm and work at another firm;
• 81% of women, and 67% of men, cited "more control over my work schedule" as an important or very important consideration to work at another firm; and
• Only 25% of women, and only 44% of men, cited "increased compensation" as an important or very important consideration to work at another firm.

So clearly, for many attorneys, leaving a firm is no longer about the money, but about work life balance.

The study also found that the average cost of an associate's departure to a Canadian law firm is $315,000, before taking into account revenue generated by the departing associate. The breakeven point on associates was 1.8 years (note: in Canada, attorneys must serve at least one year "articling").

Click here to access the full report or an executive summary.

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We weren't planning on sending out a newsletter this week, but as all know, a few days ago a series of powerful earthquakes unleashed massive tidal waves across Asia killing more than an estimated 50,000 people in six different countries.  Villages and resorts were slammed with waves of water, some reaching as high as 20 feet. It seems certain that the death toll will rise and that the destruction will be unthinkable.

Families across Southeast Asia, stricken by disaster during this holiday season, need your help to recover and rebuild - many have lost everything.

Support the organizations recommended by Network for Good (a leading provider of nonprofit services) that are rendering assistance to those whose lives have been devastated by this terrible disaster.