Time is Money

“I am much too alone in this world, yet not alone enough to truly consecrate the hour.”-Rainer Maria Rilke

They don’t teach you how to bill hours in law school. You learn in your first law firm job and billing and collecting is one of the most important measurements of success in a firm.

Over forty years ago I launched into private practice in a medium sized law firm outside my home state. I was told to bill in increments of .1 or six minutes and write it on a timesheet. If I worked on a case for 15 minutes I billed .25, and so forth. It sounded simple!

It seemed logical and in alignment with my  values to simply track the time of ACTUAL work for each client, down to the smallest .1.  Unfortunately I quickly found that to bill my expected 8 hour daily minimum, I had to work 12 hours or more to accommodate breaks, lunch, mind wandering and general tasks of living. Or, I could skip all those life necessities and just work like a machine every day.  

Sadly, I chose the latter.

If my personality of perfectionism and overachievement predisposed me to workaholism, the .1 measurement of my worthiness sealed my fate. I became obsessed with clocking every minute of my life. I was face to face with my convictions with every .1 of every day in determining exactly how much to bill.  I stuck notepads in my car and around the house to mark down billable work outside office hours.  I got up before sunrise, even logging on to email in the middle of the night when I couldn’t sleep. Freakishly, lawyers were answering me back at that hour!  I wondered how many of them were suffering like I was with the notion of billable time.

When I had my own firm, I no longer had quotas but I was supporting my family (as a single mom), my staff and my overhead.  I constantly calculated billable hour needs against budget.  I needed a new copy machine; how many billable hours would that cost me? I could work harder over the next several weekends to bank that money.

Obsession with the 6 minute increments made it difficult to be fully “present” during non-billable moments of life for much of the 40+ years I practiced law. The voice inside my head was constantly saying “You are getting further behind!”

I went to my then-10- year- old son’s baseball game and sat in my car reviewing documents.  I paused “off the clock” when he got up to bat and honked the horn when he got on base.  I couldn’t enjoy anything during the work day, couldn’t go to the dentist unless it was the earliest appointment, couldn’t breathe. I still loved yoga but I could only take the 5am class so I didn’t miss “work hours.”

Vacations?  To miss 40 billable hours and keep up with your daily quota upon return was impossible.  On trips I’d bill hours in a dark hotel room near a corner lamp before my family woke up and after they went to bed trying to stay present during the day, hearing the gremlin of billable time intermittently.

My calendar was chock full with appointments, court dates, and meetings. A coach I hired told me it was essential to put margin in my calendar.  I did as he instructed but if a potential client called, I immediately scheduled them into the margin, so I didn’t miss the opportunity to get a new client.

I went through a dark season of life when family problems were consuming me. I pulled into the office parking lot mid morning after dealing with things since dawn and cried thinking I would drown in sorrow before I walked into the office.  I looked up at the barren winter trees of the parking lot, through tears, and the bible verse from Matthew 6:26-27 popped into my head: “Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?”

My life during those frenzied years ran on what the Greeks call “chronos.”  Chronos forms the word chronological. It is time in sequential order driven by the clock and the calendar. Most of our society is driven in chronos time. 

Over time, I became exposed to the term “kairos.”   Kairos is what I like to call “divine right timing.” For Christians, this is the difference between living “in the world” and living instead by “the nudging of the Holy Spirit.”  For mindfulness practitioners it’s “living fully immersed in the present moment.” 

I’d had moments of kairos earlier in my life, but I rarely was able to recognize them back then for what they were.  Twenty four years ago I was one of two finalists for a job heading the mediation clinic at  ASU Law School. I believed then, and now, I was the most qualified candidate yet the other person was selected.  A few weeks later my father came to visit us in Phoenix and got off the plane with a cold that turned out to be a terminal lung disease. He became a  hospice patient in our house for several months before he died and I was unemployed for the months he was there so I was able to care for him. Kairos timing.

I think of kairos when clients bemoan, “I should have gotten this divorce years ago.” We discuss the circumstances which usually reveal they were not ready until the day they came into my office and said, “Let’s file.” 

Kairos may also be rooted in an inner knowing. I feel the need to write today instead of doing my chores and the writing flows. My friend out of state keeps coming to mind, and I call and find she has been struggling. I feel a nudge to take a different route home from church and come across the perfect place to live as my lease is ready to expire.

