Lawyer’s Work-Life Balance!

I am an Advocate, who deals with a diverse area of litigation matters spread over different kinds of laws practising and appearing before various judicial/quasi judicial fora starting from the lowest court of jurisdiction to the Supreme Court along with a passionate team.

I’ve been reading a lot about #worklifebalance and I wanted to share my 2 Paisa (still more than 2 Cents!) on this. I thought and tried to get work life balance for a long time. But then I realised that my approach to it was all wrong.

If my friend called me at 9:00 PM saying “Bro I’m in some trouble with the cops come help please”, I couldn’t reply to them saying “call me during office hours please”. Like instinct wouldn’t let me reply to them like that. I’d be dressed and heading to the police station at 9:05 PM.

This observation helped me realise that whether I liked it or not, I would always be a lawyer 24×7 365 days a year. Being a lawyer is not a job you have. Its a profession that you practice and its a way of life.

This means, unlike other jobs at companies, you have serious ethical obligations to your clients as well as the general public (and yes, if you work for a firm, the firm is the one instructing you to service these clients i.e. the firm is also your client). These ethical obligations are there because your job at the end of the day is “Helping people”.

People don’t come to you cause they want to. They come to you because they have to. Because the law is too complicated for them to figure out on their own (in an ideal society, lawyers wouldn’t exist, there just would be no use for us) or because they are facing legal action that they themselves can’t navigate out of. Being a lawyer is not just a job, it is a service that you provide for the rest of society.

So compartmentalising “Work” and “Life” really won’t be useful as your Work is a part of your Life and vice versa.

What did help me find some sanity was instead making a list of things I wanted to do in a month and navigating around professional life to actually go do them. Be it attending a seminar ,having dinners with friends, watching a film or listening to music.

This gave me a greater sense of fulfilment than actually doing the hard stop at 8:00 PM. Cause I felt that I was also engaging with my life along with engaging with my work and I took pride in both.

I think as lawyers its time we realised (I think Doctors would feel this way as well) that compartmentalising Work and Life is not going to work. We need to focus on a holistic development where we can serve while attending to activities that allow us to engage with the non-work aspects of our lives.

Cause if you’re a lawyer who thinks this is a “9-5 job” then you clearly haven’t understood the gravity of the profession that you are in.

So, In the end what matters is that how much you love what you do.