EP 511- Work/Life Balancing Act Part Two

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:

We are back with episode two of Work Life imbalance. So I want to talk about me.

John G.  Simon:

Doesn’t Everybody.

Erich Vieth:

Yeah. So, okay. Again, I’m 68, which seems surreal and it’ll happen to all you. It is insane. God willing.

John G.  Simon:

Yeah. Hopefully it beats the alternative.

Erich Vieth:

Right? So I’ve got about 10 good cases and I love working on it, and I’m a little bit anxious as someone might say, oh, you’re not a serious lawyer, you only work 30 hours a week on 10 cases. And I also, I founded a nonprofit on free speech, so put a lot of time into that on free speech cases. And most of what I got now is civil rights. So at the age of 60 something I started shifting. So I’m kind of proud of that. And it’s also very challenging because it’s a whole different body of law, but that’s what I’m doing. If someone were to think, oh, you’re not a real lawyer, you’re not like the Simon, Law, Firm where everybody is totally consumed on these cases, I would say, yeah, I’m not that, but on any particular case, I’m going crazy on it. I love working on these cases. Well,

John G.  Simon:

Erich, you wouldn’t be working on them if they weren’t rewarding, if you weren’t enjoying what you were doing. Right?

Erich Vieth:

But then someone might say, well, you’re not fully in the game. Tell

John G.  Simon:

’em it’s none of their business.

Erich Vieth:

And so what I’m wondering, maybe some of other stories of, I don’t know enough people like me. I know some lawyers who’ve just said, I’m done, I’m retiring, and then they flip the switch off and they’re done. So

John G.  Simon:

I’m in an organization with their a hundred lawyers in it. It’s the inner circle of advocates. I’ve been in it for about 10 or 12 years. And the average age, I would say the average age is, I’m probably still on the younger side and I would say I am for sure, but there are attorneys who are getting phenomenal results, doing crazy amazing things, and they’re in their seventies, mid seventies, late seventies, not really slowing down. So I mean, what does that mean too, whether you’re 68 or 78 or we have judges were in front of on the federal bench into their eighties. And

Erich Vieth:

Yeah, I think that’s a big error to claim that someone is stumbling because they’re old. For instance, we have two very old candidates running for president, and I hear often, particularly with regard to one of ’em, it’s because he’s old and I’m thinking it’s not the age. It’s about how you’re hanging in there, how your function is. And I think the same thing for attorneys. I would think it’d be a shame to have a mandatory retirement age for private practice attorneys.

John G.  Simon:

We have that with the judges in Missouri. We do 70, which I am not in favor of. There’s

Tim Cronin:

Firms in town that have mandatory retirement ages from their firms.

John G.  Simon:

Yeah, I think that’s kind of silly. I

Tim Cronin:

Agree. It

Erich Vieth:

Feels so much more like a case

Tim Cronin:

By case basis. I know incredibly productive attorneys that are older than you, John, that they’re never going to, I mean, you can’t pull them away from their desk and make them take a vacation if you paid them more money to do that than work. I know I’m thinking of particular ones on the plaintiff’s side, you were probably thinking the same one. And I know ones on the defense side that we work against all the time that are the same way. They could have retired. People have suggested it not, not doing well, but because they don’t need to keep working and that it’s what they love to do and they’re going to keep doing it until they not. Part of

John G.  Simon:

It too for me is, and this is legitimate, genuine, we have probably not so much anymore, but one of the youngest firms in town age-wise, for a plaintiff’s firm, I think what do we have? We have 14 attorneys and probably five or 10 years. Oh, more than that. Half. Haven’t been out 10 years. We probably have five that haven’t been out six years. But I really enjoy working with the younger lawyers, working with all the lawyers, but seeing the younger lawyers develop and my thought is always to give, everybody should be given just a little bit more than they can. They’re able to. I don’t mean time-wise, but ability wise, you need to be challenged. That’s the only way you’re going to grow and develop is to be jump in and do stuff. Watching is only going to take you so far. You really need to get in and be able to do it. Tim, you started out here 15 years ago and you were doing opening statement in very significant cases in two years, a year. Two years. Did that year. So we’ve never been accused of holding people back. No. I tell the lawyers that. I say, if you feel like you’re not being challenged, just come down to my office and we’ll fix that.