Myopic obsession with chronos closes us off from the rich kairos moments. Jon Kabat- Zinn inspired me to look deeper into embracing kairos in his book Wherever You Go There You Are:  If you did die, all your responsibilities and obligations would immediately evaporate. Their residue would somehow get worked out without you. No one else can take over your unique agenda. It would die or peter out with you, just as it has for everyone else who has ever died, so you don’t need to worry about it in any absolute way.  If this is true maybe you don’t need to make one more phone call right now even if you think you do. Maybe you don’t need to read something just now or run one more errand. By taking a few moments to die on purpose, to the rush of time while you are still living, you free yourself to have time for the present. Dying now in this way, you actually become more alive now.

All of this brought forth the question: How much of my life has been spent in search of meaning, and how much has been focused solely on survival?  Being a single mother responsible for 100% of my own support for over 20 years of my life made this frenzy understandable.  But in the last season of my life how can I tip the balance in the other direction? 

I’ve let go of attaching to the outcome when I’m the mediator on a case that I feel should settle but doesn’t.  I realize the parties may have to “go around the mountain again” in order to learn lessons, have insight, or prolong their hurt now for their ultimate healing later.  Their settlement will be in kairos time, not within the chronos hours scheduled for our mediation that day because of a court deadline.  

Walking my dog in the morning, instead of drifting into the million things pulling on my attention, I focus myself on the present. The trees, the breeze, the mountains near my home and the sunrise all seem crisp and clear. I remember feeling this way years ago when I took refuge for a few days in a woman’s monastery in the mountains.

I had to go around the mountain again myself, even after the awakening  at the monastery. I returned to the stress and burnout of chronos until I was flattened by the reboot offered by the pandemic.  I finally listened and knew that kairos time was of the essence. And now I’m practicing living mindfully in the present, in “supernatural natural.”

Last night I went to dinner with the little boy whose mom sat in the car churning billable hours while he played baseball.  My son is now a 30 year old man.  I smiled as I listened intently to him light up about his life, his hopes for the future and the wonderful woman he has met.  For a moment just over his shoulder in the air I saw his mom looking at me, reminding me she chose what she thought she had to, to survive and take care of herself and so many others. With profound empathy and love, I blessed her silently then stepped forward as the woman she is now, sitting across from her handsome son in kairos time, prioritizing a life of meaning with the years that remain.

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Finishing Well

I was asked to contribute a lesson for the book “50 Lessons for Women Lawyers-From Women Lawyers,” by Nora Riva Bergman, which is available soon on Amazon.  Here is my contribution:

In a few  months I’ll be 62 years old. Actress Jane Fonda recently announced she is in her “last act” and although I hopefully have many more years of life, the finish line in my life as a lawyer is more clearly in view.

I want to chart an intentional path for my last act, living mindfully and finishing strong. As I begin the process, I’m struck with paralysis. Where do I want to go? A good starting point might be to reflect on where I’ve been.

I was the youngest in my law school class of 1981, graduating at age 23 and entering full time law practice at age 24.  I’ve had many legal jobs: in-house counsel, associate at firms of varying sizes, solo practitioner and even senior partner at small law firms I’ve formed.  I’d gone to law school to “help people.”  I was a kind and compassionate problem solver, a good listener, and a lover of people from the time I was a little girl.

I launched from law school in one of the early waves of females deployed into the profession. Our role was clear; act like a man.  After all we’d been told that we were taking a spot rightfully belonging to a man with a family to support.

“Mr. Durant died right here at his desk,” I was told by an associate at my first law firm job as he pointed to an office with an empty desk. It was as though Mr. Durant was a warrior who died in battle saving the world.  I got the message.

I dove in as the only female in the firm’s litigation section, charting my course as a workaholic, billing hours like a trooper. I silenced my inner voice and went full speed ahead, learning to be tough. Law school and the lawyers mentoring me convinced me that compassion was a weakness and aggression was a strength.

