For Mental Health Awareness Month, The Lawt offers half-day Fridays to highlight the importance of self-care and sustainability of work. I don't know how lawyers who bill 2,000 hours annually make time for basic maintenance (paying bills, doing laundry, grocery shopping, doctor's appointments, showing up for friends and family, fill-in-the-endless-blanks). Add the stress of practice -- pleasing partners and clients, the taxing work of compartmentalizing and cataloguing deadlines and strategies in their "off" hours, and the pressures from their employers to grow business, and it's bewildering Big Law has survived all these years.
Why do lawyers do it?
Because we've normalized it.
They think they have to.
Firms prioritize profitability over people.
Billing that many hours is required to earn a living that justifies their student debt AND live comfortably.
They graduate law school eager to make a difference but unaware that success is not measured by pleasing their clients or making an impact on their community, but by how much money they make their firm.
This comes not from an employee perspective, but as the sole owner of a small business who makes concessions on our margins to ensure we're all fed and living well, as stress-free as possible. We certainly offer unlimited commissions and support those who have lofty financial goals, but it is not lauded as any more important than quality of work and values-aligned leadership. Meet your quota AND represent our values. BOTH are necessary to sustain business and respect humans.
The Lawt makes intentional (and sometimes less profitable) business decisions to ensure the emotional, intellectual, and financial well-being of our employees and colleagues.
And we hope it's contagious.
Comment if have an opinion. But be nice or I will spend a lot of money to tell my therapist on you.
#TheLawt #GrowthOnPurpose #MentalHealthAwareness