Erich Vieth:

I’d like to ask a question. All three. I’ve found that when you’re going full bore for weeks and months, if you can find moments to stop and to have just nothing scheduled, sometimes those are great moments to reconceive things, reframe, think of new ideas, new kinds of cases. Do you all do any use schedule in blocks of time? Any sort of blocks of time where you have nothing

John G.  Simon:

All the time. That’s how vacations, trips, things like that. I put ’em on my calendar 12 months ahead, six months ahead, just so things aren’t scheduled around it. And I do it, but you got to do it. There’s nothing, I can’t say, well, I’m going to do something two weeks from now because there’s probably something on my calendar. But the flip side too is 90% of our cases probably 80% settle, 80, 70, 90 whatever, less so with mine, I think probably half of mine settle and the other half end up trying. But when that happens, you’ve got three weeks blocked out for the trial and all of a sudden there’s nothing scheduled for three weeks. And I always take advantage of that. Yeah, you have to take advantage. I just take off. I just will go take off and go somewhere for a week or two weeks. There are attorneys I know who would look at my work schedule and say, nah, he’s not working hard. That’s not that many hours.

No. Well, you know what I go home at, I’m never here past six. I go home at five. That’s not true. Well, no, I mean, I had a depot the other day, it was here till nine. But rarely am I here past six. I would leave sometime between five 30 and six. You start working at four o’clock in the morning. Yeah, four or five. That’s my quiet time. That’s my productive time. I get up work for two or three hours and it’s my most productive hours during the day. Then I’ll work out for an hour and a half, make my way into the office and it goes from there.

Nathan Perlmutter:

I think going back to answering your question maybe on a little bit more granular level than what John was saying. When we had our trial a couple months back, instead of taking out a day or a week, I took 45 minutes to an hour to myself to just go and work out. And it would be after we had done nearly everything for the day. So it would be 9 30, 10 30, and I would go work out for an hour, come back and without fail every time I was thinking about the case the whole time, but it was kind of on my own and not in the constant echoing of us chatting to each other in our war room, but without fail. Every time I would come back with a new idea was something I hadn’t thought of just because I gave myself that 45 minutes to an hour to Freethink without interrupt. Many best

Erich Vieth:

Ideas happen when I’m briskly walking through a park, I have my phone with me, no notes except I just have the phone so I can dictate what I’m thinking and I’m walking fast and then ideas start happening and it is amazing.

John G.  Simon:

I like having the day before whatever it is I’m doing, if it’s an important deposition or a motion or a trial of voir dire, I never like having to prepare the day before. My day before is the thinking day just to get away from it. Look at the 10,000 foot view, think of angles that I haven’t thought of before. And that’s really when you’re not forced to get all the information lined up, it’s more logistical stuff, but it’s the day before is the day to just sit and let your instincts and your creativity work a little bit. And it’s almost like me sitting you down Erich, you’re a writer, you’re a prolific writer, you write a bunch. It’s almost like me saying maybe you could, but okay, you got 45 minutes. Write a great story or a great close of argument. You can’t make yourself be creative. It’s a process that’s going to take some time. And I feel like whenever I’m rushed to do something, it’s not good. And it’s not good because I’m not asking to do arithmetic. I’m asked to come up with an approach with a witness or an approach to an issue in a case or how you argue damages in a case. And you can’t say, okay, here’s the hourglass, you got 15 two hours, I’m going to do the opening here. It doesn’t work like that. Work like that for me.

Erich Vieth:

So John, back to work-life balance. You do control one thing. I mean other people are giving you deadlines, but you can decide how many cases to take. And I’ve always thought, man, that’s an art. I don’t know how you do it, but you got to decide how many cases can we handle. There may be some cases out there, I bet there have been where if you took that case you would occupy three lawyers most of their time for the next two years.

