Advancing Women In The Law
Newsletter Archive Issue 10, December 2000
Issue 10, December 2000 |
Career Design for Free Agents
============================== ARTICLE SUMMARY: Every lawyer is a free agent who needs to be responsible for designing her own career. This article reviews how to create a personal vision for your career. It outlines steps to: * help you determine what you will need to be satisfied with your work and your life; * define short- and long-term goals; * choose work consistent with your goals; * articulate strategies for achieving your goals; and * feel in control of your life. ============================== ****************************** Ellen Ostrow, Ph.D., Editor Ellen is the founder of LawyersLifeCoach.com™ Personal and Career Coaching for Lawyers Determined to Achieve Professional Success AND a Fulfilling Life ******************************* OUR PERSPECTIVE Most attorneys - especially women -- live impossibly busy lives. Finding a balance between work and life without sacrificing professional success, deciding on the best practice area or work setting, and making career transitions can be a daunting task, even for the most gifted and accomplished lawyer. Just as every person deserves the best possible legal counsel, every attorney deserves professional, dedicated support in accomplishing her most important goals. You know how hard you've worked to get where you are -- you serve others, both personally and professionally. You've earned the right to both career success and a fulfilling life. This newsletter is intended to help you create a satisfying life -- within, or outside of -- legal practice. ******************************* Career Design for Free Agents "It has long since come to my attention "Free agency" is a concept we've come to associate with professional athletes. No longer "owned" by their teams, players now negotiate for the richest package and the best opportunity - helped, of course, by their personal coaches. These days, however, the concept of free agency applies to all knowledge workers - especially lawyers. "In the end, every lawyer is a solo practitioner making an independent decision about where or whether to practice law today." (2) Ultimately, you are the person most responsible for your career success and satisfaction. As a free agent, it's essential to create a personal vision for your career. Once you know what you're working towards - and for - you can develop long- and short-term goals. This doesn't mean you need to know exactly what you'll be doing 10 or 20 years from now. What gives our lives meaning at 25 is not necessarily the same at 45. But you can begin designing a career you want to move toward by clarifying the kind of cases and clients you most enjoy, the talents and skills you utilize when your work "flows," and what you value most in life and work. Here are seven specific steps a free agent can use to design her career: 1. Clarify Your Vision Why did you go to law school? Have your goals changed since then? How can you make your work more meaningful? What interests and challenges you? Review your calendar to see which projects you most enjoyed. On what kinds of matters were you working? What skills did you use? What did your clients have in common? Once you determine what you're passionate about - what you'd do even if you weren't paid for it - you can begin limiting yourself to this type of work. Develop your skills in these areas and seek out mentors who can help you develop this kind of practice. Offer to work on interesting assignments and with desirable clients. Even if you need to approach this goal gradually, it's time to begin. 2. Define the Kind of Life You Want - Then Fill Your Hours Do an honest self-assessment of what matters most to you outside of work. It's too easy to let demands from your firm and clients define your working hours only to be filled with regret later in life. Balancing work and life is a tremendous challenge, but you can't even begin without clarifying what is most important to you. Balance is always a process. It's not essential that each day be carefully divided between work and outside activities. Rather, attend to the aspects of your life that reflect who you are as a person: relationships, health, family, and interests like music, writing, theater, etc. Work is never a substitute for life - and the longer you postpone having a life in order to be "successful" at work, the harder it is to reclaim the non-work activities that determine the quality of your life. 3. Decide How Much Money is Enough If you don't answer this question in advance, you may be surprised to find yourself wearing golden handcuffs - and sooner than you anticipated. There's always more money to be made - but at what personal cost? 4. Choose Work that Helps You Move Toward Your Goals Choose your work - don't let it choose you. Don't be driven by fear - that you will lose money, clients, or your job. Instead, consider taking on new work in the light of your career vision. If it won't help you move towards your goals, pass it on. If the work you really want isn't coming your way, make a plan to find it. The more people you talk to about what you love to do and are good at, the more likely it is that the clients you want will find you. A coach can help you to develop and implement a plan to get the work you want. 5. Build Your Own Career While Contributing to Your Firm Being a free agent does not preclude firm loyalty. But loyalty need not be exacted at the expense of your career vision or your life. As long as your firm's vision is compatible with your own, you can grow professionally, your clients will be well-served and your firm will profit. Remember, though, that your firm will not put your interests ahead of the firm's. In fact, most partners are so busy themselves that they have little time to consider your long-term interests. You have to take ultimate responsibility for yourself. If you need information that a partner neglects to share, ask his secretary to see that you receive copies of important documents. If you want to work with certain kinds of matters or clients, make alliances with people both within and outside your firm who can help you. If you've been assigned a responsibility beyond your current skill level, don't be afraid to seek assistance. Serve your clients well, be responsive, show active interest, and chances are good that your clients will be loyal to you. This way, you'll be contributing to your firm and building your own potentially portable career in the process. 