EP 510- Work/Life Balancing Act Part One

Episode Notes

Transcript

Announcer:

Welcome to The Jury. is Out a podcast for trial attorneys who want to sharpen their skills and better serve their clients. Your co-hosts are John Simon, founder of the Simon Law Firm Tim Cronin personal injury trial attorney at the Simon Law Firm and St. Louis. Attorney Erich Vieth

Erich Vieth:

Welcome to another episode of The Jury is Out. I’m Erich Vieth.

Tim Cronin:

I’m Tim Cronin.

Nathan Perlmutter:

I’m Nathan Perlmutter.

John Simon:

I’m John Simon.

Erich Vieth:

Our topic today is how much is too much? We’ve been struggling with the right title. We started out with Work-life balance. Maybe that doesn’t cover the whole topic. And we thought, well, there’s a number of people at the table here at different stages of their career. Perhaps I’ll claim and admit I’m the oldest one here. I’m 68 and I’m in a position of

John Simon:

Damn you’re old.

Erich Vieth:

I am. So I’m in a position where I used to work with you, John, and I know how your firm works. I’m more like 30 hours a week. I take only the cases I love to take. It’s a little different. I love working on those cases, but I don’t do as much as I used to do. And then of course you’re running your firm here with high profile tort cases. I’ll let Tim is with,

John Simon:

Well, lemme just make this point right at the beginning. I hope this doesn’t take too long because I’m really busy today. Okay.

Erich Vieth:

I thought this is your idea that we’re all coming from different stages of life.

John Simon:

Erich. I’m kidding. I’m kidding.

Erich Vieth:

I’m leaving. So there’s Tim, what’d you say? You’re 41. 41. 41, right, right in the middle of your career. And Nathan, tell us about you.

Nathan Perlmutter:

I’m 29, so I’m a few years out of law school, but for all intents and purposes right at the beginning of my career. And

Erich Vieth:

You came from another firm somewhat recently, so just mention what you were doing and how that compares to what you’re doing now.

Nathan Perlmutter:

So I came from the medical malpractice defense side and so I was working on exclusively med mal cases, obviously not for the plaintiff. And I think the work-life balance and how attorneys that have been working for defense firms, insurance defense firms like that is an entirely different ball game compared to what’s going on on the plaintiff side.

Erich Vieth:

So John, what does it take to do what your firm does?

John Simon:

I’ve always tried to compare what we do to other professions and I can’t even think of one that’s close. I heard somebody describe it as, it’s like you’re a neurosurgeon or a surgeon and you’re doing a very complicated detailed surgery and you have to get everything exactly right. You got to be extremely careful. You got to think about it in advance. You’ve got to plan about it and be strategic in how you’re going to approach it, except the differences in our profession. Well, nobody’s dying if we mess up, somebody’s

Erich Vieth:

Trying to stop you the

John Simon:

Whole time. And then it’d be like having two other, two or three other very skilled surgeons on the other side of the table trying to undo everything you’ve done while you’re doing it. And the instruments out of your hands, not the instruments

Nathan Perlmutter:

And the surgery takes

John Simon:

Three years and shake the table. I don’t know that there’s really a way to do what we do halfway and I remember one of the professors, he said, just remember the practice of law is not a sponge bath. You can’t dabble in it. You have to fully immerse yourself in the task at hand. And boy, true words were never spoken. If you try to half ass it, I guarantee you you’re going to end up in trouble. You will be in trouble. There’s

Erich Vieth:

Something be said about the career arc when you start out as a young lawyer, you don’t normally have this kind of firm. You have to build it. Over the years, and as we’ve talked about in the podcast many times, you’re always learning something new. So you’re at the stage where you have all the tools, you got the firm going, everything. Why would you pull back? It’s really probably hard to pull back. It reminds me, we once represented a neurosurgeon who as I recall, he went to medical school and then more schooling, more schooling, more schooling. And I don’t think he became a neurosurgeon until he was in his mid forties, early to mid forties. You get to do the stuff you really are working to do until and at that point he was your aged him in the forties and that’s when you’re really revving. So it’s kind of hard to pull back. At that point you finally got where you didn’t want to go.