John G.  Simon:

That’s the most important decision that we make, is the cases that we don’t take. The most important cases a lot of times are the cases we choose not to take because we’re talking about when we’re involved in a case. It’s rarely is it less than a two or three year commitment. It’s a several hundred thousand dollars commitment. And most of the cases that I work on, so we’re talking about thousands of attorney hours of thousands of hours, 70 figures in expenses. And so we want to be, if we’re going to be doing that, we’re going to commit to that. And once we take it, we take it, we got to be really, really certain about what we want to get involved in.

Erich Vieth:

Is there a calculus that goes in through your mind if it’s potentially high damage, but the viability

John G.  Simon:

Is really tough. So here’s my achilles seal, my weak spot where I take cases that I shouldn’t take and it usually ends up okay. And it’s when I like the client a lot and the facts might not be great, the law might be very difficult, but I just kind of fall in love with the client. I’m like, man, they went through some really bad stuff and I like ’em and I want to help.

Tim Cronin:

But that’s not bad. Usually the same thing the jury

John G.  Simon:

Thinks. Yes, exactly. And that’s my whole point. I get bailed out on those allegedly questionable decisions because if I liked the client that much, we do really well in those cases. Those are the cases we end up not settling, but trying and getting a good result because the other side’s kind of evaluating it objectively. But the old saying, you let me pick my client, I’ll let you pick the facts. And that’s true. If you let me pick my client, I don’t think I’ll lose many cases.

Erich Vieth:

If there’s a good case that’s in front of you, a potentially good case, does it ever occur to you? How are we doing? Are we bursting at the seams here? Do we have room for, is there always room for another? How good is the

John G.  Simon:

Case? That’s right. We’ll make room.

Tim Cronin:

We can hire more lawyers.

John G.  Simon:

We always have room for good cases for if it’s a good case, it’s a good case. But you got to remember, you get a case in and it takes, you have a delay before you’re really a year and a half before the case is going to be going to trial cylinders. So we got some time. It’s all about logistics. I remember one of the lawyers, younger lawyers here, I’ll say it, it’s Kevin was starting here and it was one of the first cases he had worked at a big defense firm for six years or seven years or whatever. Four I think. Four four, okay. And he came over, we were the same age. And one of the first cases I had him work on was a very involved automotive product case with about 40 witnesses and I’d say 60, 70,000 pages of documents, whatever. And he came in and said, we can’t do this.

We can’t do this. We like you and me. And I said, well, we won’t be doing this by ourselves. I said, this won’t be the only thing that we’re going to be doing. We have 80 other cases also. It was like, what? And I said, hold on a second. What? Sit down. What’s due today? In that case, is anything due today? No. Anything due this week? No. In the next 30 days, what do we need to be doing? And one of the cases we had was it was a case down in Florida that was in an MDL and the other side, of course we had our experts ready to roll and it was something like crazy. They disclosed 32 expert witness, whatever it was. It was just ridiculous. And it was Kevin’s case. And I said, well, let’s talk about that. It’s in federal court.

Do they have reports of course, or they allowed to testify about anything outside of those reports? Not really. Not in federal court. You don’t need any of those. Des. Yeah, well, we can take those off the calendar. We won’t need those. And ended up the case ended up getting resolved, getting settled, but we could have had four attorneys working nine months running all over the country, taking depositions that we didn’t need to take. But that’s part of it. It’s part of figuring out how to leverage your time. And part of it too is, as I said, as a young lawyer, in my opinion, you don’t know what needs to be done. You know how to do things and you’re learning how to do things. But as you get to a certain point, and I think that point is somewhere between five and six, seven years, not only do you know how to do things, but you start learning what needs to be done. And the only way you’re going to learn that is to handle a case from beginning to end and be involved in that process. You don’t necessarily need to be handling it by yourself, but once you know what needs to be done, you can be a little bit more, you will be way more comfortable in terms of do I need to do this? How is that going to help or hurt? So a lot of things,

Erich Vieth:

There’s other attorneys that do, for instance, transac transactional work, and some of those work crazy hours too, but some don’t. Some have somewhat regular hours. There’s government attorneys, there’s people that work with nonprofits I know that work regular hours. But setting aside, not everybody has this kind of business, but you’ve got this apparatus that you have to keep going. It seems to me that I don’t know, and maybe that’s my question, is there any way to do what you do without it being like this?

