2 more (surprising!) things that 😊 happy lawyers and 😒 unhappy lawyers have in common
2 (SURPRISING) THINGS THAT 😊 HAPPY LAWYERS AND 😒 UNHAPPY LAWYERS HAVE IN COMMON
"One of these things is not like the other, one of these things just doesn't belong. Can you figure out which one it is, before I finish this song?"
Remember that song? 🎶 Let me give you this list and you pick the one thing on here that happy lawyers and unhappy lawyers do NOT share in common (extra points if you hum the song in your head and finish picking before you're done the song):
1. FEELING UNDER PRESSURE
2. WORKING HARD
3. UNCERTAINTY / LACK OF CLARITY
4. REACTING TO LIFE
🤔
Well, I wrote just two days ago that happy lawyers and unhappy lawyers both feel pressure. So you know it's not that one. Let's run through the others quickly.
2. WORKING HARD
Do you know that joke about lawyers working too hard? I don't. It was too sad a reality to make jokes about. 😞
I was chatting with an associate yesterday who has a billable target of 1920 hours/year. Assuming you NEVER take vacation, that's 7.7 billed hours per day. Personally, I only billed about 70% of the time I was in the office. So that total actually becomes 11 hours a day.
Toss in a 45 minute commute each way and you leave home at 7.30am in the morning every day just to get home at 8pm. Monday to Friday, every single week, without a single vacation day all year. 😳
I know at least one lawyer is reading this and thinking - hey, at least he got his weekends! 🙌
😬
It can really drain you to work that hard. And yet, some happy lawyers work that hard too. And some unhappy lawyers work a lot less.
Turns out working hard (by itself at least), seems to be independent of whether you're a happy lawyer.
3. UNCERTAINTY / LACK OF CLARITY
A significant number of the unhappy lawyers I spoke to just wanted clarity in their lives. Was law for them? Was this firm for them? Should they move somewhere else? The uncertainty ate at them. When I asked about what they wanted most for themselves over the next year, they said:
"Clarity. I want clarity. Over what I'm doing with my career/job."
Got it. Uncertainty is tough and can undermine your happiness. So to make lawyers happy, I need to help them get clarity.
Except wait. A lot of the happy lawyers didn't have certainty either. They didn't have clarity about the future.
But it didn't bother them. 🤔
They seemed content to live in the present. They had some measure of trust and optimism for the future and believed that, regardless of how it worked out, it would work out for the best.
Okay, so uncertainty and an absence of clarity isn't really causative of unhappiness in lawyers either.
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So? Did you guess the fourth option? If so, give yourself a gold star!
Turns out that happy lawyers reacted less to life and were far more intentional (even if it was only on a smaller scale), you're right. But we'll get into that next week.
Do you find anything surprising about the above?
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