Tim Cronin:

Increasingly over the last several decades we hear about the importance of a healthy work-life balance, and I agree with that, but it’s not a one size fits all. It differs profession to profession. It differs over the stage of your career and it differs based on what works for you and what you personally enjoy spending your time on. So there may be an idea out there that everybody should only be working a nine to five, five days a week and you have to have your personal time, your family time. And for a lot of people that may be great and for a lot of other people like John for an example, he’d rather spend a lot more time working. And so his work life balance that works for him and makes him happiest is different than it may be for somebody else. And that’s perfectly okay. I mean people who are workaholics and enjoy working and are driven to do it have helped build our industry in our country. To

John Simon:

The extent I get it, I take the issue with the workaholic, it sounds like there’s something wrong with it. Even the term it’s a

Tim Cronin:

Negative,

John Simon:

It’s a negative connotation and it shouldn’t be. And part of it is think about this. If you just look at what the average person spent, how much screen time or television time and let’s be honest, does everybody spend a day a week? It’s things like that to me, if I didn’t like or enjoy what I was doing, you couldn’t pay me enough to have me spend five hours a week doing it. I just wouldn’t do it. And I’m telling you, I just wouldn’t do it. So if you’re in a spot or in a position where you don’t enjoy what you’re doing, I say the less the better. Go find something you like doing, but it’s just a big part of it. It’s not just, well, I’m going to work it whatever it is they put in front of me, I’m going to do that excessively or whatever.

I think it’s a matter of if you are doing something that you truly enjoy doing, as they say, it’s not work. It’s not work. If you enjoy doing it, if you like the challenge and Erich, you make a good point. And the career arc for what we do is tremendously different. It’s a whole different ball game from what you’re doing the first four or five years to what I’m doing in cases. Now. What my day looks like now versus what it looked like 35 years ago is just completely different. And it’s not just that too, it’s the stage you’re at in your personal life too. I think there’s all kinds of different factors that go into whether you are working enough or not enough or whether you’re working too much. That’s really what we’re talking about, right? Whether you are spending time, too much time working, and again, if you like doing it, it’s not work. And overlaying all of that is, and nothing against people who dig ditches, but I mean we’re not digging a hole. And when at the end of the day you put the shovel down and you get back there and the holes there and you keep digging it,

Tim Cronin:

The work is never

John Simon:

Done. The work is never done. And not just that you get into cases and into trials or whatever it is, you can’t just pull back. You can’t say, well, I’m going to take the evening off this evening and you got three experts that you need to cross examine in the case the next two days.

Erich Vieth:

I agree with you that the word workaholic is a pejorative. Is there a neutral term that would describe, is this job all consuming worker? Is it all consuming and does it need to be all consuming to do it at the

Tim Cronin:

Highest level? Some people love that it’s all consuming. I mean, when I’m in the middle of a trial, I love that it is all consuming.

Nathan Perlmutter:

I think you guys have both raised good points about what’s going on in the middle of the trial and at certain stages of certain cases requires that all consuming mindset. And if you’re not having fun or enjoying or getting something satisfactory out of that all consuming mindset that takes 18 hours of your day when the case really, really demands it, that’s when you’re not bringing your full personnel into the boxing ring like what we were talking about before. But at the same time, there are also points where you’re not in trial and then you don’t have to be doing those 18 hours a day. And so it’s important to recognize, okay, when does this require my full throttle? Unless you want to, but when does this require my full throttle and when are we not full throttling?

Tim Cronin:

I mean I’m sure we can all agree people have different burnout rates and points. What you want to avoid for anybody and for somebody that might be 80 hours a week for somebody it might be 40 hours a week for somebody, it might be I can work 80 hours a week for a month, but then I need a couple weeks lower. You don’t want any of your employees to feel burnt out, John.

