legal sanity

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I’m thrilled to announce that our new eGuide, Beyond Balance: How to Cultivate Work-Life Synergy in the Law (PDF) is finished and now available as a complimentary offering from Legal Sanity Learning Programs. Here’s an excerpt:

What Are We Really Looking For in the Name Of Work-Life Balance?

If you ask lawyers (whether male or female, seasoned or newly-minted) to describe their work-life issues, you’ll get many different responses, including:

· I love my work, but I don’t have time for personal pursuits

· I don’t like my work and have no time for personal pursuits

· My work life is dull and boring compared to my personal life

· My work and personal lives are both unfulfilling

· The people I deal with at work are draining

· My work tasks are unchallenging and depleting

At first glance, these complaints seem quite distinct.

But, on closer inspection, we can see that they’re all expressions of discontent with how practitioners are engaging and handling the lawyer experience and its three component parts:

1. Time

2. Relationships

3. Tasks

We feel distressed when any of these three components is deficient and depleting us. And if more than one of the triad is impaired (as is usually the case), our distress and discontent only increases.

Lawyers feeling the fallout from this impairment often wonder: “What is the purpose of this? I want to experience more meaning in life. How do I find my way to happiness?”

While some people dismiss work-life issues in the law as bunk, articles like this one about workaholics and this one about the best companies to work for evince that this is not a red herring matter for a profession populated by stressed, unhappy and defecting practitioners.

Work-life synergy is a subject that’s been near and dear to me as I’ve traveled my own career path and developed content for this blog.

I’d love for you to read the eGuide and share it with your co-workers and friends in the service professions. Also, please feel free to give me your feedback on the Guide and its core message about moving beyond balance.