6. Take Risks and Consider What You Stand to Gain Be willing to take risks. As an attorney you've learned to identify and avoid potential risks. But you cannot progress in your own career without taking some chances. Consider what you stand to gain; not only what you stand to lose. Designing your career - and creating a satisfying life - is a continual process of learning what works and what does not. Mistakes are our best teachers. 7. Avoid the "Tyranny of the In-Basket" (3) As long as you focus exclusively on getting your work done, you will never focus on creating your life's work. There's never a "right time" to assess your current alignment in terms of your goals. Most people ignore signs that they need to make some sort of change. They simply work harder to do their jobs - while their stress mounts and their passion for their career erodes. But periodic self-reinvention is absolutely necessary, both for career success and life satisfaction. Occasionally, everyone veers off course. What's essential is to take the time to determine where you are and the changes you need to take to regain your balance, vitality and personal integrity. As Robert E. Quinn, the organizational behavior and human resource management expert and consultant writes: "Ultimately, deep change... is a spiritual process. Loss of alignment occurs when, for whatever reason, we begin to pursue the wrong end. This process begins innocently enough. In pursuing some justifiable end, we make a trade-off of some kind. We know it is wrong, but we rationalize our choice. We use the end to justify the means. As time passes, something inside us starts to wither. We are forced to live at the cognitive level, the rational, goal-seeking level. We lose our vitality and begin to work from sheer discipline. Our energy is not naturally replenished, and we experience no joy in what we do. We are experiencing slow death....We must recognize the lies we have been telling ourselves. We must acknowledge our own weakness, greed, insensitivity and lack of vision and courage. If we do so, we begin to understand the clear need for a course correction, and we slowly begin to reinvent our self." (4) Free agency means accepting the responsibility for the freedom to create the career and the life that will most satisfy you. It may seem like a lot of work - but it's worth the trouble. And it's exactly what a coach is trained to help you do. Notes: 1. Cited in Bridges, William. "Creating You & Co. - Learn to Think Like the CEO of Your Own Career." Perseus Books, 1997, p. 160. 2. Vogt, M. Diane & Rickard, Lori-Ann. "Keeping Good Lawyers - Best Practices to Create Career Satisfaction." Law Practice Management Section, American Bar Association, 2000, p.xiii. 3. Quinn, Robert E. "Deep Change - Discovering the Leader Within." Jossey-Bass, 1996, p.60. 4. Quinn, Robert E. Ibid, p. 78. ******************************* ARE YOU A LAWYER WITH CAREER SUCCESS AND LIFE BALANCE? The legal field needs to hear your strategies. If you are willing to share them, I'd love to hear from you. You can send e-mail to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . Lawyers Life Coach is dedicated to sharing practical strategies that lawyers are already using -- from something as small as hiring a virtual assistant to something as large as leaving the profession. Of course, I will only share your strategies and any identifying information with your permission. ******************************* BEYOND THE BILLABLE HOUR™ is published monthly by Ellen Ostrow, Ph.D., founder of LawyersLifeCoach.com. She brings 20 years of experience assisting women attorneys to her work in Lawyers Life Coach™. LawyersLifeCoach.com is a professional and personal coaching firm specializing in working virtually (by phone with email and fax backup) with women attorneys interested in developing strategies to find greater satisfaction in their careers within the law or in exploring career alternatives for lawyers. Ellen Ostrow, Ph.D. established Lawyerslifecoach.com to coach busy lawyers who might benefit from the insights gained from 20 years as a psychologist combined with her experience and familiarity with the legal profession. Ellen holds a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University of Rochester and is a managing member of Metropolitan Behavioral Health Care, LLC., a multispecialty, multidisciplinary psychotherapy practice in Washington, D.C. and suburban Maryland. She is a member of the International Coach Federation and a graduate of the Mentor CoachProgram™. ******************************* NOTE: BEYOND THE BILLABLE HOUR™ is intended for informational and educational purposes only. It is not a substitute for a personal consultation with a mental health professional and should not be construed as a form of, or substitute for, counseling, psychotherapy, or other psychological service. ******************************* SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION For a FREE subscription to BEYOND THE BILLABLE HOUR™ sign up at: http://LawyersLifeCoach.com or send an email to: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it with the word subscribe in the body of the letter. ******************************* CONTACT INFORMATION Ellen Ostrow, Ph.D. ******************************* © 2000 — 2008 Ellen Ostrow. All rights reserved. Distribution Rights: The above material is copyrighted but you may retransmit or distribute it to whomever you wish as long as not a single word is changed, added or deleted, including the contact information. However, you may not copy it to a web site. Reprint permission will be freely granted upon request. Advance written permission must be obtained for any reprinting of this material in modified or altered form. ******************************* Please forward this issue to your friends, colleagues and family if you think they might be interested in it. They can get their own FREE subscription by signing up at: http://LawyersLifeCoach.com. © 1998-2008 Lawyers Life Coach, LLC. All Rights Reserved. |
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