John Simon:

Not at all.

Tim Cronin:

Not At all. Because not only for their own happiness, but for any business. If your employees feel burnt out, I mean we know they don’t produce the amount and quality of work than others who do not feel burnt

John Simon:

Out. There was a young lawyer who worked with me decades ago and very smart, very hardworking, and I don’t know exactly what his hours were or whatever, but I found out that a couple nights in one week he was working on a brief or whatever. He didn’t go home, he didn’t go home. He worked

Tim Cronin:

In the office next week.

John Simon:

And so when I found out, I went into his office and said that that should never ever happen. Not never. It can’t happen. It can’t happen. That’s not going to happen again. Again, yeah, I was like, go home, shower, sleep, whatever. And part of it was both of the things that you talked about. One, how can that be good for anybody at a lot of different levels. But the other thing too is what the hell work? If you’ve been up for 30 hours, what? You’re not

Tim Cronin:

Putting out quality work for

John Simon:

Your kind of work you’re doing. Yeah, so here’s my point. I’m 63 years old. I’ve been working as we talked about earlier, I got my first job when I was 11 years old. I was in the fourth grade, 11 or 12, and I pretty much think I’ve had a job of some kind or another every day since then, for the last 53 years or 54 years I’ve been employed doing something part-time, multiple jobs and growing up and up until, I would say up until the last couple decades, 25 or 30 years, that was, and maybe it’s generational, it was people who did that, who worked a lot were called people with a good work ethic, a strong work ethic. It was admired, it wasn’t derogatory. And I don’t want to say now it’s over the past couple decades or so, it’s almost gotten to the point where you don’t even mention it because

Tim Cronin:

You’re viewed as an unhealthy person.

John Simon:

You’re unhealthy person. There’s something wrong with you like painters, writers that write novels. I mean, it’s kind of like what we do and it’s a creative process that we’re involved in and it’s like telling a painter, oh my gosh, you’re 63. You should put the brush and the paint down and go sit in a rocking chair somewhere. Not to mention that that painter probably is at the height of their skillset and creative level, but to me what it all boils down to me is one size doesn’t fit all. And if you want to work two hours a week and do whatever, I got no problem with that. If you want to work 80 hours a week, I guess it could get to a point where it’s physically unhealthy for or something and you spending the whole night in the place,

Erich Vieth:

Imagine that you’re a client and you go to firm A and they say, we believe in work-life balance. So we go home at five or six as opposed to firm B and they go, we will go to the Met for you. We will do everything possible that you can have the best result in your case. And you see lawyers there at six o’clock in the evening still wrapping up doing, which one do you want to choose as a client? Six. Well, I’m just saying it’s pretty early. I used to work in government work, I used to work at a state office and at five o’clock it was magic. Everyone stood up and walked out. So

John Simon:

Is it two things? Is it generational? Is that part of it? And also is it professional related? In other words, are we in the type of profession? I’m not talking about being a lawyer, I’m talking about being at a litigation firm or we do it. That’s what we do. We do nothing other than litigate. And if we’re not in trial, we’re preparing for the next trial that have a lot to do with it.

Nathan Perlmutter:

I think I can talk about the generational thing, of course. And for me personally, the most satisfaction I ever get out of work are from those really long days where you accomplish something very difficult. As a lawyer, obviously trial that gives me a work high that I say in quotes that nothing else can really give me. And I go back to before being a lawyer, I worked on campaigns and those were also 18, 20 hour days and those once again gave me the work high that nothing else did. And then I can go back even further to something even more simple and it would be a 12 hour shift at the grocery store, stocking shelves, getting a lot done for whatever reason. For me, that is what brought me satisfaction despite the fact that I am of the younger duration, that’s just kind of how I’m wired and how my brain works. Now, do I think that I could do that every day for an entire year? Absolutely not. But when those moments do call for it and the situation arises, those are the ones that I’m most excited for.