In my private life I paired with a man also constrained by his job, traveling for business  five days a week. We married and had three children. What was wrong with me? I loved my babies but I was obsessed with being a lawyer.  I heard a new term called “work-life balance” so  I joined the part time work committee of the local bar association. The all -female committee soon disbanded with the summary finding that for women lawyers,”part time” meant shoving all your full -time work into fewer hours and getting paid less.

I navigated as best I could with no women mentors to guide me.  I’d race to little league baseball games, editing documents in the stands while waiting for my son to bat so I could wave and give a thumb’s up, and then race back to the office. I tried to be nurturing but I never took off my lawyer hat, often telling my children to “toughen up” instead of acquiescing to the sorrow of childhood bumps and bruises.   Nannies were enlisted to help assuage working mother guilt. I’d try to mother my children when I came home exhausted from the office.

My marriage began to deteriorate so I stopped practicing law and tried staying home. I was an outcast among the other mothers.  Their conversations were boring and their obsession with their children seemed unhealthy to me. I prepared spreadsheets for class cupcake volunteers and felt incompetent in my new role. I became depressed and like an addict who needed a fix, I yearned for the office.

At the same time, my lawyer father became ill at age 65 and came into my home for hospice care as he was dying. Towards the end he would hallucinate often saying he saw dead lawyer colleagues in the room.  I wondered why the lawyers would show up to him instead of cosmic visits from loving relatives or his golfing buddies.

My father died and I was divorced. Even though I wasn’t working I was “imputed” with the income of a lawyer in the divorce. After all wasn’t that who I was? I had to recreate myself and start making money quickly and the most logical step was to reclaim my lawyer-self.  When I went back to inhabit her skin, I noticed she was different. She was weary, having sustained a whirlwind of life, tragedy, and brokenness.

I set up a law practice focusing on family law and mediation. I’d experienced devastation similar to what my clients were facing. I encouraged clients to find healing, forgiveness and compassion and decided to claim those things for myself.  I still fought for client’s rights and equity, but I did it with dignity, calmness and compassion for all.

I felt more authentic as a person and a lawyer. I began to write. I transported my brother diagnosed at that time with cancer to his chemotherapy appointments. I watched the IV drip, drip, drip of the drug infusing him with life. The writing did the same for me. Each moment in the chair typing was life-giving, healing, rebuilding, and renewing myself.

I wrote and self-published “The Compassionate Lawyer” in 2014 and started speaking to lawyers about compassion in the practice. I mentored several lawyers and helped three women lawyers start their own firms.  I encouraged lawyers to be compassionate problem solvers and for women lawyers to realize we should celebrate our unique gifts and skills as women.

I continue to practice, write and teach about what I’ve discovered.  Earlier this week I saw a woman lawyer in her first few months of practice aggressively tell off a male lawyer on the phone and then hang up only to burst into tears. ”I’m such a wimp for crying!” she declared.

I told her that being tough and aggressive is uncomfortable for many women. We can do it, probably even more biting than men, but is it really who we are? The crying was undoubtedly from the adrenaline but it was also a warning sign of living outside her authenticity. It hurt to watch her minimize her body’s warning and I tried to tell her so, encouraging her to use compassion and dignity instead.   I’m guessing it fell on deaf ears as it would have to me at her age when I ‘d set out to “make my mark” as a lawyer. But at least she is getting a message I was never told.

In my last act, I see a woman enjoying life, available to her three children for long talks instead of saying “I’ll call you after this meeting.”  She is a compassionate, kind person to all she encounters. She practices law in an authentic way that is uniquely hers, until she decides it’s time to stop. That woman will die as far away from her desk as she can get.

From the moment she walked into the doors of law school her identity as “woman” and “lawyer” were permanently fused together. She’s learned many lessons as a woman lawyer. She will claim her journey without regret but with gratitude for the wisdom she’s gained.  And most importantly, she’ll  live out her last act with compassion for herself.

 

 

 

Give Me Rest

“Come to me all who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest.”- Matthew 11:28

I have always been a “good worker.”  My mother often bragged about how she loved to work, crediting her father as the role model of a strong work ethic.  My mother never rested, and neither did her father. Interestingly when they both retired they spent most of their time sitting in a chair,  not doing much of anything.

