What I Realized Yesterday

I was at a Virginia Bar Association MANDATORY Professionalism course yesterday, and I heard fellow new attorneys talking about their jobs, and I overheard one guy talking about all these cool things that I wanted to do in the business and corporate arena and then he ended the sentence with a "but."

What followed the "but"? "But this past week I've gotten home somewhere after 1:30." And no folks, he wasn't talking about 1:30PM, as in the afternoon, but in the morning. He worked, as many other of the newer attorneys in our group, for the BIG law firm--you know, the ones that hire young associates by the truckloads from Harvard, Yale, the University of Virginia, etc. He has a wife and kid, and he's commuting 45 minutes each way.

Now, I would love to do some of the stuff that he's doing--but what's the cost? Associates in firms like that have the responsibility to bill close to 2000 hours a year (which is daunting), so days like that can be quite typical. Oh, the new firm trend is to speak of "balancing" life with family and community service so as to make a "whole" person as an attorney. But it seems to me that the secret in how to do that is left up to the individual attorney, and if you lose sleep in the process, that's fine, so long as it doesn't hurt the partner's bottom line. Life is in fact full of crossroads, junctures where we make a decision to choose one thing over another--work over family, material things over things that last, and idols over Christ.

One of the speakers on a video we watched reiterated what I so often hear from attorneys (as well as businessmen in general) but I do not often see practiced--"no one ever says I wish I spent more time in my office when they're on their deathbed." This coming from a U.S. District Court judge that had to work his tail off to get to his position--but at what cost? Position and stature does you nothing if you cannot be the husband and father that God has called you to be--it simply is worldly attention that evaporates before the throne of God.

Young lawyers such as myself would do good to really hear the quotation above, rather than simply fight tooth and nail to get in such positions as the judge and simply mimic him in thirty years, essentially saying, "do as I say, not as I do." These type of life choices start today, and each person has to decide their priorities and not let their work decide it for him--otherwise, it will all be vanity and striving in the wind, as the Preacher explains in Ecclesiastes.