John G.  Simon:

I don’t think we go full bore very hard all the time. It’s like peaks and valleys. When you have a case coming up for trial, the two weeks before trial, you’re going to be going crazy. When you’re in trial, your time is not yours. You’re locked in. So

Tim Cronin:

The last trial you were involved in, you just stepped in to do voir dire and argue some pretrial motions. And then your brother was local counsel throughout the trial.

John G.  Simon:

And I was

Tim Cronin:

A few weeks before that. We tried a significant,

John G.  Simon:

So after that case that I don’t think I was in the office for four or five days after our last trial and I did nothing for four or five days. That’s typical.

Tim Cronin:

I was here at 8 81 Monday,

John G.  Simon:

God bless you. And part of it too, I have the big advantage of I get to pick what I want to do. Also on cases I get the advantage of picking some of the best cases in the office and getting to do the things on those cases that I want to do versus things that I have to do. So I’m kind of spoiled in that regard. 10 years ago or 15 years ago, the lawyers that I’d be trying cases with were one or two years out. Now I’m trying cases with Tim or Kevin, I’m second chair. I get to actually go in and cherry pick what I want to do in the case. I’ll say, well, I want to do, it’s not me going in and putting the whole thing together. It’s me saying, okay, I’m going to get involved in this case. What can I help you with?

Tim Cronin:

That in part, to answer your question, I mean some people are just better at managing their time and being a little bit more efficient. And some of that comes with more experience at learning how to manage your time and be more efficient. There’s plenty of weeks where I work 40 hours a week and we still get a lot accomplished. And then weeks where we’re gearing up for trial or we have a ton of depots and briefs stew where the hours are kind of crazy. And then I take advantage of it when I can, if there’s a lull, if a case settles or after a trial where I hardly work at all for a week, but it’s a skill that you gain where you can accomplish the same amount of important work in your cases that you need to get done, that improves the value and puts ’em in the position that they need to be in with less time than you could the year before or the year before that the more

John G.  Simon:

That you learn. And part of it too is it’s the type of work we do. We don’t keep track of our time, which is good and bad.

Erich Vieth:

Maybe just to come full circle, anybody wants to answer this? Jump in. If someone says, it sounds like you’re a workaholic or you don’t have work-life balance, how would you sum it up to that person?

John G.  Simon:

I think it’s hard to say that to anybody unless you really know who they are, what they’re working on, what their life is like. It’s being generalizing. And I

Tim Cronin:

Disagree with the premise. I mean, work is a big part of my life and it’s balanced the way that works for me.

John G.  Simon:

That’s it. Better said. That’s a better way to say it. In

Tim Cronin:

Conclusion, work harder if you want to.

John G.  Simon:

Yeah, and here’s the thing, I don’t think anybody, I mean, if you are literally working at a place that you hate and you’re working tremendous number of hours, I guess it’s because you have to. I don’t know why anybody would do that. Yeah.

Erich Vieth:

How about this? I am not thinking of anybody in particular, but what if there’s a fantastic athlete out there who’s making a lot of money and it’s the top of this game, and I don’t know who’s big in a sport right now. Would anybody go up to that person and go, dude, you don’t have work-life balance.

Tim Cronin:

Yeah, shhe, Ani. Quit taking batting practice and pitching practice.

Erich Vieth:

Right. Would anybody do that ever and go, Hey, you need to lay back on that?

Tim Cronin:

Yeah, I don’t think so.

John G.  Simon:

So Nathan, what do you think about this work-life balance?

Nathan Perlmutter:

Going back to what Tim just said, which is work hard if you want to, but also at the same time, working hard with other people that want to work hard adds to itself. It’s like multiplicative. It makes it even more rewarding in that aspect. Not just working hard on your own, but with a group of people sharing the same mindset and doing that together, it becomes even more rewarding. And so having that sort of teamwork makes it even better.

