A big part of life is defining what is truly valuable to us. Some people are hyper-ambitious, always searching for the next brass ring. Other people are relatively happy where they are, and just kind of coast by. Some people define success by tangible symbols: Money, houses, cars, boats, lavish vacations, etc. Others are more focused on inward feelings of accomplishment, happiness, or safety. I’ve grappled with these questions myself, and I think I’ve more or less distilled the things most valuable to me into two simple concepts:
- Freedom
- Time
These are the only truly priceless, irreplaceable things that we all possess. You can lose your house, your car, and every single one of your material possessions. You can gain all of it (and maybe more) back. I have seen nearly destitute people declare bankruptcy and make a nice life for themselves a few years out. People fall on hard times. It happens. Humans are incredibly resilient; we can recover. What you can’t replace, though, is the time you lose or the opportunities and experiences you give up trying to carve your name on Glory Row.
In my experience, extremely ambitious, “Type-A” people are not as happy as people who are more laid back. I know some people who achieved their goal of going to work for BigLaw or other big entities in major cities. Almost invariably, what I always hear from these people is that:
- They’re constantly stressed.
- They’re not happy.
- They don’t feel appreciated or respected; they feel like cogs in a machine, completely replaceable and fungible.
- They are constantly in fear of losing their job or being laid off.
- Their bosses belittle them.
- They never see their family or friends.
- They’d gladly take a fraction of the money if they could just have their lives back.
- They hate practicing law.
Of course, few actually quit. They are addicted to the “prestige.” These are people who are constantly dissatisfied; I’ve been around them their whole lives.
- In high school, they had to have the 4.0 GPA and the perfect SAT to get into their dream undergrad college.
- In college, they had to have the 4.0 GPA and the perfect LSAT/MCAT/GRE/Whatever to get into their dream grad school.
- Once they were in their dream grad school, they had to do perfect once again to get their dream job at BigFirm or RenownedHospital.
- Once they got their dream job, they had to make Partner or Chief or whatever the top position was where they were working.
The only constants are crushing stress and fear of failure and inadequacy. Don’t get me wrong, ambition is a good thing. We all need something that drives us to get out of bed in the morning, or we’ll end up doing nothing but playing video games and watching TV, feeling depressed while we barely scrape by. It is certainly not a bad thing to excel or to want to be the best at what we do, and that’s not what I’m saying. What I’m saying is that this drive to succeed has to be tempered by personal development and doing things that you, personally, enjoy doing. I think due to TV and movies people have this weird idea that there are only two options in life:
- Be a super nerd who does nothing but study or work all the time. Live your life like a recluse with no friends, no fun, and no social activities.
or - Be a super popular party bro-dude (or dudette) who has tons of friends and goes out every night, but who is also an idiot.
This is a completely false dichotomy. You can do both. You can be someone who works extremely hard and is great at what they do, while also maintaining great relationships with people important to you. What good is $250,000 or more a year if you have to work 80+ hours a week, every week, to get it and you never have any time to enjoy it? If you have no time for family, friends, or things that you enjoy, what is the point? You own a $1,500,000 home, but you’re pretty much only there to sleep and change clothes?
Now, of course, I’m not asserting that life should be an endless vacation on the beach. We all need to contribute to society somehow, and it feels good to be productive and earn a living while doing so. If I am preparing for a trial or other major event, I will happily put in the 80 hours a week if I think that’s what is needed to maximize the chances of success. However, those events should be rare, not the everyday fact of your existence. You should not feel like there is a gun to your head every morning when you wake up. Minor annoyance or frustration is normal, soul-crushing depression is not.
For someone with my mentality, solo practice is the brass ring. There is literally nothing else I could envision myself doing. If I was offered a job at a BigLaw firm making ten times what I make now, I would refuse. There is just no substitute for the benefits that solo practice offers. Every other job I have had in my life, I inevitably found myself staring at the clock at a certain time each day. All my work for the day was done, but I had to sit there, chained to the job location, watching precious minutes and hours disappear forever into the abyss. There was no point to this, beyond appearing to be a “dedicated worker” who stayed late and arrived early (incidentally, I have always found this assumption somewhat comical; I would much rather have someone who could breeze in, complete all their tasks quickly, and leave for the day…why would I, as an employer, be more pleased with someone who takes twice as long as everyone else to do their work?).