Erich Vieth:

This is reminding me of the concept of flow, FOOW, this psychologist chick Mani High who had this idea that when work is at your high level but you’re still not struggling with it, it’s hard work, but you’re totally in it and it’s not too easy where you get bored, it becomes timeless. And those are the days, I know all of us have had this where you look at your watch and you go, shit, that’s six hours. I’ve been sitting here for six hours. It felt like one hour.

Nathan Perlmutter:

You lose the

Erich Vieth:

Day and it’s joy, it’s joyous. It’s like a joy ride that you’re actually in this thing and it’s timeless,

Nathan Perlmutter:

Right? Yeah. Because when I’m in that, if we’re going to go with what you were talking about, if I’m in that flow state, I can tell that I’m happier just trekking along and grinding through that work that I call it a grind, but it’s enjoyable.

Tim Cronin:

I dunno. I mean I tend to think there’s a little bit of a generational aspect to it, but maybe it’s just because I’m starting to get older and every generation thinks the younger generation doesn’t work as hard as they now.

John Simon:

Wait a minute, are you saying that Nathan is not generationally?

Tim Cronin:

Nathan works very hard. He is unique.

John Simon:

His generation, you have no respect for the work ethic of his generation.

Tim Cronin:

I’m saying the priorities seem a little bit different and mine seem a little different than generations older than mine. So

John Simon:

In two generations nobody’s

Tim Cronin:

Going to be working. Yeah, nobody’s going to work anymore. We’re all going to have robots. It’s going to be perfectly fine, but there’s definitely truth to where you are at in your life. I mean, when you’re first joining in this profession, I mean you kind of have to work very, very, very hard. If you want to develop and learn as an attorney, you got to work long hours in the beginning to learn the law and figure out how to do what you’re going to do. And then when you get to where I’m at in my life where I have three, his one in college, but two, eight and 11 years old, I am obsessive with my work. If I’m in the middle of something important and it’s occupying my mind want to do and my creative juices are flowing is I will work. I’ll get here early, I’ll work till 9, 10, 11, but with my kids the age that they are, I’m going to feel like I’m letting one part of my life down no matter what.

I am going to feel guilty one way or the other. Like, oh, I have this case and I really care about doing this for this client and I want to work on it around the clock, but then I’m letting my kids down or my wife down. And so I have to balance. I’m not going to miss, I may miss a baseball game, but I’m not going to miss more than one in a week. So it certainly depends where you’re at your life. And then once your kids get older, you don’t have that pulling you in the other direction as

Erich Vieth:

Much. I don’t know if it’s just pure generational, but there’s been an awareness that okay, work should be maybe all consuming. They do it well, you should be deeply into it. But then in more recent generations are decades anyway. Your kids should be all consuming. It should be an all consuming interest. Okay, how do you do that? And then, oh, your spouse and taking care of your elderly parents, your community involvement. And so people are piling all these things in this basket and you’re going, well, I’ve got 24 hours in a day and I do want to sleep. How do you do it and how do you do it with guilt? The guilt doesn’t help because it is real easy. Like what you said, Tim reminded me, I wasn’t there enough for my kids. I was working real hard here and doing some other legal related things and I felt like I missed out some things.

Tim Cronin:

I was in a depo last week that I had to travel two hours for last Tuesday in a case of putting up one of my experts and the depo went till 9:00 PM at night and I didn’t get home till almost, and I felt really guilty because my son’s first base game of the year was going to be that night. Luckily, it rained and it got rained out and his first baseball game was two days later. But it worked out. But I mean that’s just something that when you’re at my particular stage in life that you kind of have to deal with,

Erich Vieth:

I Struggled because I was thinking, okay, I’m going to be home as much, so I’ll make it good quality time. And then I found out the quality, you can’t make up for quantity with quality. You got to have enough time there. So it was a struggle for

John Simon:

Me. I think also that one of the things is we are unique in this respect that we don’t create our own schedules. For the most part, the court puts something on your calendar, the other side puts something on your calendar. Things appear on your calendar that when you got up that morning, you had no idea they were going to be there. We had depos in a case we’re working on where as it worked out a week, two weeks notice of taking two very involved day long depositions in a case that I hadn’t been involved in before. The problem with that was the two weeks of time between the time I was told and the time of the deposition weren’t clear, I had full days with things that had already been on. And again, that comes up, you do it. And I don’t think it’s generational at all.

