(And keeping the ones you want to keep!)

The continued achievement of worthy goals is one definition of success. In that context, life as a lawyer may present one with the greatest potential for success of any job on Earth. Certainly it has the potential to be more flexible, more personally satisfying, and more financially rewarding than any other career.

Yet surveys repeatedly reflect the low level of job satisfaction and high voluntary turn over among lawyers. Indeed, the National Association for Law Placement Foundation reported this summer that more than 80% of lawyers leave their first law jobs after 8 years. And the Florida Bar survey reported that 70% of lawyers are at least "somewhat dissatisfied" with their practices.

How can individual lawyers improve their satisfaction with the jobs they currently have, and how can law firms keep good lawyers with the practice?

No one comes out of the womb knowing how to be a successful lawyer. Lawyering is a learned skill and successful lawyering takes years of practice. Often, just as lawyers learn their craft, they leave their practices due to job dissatisfaction.

Solving the problem of job dissatisfaction among lawyers has been viewed by some as insurmountable because lawyers are viewed as people who don’t want to be happy, and law firm management is viewed as uncaring about job satisfaction of lawyers, support staff, or anyone else.

We know that a one time, easy solution is neither possible nor desirable. If such a solution were available, it would have already been implemented, not only for lawyers, but for humans everywhere. But we also know all problems can be solved.

What we can do is to provide individuals and firms with strategies that will improve individual job satisfaction and Quality of Life and reduce voluntary turnover.

Interviews with hundreds of attorneys reflect that Job Satisfaction for Lawyers is primarily a function of how much control a lawyer has over his professional and personal life. If control is the over riding objective, job satisfaction is based on how well individual lawyers and firms manage five broad elements:

1. Time includes the idea of a life outside law practice as well as managing one’s time within one’s practice area. It includes certain scheduling techniques that help with time management. Everyone on earth has twenty-four hours in the day. Time is the one element that is not expandable. Within that twenty-four hours, one must fit all of one’s personal and professional desires. Proven methods for balancing the competing demands of personal life, family life, and professional life are essential for job satisfaction. Time also impacts on the other four elements because successful time management is the fundamental tool that makes the other elements possible.

2. Money includes coming to grips with our financial needs as individual lawyers and, when we practice cooperatively, as organizations. It includes managing expectations successfully, as well as managing money successfully. The old adage "It’s not what you make, it’s what you spend" is half true. A more accurate statement is "It is what you make, and what you spend, as well as how you spend it." This element includes pricing of legal services, managing your practice with financial goals in mind, marketing, managing expenses and so on.

3. Personal Style determines, perhaps more than any other factor, whether a group of lawyers are going to work successfully together. The same is true for clients. The aspects of Personal Style that are important in this context include such issues as whether one is an early bird or a night owl; one’s communication style (analytical/amiable/expressive/driver); how one prefers to dress, market the practice, and just generally, play well with others. More voluntary turn over is caused by differences in Personal Style than any other single factor.

4. Conflict is the issue of how to deal with the essence of lawyering without having it reduce life to a personal conflict and desire to leave the arena. Conflict is so universally cited as an element of dissatisfaction with lawyering, that it must be dealt with independently. Managing conflict effectively is an essential skill for job satisfaction.

5. Professionalism includes all aspects of being a lawyer in the highest sense, in the sense of goals and aspirations for the profession, for society and for society’s view of lawyers. It includes our desire to be of assistance to humanity and to make a difference in a larger way than individual representation of specific clients can give us. Techniques for improving professionalism on an individual and group basis are skills that can be learned.

©PeopleWealth November 1998