As I grew up, I also became a hard worker.  I was always accomplishing things, taking on projects, raising my hand to lead a task. As a lawyer, overwork is a badge of honor. Billing hours, staying late at the office and coming in on weekends often garners you a partnership. When I entered the practice in the 1980’s it was particularly important to work hard and show up often because  women were just starting to be accepted into the previously male dominated profession.

Where is the line between hard work, perseverance and being a “workaholic?” One source suggests that if you answer “often” or “always” to the following you might be in danger of being a workaholic:

1. You think of how you can free up more time to work.

2. You spend much more time working than initially intended.

3. You work in order to reduce feelings of guilt, anxiety, helplessness and/or depression.

4. You have been told by others to cut down on work without listening to them.

5. You become stressed if you are prohibited from working.

6. You deprioritize hobbies, leisure activities, and/or exercise because of your work.

7. You work so much that it has negatively influenced your health.

Unfortunately, after examining this list,  it’s clear I may struggle with  workaholism.

One of the anecdotes for overworking is rest.  Without it we can suffer burnout.  Even God rested on the seventh day.  Rest may not come easy for those of us who are constantly working.  As lawyers even when we are “off the clock” we carry our client’s burdens in our heads, and we may be worrying about the next court deadline in the back of our mind. Even when we are with family, we may have our mind back at the office. We may not even know how to rest.

I love the Scripture verse at the top of the page. When God says “come to me” what might that look like for this weary lawyer?

I’ve noticed it doesn’t take a vast amount of time to make me feel refreshed. When I have even a bit of solitude (preferably with God, reading my bible, journaling prayers to him, or just taking a walk in nature talking to him ) I feel instantly restored. And the power of that rest endures for hours.  Even during the day at the office when I close my door and read a scripture or a page from a Christian devotional, the break restores me.

For those without a spiritual practice, even  taking short breaks away from the desk or computer throughout the day can bring relief. A friend of mine sets her computer at the office to go off every few hours as a reminder to just breathe, pause, look away from work and dream for a minute.

One of the best steps I have taken is to remove my work email from my phone, so I am not constantly being pulled back into work during leisure time. I set limits on times to return emails and while I thought it would be stressful to let go of constant connection it has actually been freeing.

I’ve also blocked time on my calendar for a lunch break every day, and also for time to write at a local coffee shop on Friday mornings.  It’s tempting to fill the time when I see it blocked off but the more I actually take the time the better I feel. Even if I don’t take the whole lunch break I know it is “downtime” without clients coming in or other expectations.I’ve also been experimenting with setting a firm stop time for work, no matter what.

Like all boundaries, the ones I am setting are easy to set but not easy to hold.  It takes real commitment, and it’s important to enlist the others in the office to help you stay accountable. I meet a friend for the Friday writing who also holds me accountable. My law partner is supportive of my goals to stop overwork and is quick to remind me it’s time to leave if I am lingering.

I’ve also found it helpful to take a Sabbath.   Many Christians feel that Sunday is the Sabbath but this is just our Western tradition because we go to church then.  Christians don’t go to church on Sunday because it’s the Sabbath, it’s because Christ rose from the dead on Sunday and we are celebrating the resurrection.

The true Sabbath is Saturday, just as it was when Christ was alive. In the Jewish tradition the day begins at Sundown, so Friday night at sundown begins the Sabbath which then ends on Saturday at nightfall. The Jews still keep this tradition called “Shabbat.”

In Greek Orthodox tradition we have Vespers service on Saturday night just after sundown, as the beginning of the liturgical day.  It is my very favorite Orthodox service, and even now if I don’t attend Vespers I love going to Protestant church on Saturday night because I am in such a rhythm of beginning a day dedicated to God at sundown.  It makes me let down from the week, focus on God and relax, and I sleep like a baby.

There are many who would argue that to be “true” to the Bible and God’s commandment we have to honor the Sabbath on Saturday. I like to think that God doesn’t want us to be legalistic, particularly when we have taken the time to dedicate a Sabbath, and that he is just grateful to have our attention and to have us rest on any day we choose.

Taking these steps has helped me begin to pay attention to what I feel is an unhealthy pattern of prioritizing work. As I continue to explore this tendency I have self compassion,  remembering my overwork has been a coping mechanism in the past for me in some way. I want to choose a healthier  lifestyle and know that letting go of overwork, like all self improvement endeavors, is a journey.