Driving into the office on Friday this week, I reflected on yet-another failure of my promise to work four, 10-hour days this year. I could have stayed home, it is true, but I wanted easy access to file documents and emails, as well as the counsel of a law partner who understood a certain client’s peculiarities better than I. I had hoped to stay home but I realized during Thursday night’s fitful sleep that my client’s interests were best served by me going to the office.
I thought about what a demanding profession I work in. A law firm’s sustainability is tied to attracting and keeping clients. Lay people are drawn to attorneys they believe can obtain the best outcomes, but that is only part of the story. Clients may hire you because of your reputation and ability, but they will not give you more cases, nor refer you to others, unless you are repeatedly available to them. Setting boundaries on people’s expectations is difficult to carry out in the real world.
I have made my share of sacrifices for clients or for firm management demands. Some were merely irritating – like the time I left a family function in Bellevue on a Friday night and drove to Seattle for an after-hours meeting. The client cancelled the moment I got to my Seattle office. Another time, I took repeated telephone calls from my firm’s tax accountant while on a bike trip in Vermont, while my biking buddies sat and waited for me.
But some incidents carry lingering regret. I missed the first day of first grade for one of my kids due to a court appearance on an insignificant case. The World’s Greatest Dad was happy to stand in for me, but I was not able to watch my son board the bus nor follow him to school to meet his teacher. More painful was missing middle-son Andy’s culminating project speech his Senior year in high school. I left work and arrived five minutes before he was scheduled to speak; however, the presentations were ahead of schedule. When I got there, the door to the classroom was locked to prevent interruptions. I watched Andy from the hallway while I peered through the small, rectangular window in the classroom door. I could not hear him speak, but I saw his calm and confident demeanor as he presented with authority. It was an oracle of what was to come: a young man, ready to graduate and take flight, leaving his parents on the sidelines.
The most poignant event was my mother’s death. I missed being with her when she passed away by mere minutes. Her nurse had called me at the office and reported that my mother had not eaten lunch and that they had taken her to her room and put her on oxygen because she was having trouble breathing. The nurse’s words and tone seemed matter of fact but not alarming. I wrapped up my work quickly and reported to my partners that I needed to leave the office. I wish the nurse had said, “your mother might be dying. You should come right away.” But she didn’t, and I had no medical expertise that clued me to the message behind her words. If I had, I would have dropped everything instantly to be at her bedside. As it was, I arrived and met the ashen-faced caregivers who had been with her when she died minutes before. Such is the terrible, tiny tragedy of one small but very significant life.
I am listening to the 1989 novel, The Remains of the Day, by Kazuo Ishiguro on Audible right now. The book has a complex imbedded theme of an English butler who steadfastly attends to his aristocratic employer despite learning that he is a Nazi sympathizer. In an odd way I relate to the commitment and professionalism of the butler. Butler Stevens’s dignified restraint and diligent service are a source of self-pride but are also necessary for his employment survival. He commands respect through his incessant attention to detail – the tidiness of the kitchen, the orderliness of the grounds, the organization of the staff, the cleanliness of wardrobes, and the neediness of the estate’s residents. Only with age does Mr. Stevens understand the sacrifices that his employment required.
I have no remorse and I do not feel guilty about the commitment my law firm exacts. Starting and building a business requires absolute diligence. I remember talking to a federal bankruptcy judge about it once – someone who had seen countless business failures. I told her it is not enough to staff your law firm with brilliant lawyers and accomplished staff. You create sustainability by single-minded focus, reading emails, returning phone calls, scrutinizing bank accounts and financial statements, perusing the mail, reviewing invoices. You listen to everything anyone says. You process and respond to clients. You plan relentlessly. You watch endlessly. Inevitably you make mistakes, and you learn from them.
In another life, I think I could have been that diligent butler running an estate. Well, except that four, 10-hour day thing would have been out of the question.