Greising: Thoughts on the work-life teeter-totter in the practice of law

Greising

By Robert A. Greising

Life presents choices to us every day on what we should do to fill the hours from dawn until the light goes out at night. It has always been that way. It always will be. We strive each day to plant our feet firmly on both sides of life’s teeter-totter. Like the iconic fiddler in “Fiddler on the Roof,” we seek balance every day among the needs and demands of our family, our clients and colleagues, and our friends and communities.

We may have found it easier during our student days, at least in hindsight, to find a way to squeeze in homework and chores with sports, theater, band or just hanging out. I’m not sure it really was.

In our present life phase, though, the demands seem more challenging, more complex and convoluted, more strident and certainly of more consequence. How do I really justify the necessary trade-offs and compromises to be a good professional, a good service provider, a good spouse/life mate, a good parent, a good son/daughter/sister/brother, a good friend?

The solution to this quandary requires more than managing a to-do list. We must go beyond merely doling out the appropriate time sharing of our psychic and physical reserves. While definitely more than these, the components of the answer include how we respond to these decision points, these tipping points in our life.

I have run into a phrase recently that captures this pretty well — the “Four Fs of Life.” I saw this in the name of a business and in an article about success by Jim Kelly, the NFL Hall of Fame quarterback and cancer survivor. The business owner shared that the name was homage to his mother’s advice to always remember the Four Fs – Faith, Family, Friends and Fun – and to keep them in mind and in balance. Kelly saved the fourth F for Fans. We lawyers seem to have no choice but to add a fifth “F” — our Firms.

This work-life balance conundrum has been a recurring question throughout history — the search for who we are, what we should aim to be and the proper balance among often conflicting goals and pressures. Do we seek perfection as so many moral systems encourage us to do, or is the better quest to seek the golden mean, the balance between the extremes? And is either perfection or the golden mean even possible given the compromises that must be made to satisfy all the people and commitments that compete for our attention?

While our profession is demanding, we also have — or at least usually have — enough flexibility to accommodate the balance we crave. Certainly, I have missed many dinners, experienced many delayed departures, checked my smartphone between my desk and the elevator, too often while on vacation and too late when at home, and attended too many after-work committee meetings.

But I also have rarely missed a school performance or volleyball game, have left early to coach soccer, made every parent-teacher conference (at least I’m pretty sure about that one), traveled on mission trips, taken long walks with my wife and our dogs, debated issues of art at a coffee house, cooked new concoctions for family and friends, have a couple of books going on the nightstand, been to Wrigley Field and Fenway Park in the last couple of years and planted bulbs in anticipation of spring. I also have a dream list of many more want-to-dos that will hit the plan-to-do list sometime.

I believe our firms and colleagues will be better served, and we can better serve our clients, by encouraging and supporting interests outside the office and by recognizing that we will be more effective as professionals if we have found fulfillment and satisfaction at a personal level. Some of that fulfillment will come from professional achievement: developing a “go-to” competency and skill, gaining the respect of our internal and external peers, getting the deal done, winning the hard-fought case with the favorable verdict or catching the grateful glance and smile from the satisfied client. These certainly drive us each day as lawyers. And we certainly work hard to get there and stay there.

But we also are driven each day and called each day to be a friend by lending a shoulder or a willing ear, to be a mentor by offering thoughts on finding a path and moving down that road, to help with homework, to take a slip from the chore jar even before being asked, to serve on that committee for one more term, to say “yes” too often because the cause is worthy, to be our own Don Quixote or to seek our own Camelot.

All the Fs occupy that teeter-totter with me and with each of us. Each shifts its weight every day, requiring some adjustment to get back to balance. Maybe it won’t happen right then, because the pressure from one of them needs to be more slowly relieved over a period of time. Maybe we are the one contributing to that pressure and need to recognize that we should hold back a bit.

And remember on the playground when a friend jumped on our side of the teeter-totter because we had been suspended in the air too long? We should still do that, too.•

Robert A. Greising is a partner at Krieg DeVault. Opinions expressed are those of the author.