Now that I am a solo practitioner, the days fly by. It’s absolutely amazing. I find now I am virtually never bored, I am always racing to do things, and the days are filled with productive activities instead of staring brainlessly into a computer screen watching the minutes tick by. If I’m done with everything I need to do at 2:00 or 3:00 PM, I will leave at 2:00 or 3:00 PM. If I don’t even need to come into the office that day, I won’t even come in. If I need to stay late to finish something, that’s fine too. I don’t have to concern myself with keeping up any appearances one way or the other. Since my compensation is not tied to an hourly wage, I have great incentive to complete my tasks as efficiently and as well as I possibly can. I am not concerned with meeting some Managing Partner’s billable hour quota for the quarter so I can get a bonus; I am concerned with delivering results for my clients as quickly as possible since that is the direct path to my business succeeding. Action is what gains profit now, not merely being a warm body in a chair for a certain stretch of time each day.
Just a few benefits of being solo:
- As said, I can come to work and leave whenever I want. No boss is going to get on my case for getting to work 5 minutes late or needing to hurry up with a client matter that isn’t due to be filed for weeks. Obviously, I still need to adhere to things like court deadlines, statutes of limitations, and ethical considerations towards communicating with my clients. These are all important things with serious consequences. Making sure Boss Dude in the corner office gets my memo before his trip to Maui this weekend is not.
- I do have a physical office, but I rarely need to be there. I can do almost everything through a laptop with internet access. If I’m meeting a new client, doing some heavy duty word processing (like an appellate brief), or printing off lots of documents, I will head to my office to focus in a distraction-free environment and take advantage of the equipment I have there. But by and large, I don’t “have” to be somewhere every day at 8:00 AM, and that is tremendously freeing.
- No office politics. I don’t have to worry about getting into anyone’s good graces, or butting heads with an important attorney at the firm who is asking me to do something I consider unethical or idiotic.
- I speak with equals, not grovel to superiors. I don’t have to timidly poke my head into a supervisor’s office and beg forgiveness for wording something in a way that was found distasteful. I make all the decisions. When I talk to opposing counsel or to clients, I speak as one with authority. I don’t have to hem and haw and say I need to check with someone else before I can do something.
- I get to see a case from start to finish. I hear that lots of associates at bigger firms get stuck doing just one thing, like motion practice or discovery. When I get a case, I get to see the whole process. I do the client intake and initial interview, I write and file all the documents, I see the case from start to finish. In a few years time, I think I will be a much more experienced overall practitioner than someone who has just gotten really, really good at writing motions or reviewing contracts.
Of course, for every one of these benefits there is an attendant downside:
- I can come and leave whenever I want, but if I’m not there, nothing gets done. There’s no one else to mind the shop if I’m out of town and the mail starts piling up. If I don’t stay on top of things, a backlog can quickly become unmanageable.
- There’s no office politics, but there’s also no other attorneys to bounce ideas off of. If I need another legal opinion, I’m limited to calling or e-mailing a colleague or mentor, and I am generally reluctant to hassle other busy attorneys.
- I’m constantly afraid I’m going to accidentally screw something up, even if it’s a routine matter I’ve done before. If I do screw up, there’s no one else to blame; the responsibility is mine.
- There are lots of “unwritten rules” in the practice of law, usually specific to locality. Different judges, different courtrooms, different local preferences abound. So far, the hardest part of practicing law to me is not the actual legal stuff, but navigating the unique way that each court runs things. If you are not OK with encountering a whole lot of “sink or swim” situations where you’re pretty much shooting from the hip (despite your best efforts to thoroughly prepare), solo practice is not for you.
- I’m limited in the amount of cases I can accept; I pretty much have to refer out potential clients who contact me with very pressing or emergency issues because I can’t change around everything at the drop of a hat to focus on something new without negatively impacting existing work.
Given that my time and my freedom are the most important things to me, even with these downsides, I wouldn’t have it any other way. I also have a job where I get to help people, often people in dire straits, and that is hugely rewarding at the end of the day. The legal market is looking quite grim for new lawyers these days, but I would encourage almost any new lawyer out there to make the leap into solo or small firm practice if they either can’t find a job or find the practice of law to be tedious and miserable. Done correctly and for the right reasons, the practice of law can (and should) be immensely rewarding, exciting, and fulfilling. No one is going to just give you the life you want to live; it’s up to you to create it.