John G.  Simon:

I think to sum it up, I would say one size doesn’t fit all. And I would ask everybody to be a little bit more, what’s the word, is a great way to be a little open-minded. Everybody’s different. Everybody has got different types of jobs. Some like what they’re doing, some love what they’re doing, some hate what they’re doing. If somebody’s doing their thing, let it roll man. Let ’em be a little more open-minded, and let everybody choose for themselves how they want to live their work life and personal life.

Nathan Perlmutter:

And I think that individual freedom aspect of, it’s important because we’re talking about this as lawyers, albeit in different stages of our career, but we’re talking about it from the aspect of someone who has chosen that profession and a huge variety of professions outside of that spectrum could warrant different sets of advice.

John G.  Simon:

If somebody came in and told me I had to do what I’m doing and spend the number of hours, I probably wouldn’t like it as much.

Nathan Perlmutter:

Exactly. I

John G.  Simon:

Don’t have to do it. I choose to do it. What about you, Erich?

Erich Vieth:

Well, what you just said was important. When someone tells me I have to do something, I normally say, I’m not going to do it. I’m just wired to not do. I don’t know, I’m just contrary. But when it’s me telling me to do things like, Hey, let’s do, I think the trick is even doing dishes, it’s weird, but you can get yourself into a frame of mind where you’re thinking, I’m just doing dishes. I’ll do ’em. Well, I

Tim Cronin:

Can’t roll with you on that one. Erich,

John G.  Simon:

They’re all different. He’s more laundry person.

Erich Vieth:

But there’s a mindset where I think if you’re going to do something, you it well, and it really bothers me when I’m with someone who doesn’t have that mindset, whatever it is you’re doing, it’s like, I can’t see doing anything unless you’re going to do it. Well. So with the law man, it gives you all kinds of possibilities. In my career, again, I’ve switched fields, so civil rights is really interesting. It’s compelling. I’m paired up in co-counseling with some people who know what they’re doing. They’ve been doing it for years and it’s really exciting. So there’s nobody telling me to do this. It’s by invitation, Hey, I got this case, you want to work with me on it? And I’m thinking, sounds great, let’s do it. And yeah, there might be weeks where in fact we just finished a brief with the eighth circuit and doing that brief was incredibly frustrating.

The rules are complicated and it’s hard to get it all online and the citations and all that. Make sure you got the right color cover page. There you go. And we at least got that one right. There you go. But when it’s something, when it’s done, there’s something about getting something done and getting it done well, that’s really, really wonderful. Did you have to hand deliver 10 copies? You still deal with, okay, this could be another episode. Why are they dealing in paper still? But they are. And a lot of other, I think archaic rules, but when you get it done, it feels so good. I think when you’re into that mode, back to the flow, when you’re into that mode where you’re doing something, you’re doing it well and you see the end point and it seems like a good thing. You’re not thinking about, I should be doing other things too.

When you’re consumed with something, time of your thoughts, it takes care of itself with the, maybe it’s the guilt is not there when you’re really absorbed on something. I think it’s when you pull back a little bit and someone says, oh, you should be doing this. Or people with real wives, they’ll ask you, oh, have you seen this movie? Or have you read this book? Or you gone to this theater event or whatever. And I’m thinking, man’s people living other lives out there that are doing other things than I’m doing. And it makes you feel like, well maybe I’m missing out, but then they’re missing out on this. Yeah, this is an awesome way to spend a career. I dunno if that answers your question. It answers

John G.  Simon:

My question in

Erich Vieth:

Your way. Alright, there you go.

John G.  Simon:

You, it answers my question for you.

Erich Vieth:

So that wraps up our two part series on work life imbalance. 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 G.  Simon:

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

Announcer:

The Jury is, Out is brought to you by the Simon Law Firm at the Simon Law Firm pc. We believe in the power of pooling resources in order to create powerful results. We often lend our trial skills and experience to lawyers around the country to achieve better results for their clients. Our attorneys welcome the opportunity to work with you on your case, offering vast resources, seasoned litigators, and a sterling reputation. You can contact us at 2 4 1 2 9 2 9. And if you enjoyed the podcast, feel free to share your thoughts with John, Tim and Erich at comments at The. Jury is Out Law and subscribe today because the best lawyers never stop learning.

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