I think it has mostly to do with what are you doing? You were talking about Nathan, great examples of you can’t wait to get to work because you’re working on something that’s worth working on. I started out at a firm that, and that’s probably typical, the typical experience of every new lawyer. I couldn’t get myself to go to work in the morning. Okay. I’d go home honestly and pace and think to myself, Jesus, there’s got to be something else because I can’t keep going to work. This is not time well spent. Yeah, I just can’t get myself to go to work and put in the time versus where if the work is meaningful and rewarding, I think that changes the game. The other thing that’s really different and unique to what we do is it’s very result oriented. It’s like going up to the batter’s box. It’s like being a relief pitcher. You’re going to win or you’re going to lose. It’s a motion, it’s a trial. Life keeps score for us and whether you put in a good effort or whatever, and so it’s not like, well,

Erich Vieth:

And it’s public. Yeah, it’s public. The victory’s hand to losses

John Simon:

Are public, and so you’re being put on the spot literally every time you walk into the Courtroom, every time you walk into a deposition, a case literally, as you guys know, can turn on one answer to one question. And when we’re handling cases that are pretty high stakes, all of that makes it way more rewarding and satisfying. But the flip side too is because it is so result focused, it’s another motivator that you want to be as completely prepared as you can be.

Nathan Perlmutter:

And I think you raised an interesting point about when you’re doing work that’s meaningful and rewarding, you want to go in and do that work and you want be excited for going. You are excited going in and doing that work. And maybe part of the generational issue, me being raised, me growing up, my friends, my peers, the other students in my class, we all felt like we were destined to travel on this path through high school and into college and said, you have to get this degree and then do this type of job and hold down so you can provide for your family. And maybe part of this generational issue is that people are doing stuff that they don’t find meaningful and rewarding simply because they’re following the motions that they thought they were supposed to instead of carving out their own path and doing something that would actually feel meaningful and rewarding to them. And that’s led to this generational gap and not being as motivated to work and looking more toward that work-life balance. I

John Simon:

Agree with you, although I can see it doesn’t matter. 40 years ago if you were doing something that wasn’t rewarding, I think you’re still not going to be as motivated to come to work and do it.

Nathan Perlmutter:

One of the things that I always look for and whether it’s another associate I’m working with or a LawClerk is something so simple as whether they care. Do they care about the cases they work on? Do they care about how good of a job they’re doing or are they simply just putting in the time that they feel that they’re supposed to? And if you’re not doing something that you love, it is hard to care about it, and therefore you are more concerned about putting in too much time and overworking yourself rather than putting in the time you think is appropriate for something that you’re passionate about.

Erich Vieth:

There is thing that is about the being on a plaintiff’s side that helps with that. At least three of us. I don’t think, Tim, you weren’t in defense law ever, right?

Tim Cronin:

Just when I clerked while I was in law school, I worked at one firm that did almost all defense work and another one that did some plaintiff mostly defense. So

Erich Vieth:

I had a good dose of it. And the rest of us have also, and my experience is that sometimes there was this, it seemed like a slow motion, almost glacial committee permeated culture of trying to make sure you’re satisfying the person above you and the person above them and making sure there’s these calls that seem to go way too long. And here the goal is

Tim Cronin:

The hours not the product.

