Here at Adam Smith, Esq., we cover the array of law firm management issues from strategy and finance to compensation and cultural issues—”an inquiry into the economics of law firms,” to coin a phrase.
But there’s much more to life.
Specifically, there’s your career. Yes, yours, Dear Reader. As they say in New York, “I’m talking to you.”
Writing about this for a time or two, or every once in awhile, is as fitting as for a doctor to observe that your bodily health is the sum of the health of your organs and bodily systems: A law firm’s health is the sum of the health of its members’ careers.
So today we turn for our text to the Harvard Business Review for their just-published “How to build a meaningful career.”
Many people take alarm at words like “meaningful,” especially when their presumably soft and squishy contours are paired with something as deadly serious and unyieldingly hard-edged as “career,” and lawyers are probably among the worst offenders. Bear with me.
The authors start by acknowledging, realistically and humanely, that in our 20’s “We look for things that we’re proud to talk about at a cocktail party or look good on a resume.” But the en garde immediatley follows: “rarely are those the things that translate to satisfaction.” Why not? Doesn’t that lead to the world’s markers of success including title, compensation, and prestige of the firm? Well, yes it can, but consider these other four factors the authors enumerate.
Legacy
What do you want to achieve, and what do you want to leave behind? This can be fine-grained or broad-brush. “Legacy” to you (this is all about you, to repeat myself) may mean having helped 3 or 23 or 56 specific clients in particular situations, or it may mean having built the firm’s Shanghai office or given the pro bono program teeth. Only you know what legacy would matter to you. But you better have one in mind.
Mastery
This isn’t, actually, a psychologist’s buzzword; mastery means excelling in your work at something you love to do, and having your work call for you to employ that skill. You could love to decrypt cyphers but if that’s not in your job description it’s frankly irrelevant. Conversely, you could be a gifted litigator (say), but if the spar and jab of contention don’t fundamentally excite you, best look elsewhere.
“Mastery” is simple at root but of course hard to find for many in real life: You want to be superb at something you care about passionately.
Freedom
Or, as I might re-characterize it, autonomy. Lawyers overindex on autonomy as a personality trait to a fare-thee-well, but I wonder if we’re all aware of the many guises “autonomy” can inhabit. It doesn’t only or always mean free of any managerial or externally-imposed constraints. In our complex—blessedly so!—society, it should to my mind mean something more akin to a productive balance among the many dimensions of our lives: Our profession, our economic/financial situation, our family, our intellectual and spiritual lives, and the many communities we all belong to—of friends, neighborhoods, alumni networks, churches and synagogues, and more.
New York is famously populated by actors, singers, screenwriters, novelists, artists, photographers, and many other creative types waiting tables while pursuing their dream. They have found freedom and autonomy, even if they haven’t achieved their life’s goal just yet.
Alignment
Or, in less oblique terms, whether you feel as though you belong where you work. Do you feel you know what the organizations’ fundamental priorities are—and the priorities of those you work with? Those priorities can be getting rich fast, doing the greatest good for the greatest possible number, serving clients, advancing the cause of knowledge, or any number of things. It’s not what they are but whether they’re your priorities as well.
OK, now what?
A wise mentor told me early on “don’t go to law school. You tell me now you want to make the world a better place, but at graduation you’ll say ‘just a few years of biglaw to pay off my debts’ and then a few years later you’ll say ‘just a few more years of biglaw to pay for this Park Avenue apartment’ and then a few years later you’ll say ‘just a partnership to pay for private school’ and then you’ll be done.” Thankfully I ignored the first part, but took the second to heart…
It’s amazing how peaceful and free from worry one’s little corner of the world can be when outgo is kept rigorously lower than income.
For those whose discernment in such matters lead them to commit a major portion of their life to a single firm (or in some rare cases perhaps a couple), one of the topics of some number of earlier Adam Smith Esq threads overlaps with Legacy in this one: Stewardship. How shall we make our firm a better place for our having lived and worked here? When we look back at the legacy (the specific clients, the Shanghai office, the pro bono program…) we will see the evidence and can judge how well we have done as stewards. It will not happen by a random-walk process.
Very in-depth post. A lot of jobs out there get a fatigue after a few years or realizing things aren’t as you pictured them in law school. There’s some great advice on the bigger picture here, thank you for sharing.