Erich Vieth:

Well, it wasn’t like you’re trying to generate hours. It’s like they wanted to have these meetings and I think everyone wanted to make sure that no one’s going to second guess ’em because there was a hierarchy that went high and deep

John Simon:

Called institutionalized

Erich Vieth:

Paranoia. Maybe that’s it. And here, if you had an idea, you just did it. Or maybe you walked down the hall and said, John, I’ve got this idea. It’s not the normal thing we do. What do you think? And we do it. That’s it. And that gave you this autonomy and this, it just became more lively and more interesting.

John Simon:

Perfect example. There’s no defined path for anything that we’re doing or any case meaning if you put in a little extra or think about it a little more or approach it from a different angle, you’ll come up with something completely unique and new that may end up being decisive in the case. We’re in an environment where we’re paid to think that’s what we do. We’re problem solvers. That’s how we’re trained. That’s what we do. And so it’s not a matter of, okay, I want to review these six depos and I can hit the road at point A. I want to get to point B. Here are the 15 obstacles that have been thrown in my path. What am I going to do? How am I going to get around them? How am I going to get over? And that’s mostly what we do. We think of an approach or changing our strategy or abandoning a particular legal theory and adopting another one.

It may have to do with agency or venue or who the parties are. We’re always thinking and solving. That’s the challenge. That’s where it’s at. It’s the challenge is it’s kind of like this. I’m an early riser. I get up in the morning, I’m more productive. I can think more clearly, and 10 minutes of creative time is more valuable than 10 hours of you can get more done. Literally in our profession, we don’t bill by the hour. We get paid for results. And how you get there can be one thought or one stroke of creativity can save you days of work. I don’t think it’s generational. I think it’s a little bit of the stage in life you are versus generational. When you got little ones at home, it’s a different ballgame as your kids, even as they get a little older. I haven’t had anybody at home, children wise, in 10 years, 15 years, you got your grandkids and the grandkids.

Now it’s a different ball game with the grandkids. But if you’re not challenged by what you’re doing and you don’t find it rewarding or satisfying, I don’t blame you. I’d sit at home, I’d find something else to do. The people, every person I know for the most part, who has a good work. I mean, everybody’s got a good work ethic. It’s just a matter of whether it’s worthwhile doing it, not have a good work ethic. Well, I should say if something’s worth doing, you’re more excited about doing it, right? That’s fair. Yes. And you can take somebody with the strongest work ethic ever. And I know people with tremendous work ethics, and if you had them doing something that they didn’t think was worthwhile or worth doing, they’re not going to be working too hard on it. You give

Tim Cronin:

Me a merger and acquisition to work on, I’m not going to be very

John Simon:

Motivated to work very hard. No one’s going to give you a merger. I don’t think that they are.

Nathan Perlmutter:

And that’s one of the good parts of the plaintiff’s side is Tim, you don’t want to work on mergers and acquisitions, but even within the med mal field or the personal injury field on the plaintiff’s side, we can pick our cases and it’s way more conducive to being passionate and motivated and wanting to spend those long hours when I get to choose what I want to file rather than having to defend any suit that comes my way. And so for me, I’ve really found it a lot easier to spend more time on the cases here.

John Simon:

And the other thing too is we’re assuming that people have the time to spend working on stuff. A lot of people are in a position and that stage of their life where they don’t, they’ve got their hours are limited. They are, everybody’s hours are limited to some extent, but you need to, and I think it’s the toughest, the first four or five years practicing law because your calendar isn’t yours. You’re working with somebody else. Things are being scheduled for you. And as

Tim Cronin:

You may have just started having kid, not everybody, but it’s a time in your life a lot of times when you may, you’ve recently gotten married or just started having, there’s a lot going on in your life,

Nathan Perlmutter:

Right? Big transition period.

Erich Vieth:

At this point, we’re going to close out episode one on work life and balance. We’ll be back with part two next time. This has been another episode of The. Jury is Out. I’m Erich Vieth.

Tim Cronin:

I’m Tim Cronin.

Nathan Perlmutter:

I’m Nathan Perlmutter.

John Simon:

I’m John Simon. We’ll see you next time.

Announcer:

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