Clients Don’t Have My Cell Number: 5 Rules for Preventing Lawyer Burnout

Burnout is not a personal failing, says Jason Wright. Rather, it is the predictable result of poor systems and leaky boundaries. Below, he shares his five non-negotiables for preventing lawyer burnout in his family law practice.

We know the statistics. The legal profession is exhausted.

According to recent Bloomberg Law workload and hours surveys, attorney burnout remains stubbornly high. We read the think pieces, we attend the wellness CLEs and yet the churn continues.

As a family law attorney, I operate in a practice area the state bar routinely identifies as one of the most prone to burnout, secondary trauma and emotional fatigue. My firm handles high-asset divorces, custody battles and family dissolution. It is a pressure cooker. But over the years, I’ve realized that burnout isn’t just an inevitable side effect of the job. Often, it is the result of bad boundaries and flawed firm architecture.

If you want to reach the next plateau of your career and enjoy your life while doing it, you have to stop pretending that being available 24/7 is a badge of honor. It isn’t. It’s a fast track to exhaustion.

5 Rules for Preventing Lawyer Burnout

Here are five pragmatic, battle-tested rules we use to run our firm, protect our staff, and keep burnout at bay.

Rule No. 1. Cut the Cord (No Personal Cell Phones)

Let’s start with the most basic boundary: No client has my personal cell phone number. I do not have a separate “business cell” that I carry around in my pocket, either. No client can contact me directly on a mobile device; they must go through the firm.

Yes, we can text clients through our practice management software, so we are still accessible and communicative. But it is fundamentally not about our constant availability. Many of my peers have a firm culture dictated that the staff must be available 24/7. When I’ve explained my communication boundaries to potential new employees during the interview, their eyes often get wide with pleasant surprise.

You cannot unplug if the device in your pocket is a direct line to your clients’ anxieties. Preventing lawyer burnout means cutting the cord.

Rule No. 2. Use The “Paper that Judges Sign” Rule

Lawyers are problem solvers, which means we naturally want to fix things the moment they break. But you have to set expectations early. I tell my clients and my staff that our superpower is making paper that judges sign. Meaning, if the courthouse is closed, there is not much  I can do for them from a practical standpoint.

If there is a bona fide, life-threatening emergency, they need to call the police. But 99% of the time, whatever “emergency” has popped up at 6 p.m. on a Tuesday or 2 p.m on a Saturday can wait until the next business day.

To enforce this, I include clauses in my contract stating that my hourly rate increases significantly for after-hours contact. I will flat-out ask them, “Do you want me to call you on that rate, or can this wait till Monday?”

There has never been a time when a client didn’t immediately decide they could wait until Monday.

Rule No. 3. Don’t Go to DEFCON 5

Empathy is critical to practicing law, but emotional enmeshment will destroy your career.

A phrase I was taught early in my career is that you cannot care more about our client’s case than they do. I cannot get to DEFCON 5 with every client. Practically speaking, we have too many clients to live and die by every emotional spike they experience.

Sometimes this might make me come across as cold or callous, but I need to be the voice of reason and calm. I’m doing them a disservice by meeting them at the same emotional shelf they might be on. And, as hard as it is at times, I have to remember that I am going home to see my kids; I didn’t create the situation my client is dealing with.

Getting sucked into clients’ panic doesn’t help them. They hire us specifically because we are not in the middle of their insanity. We are here to provide a perspective they may or may not listen to.

Always maintain your emotional discipline.

Rule No. 4. Shield Your Team from the Friction to Improve Firmwide Well-Being

In many mid-size and smaller firms, associates are treated like mini solo practitioners. They are expected to manage their own docket, act as the primary point of contact and, worst of all, chase down their own clients for money. I strongly believe this is a flawed model.

In our firm, paralegals do not do intake. We have a dedicated phone screener who handles initial calls so the legal staff doesn’t have to carry that burden. More importantly, I have never felt that dealing with billing is an associate’s job; it is the firm’s job. Currently, our operations director and I handle billing.

If you force your associates and paralegals to fight with clients over invoices, you destroy their working relationships. Paralegals and associates must maintain a relationship with clients that excludes billing, so that when they reach out for case information, the client doesn’t dodge their calls, assuming they are just asking for money.

Let your lawyers lawyer. Shield them from the administrative friction.

Rule No. 5. Protect the 5 p.m. Exit

You cannot preach work-life balance if your actions demand constant overtime. I am very firm about protecting my team’s personal time. With very few exceptions, my staff needs to get out of the office at 5 p.m.

I am often in the office between 5 p.m. and 6 p.m. or early in the morning because it is the quietest time to get certain tasks done. But I do not place that expectation on my team. I want them out and with their families.

To make this work, we push the work downward. My hourly rate is the highest, so anything that can be done at a paralegal rate is delegated to a paralegal. As a result, our paralegals handle a large amount of work.

The only way this ecosystem survives is through trust. My staff knows that when their “cup is full,” and I am still pouring work into it, I trust them to tell me they are overwhelmed. I would much rather know someone is overloaded so I can make an adjustment than have them stay silent until a ball is dropped.

Burnout is Rarely a Personal Failing

It is a predictable result of poor systems, leaky boundaries and mismanaged expectations. By cutting the digital cord after hours, defining what an actual emergency is, maintaining emotional distance, shielding your legal team from billing, and aggressively protecting off-hours, you can build a practice that thrives without sacrificing the people who run it.

Photo by Tangerine Newt on Unsplash

More Ideas for Dealing With Burnout

• Why Your Brain Needs a Creative Rest
• The Stress of Always Being the Responsible One
• 5 Personal Tasks to Delegate Now
• Managing eDiscovery Teams and Rampant Burnout
• Why Are You at the Office Until 10 p.m.?
• Five Ways to Reduce Lawyer Burnout and Improve Employee Retention
• 4 Self-Sabotaging Traps to Avoid

Photo by Júnior Ferreira on Unsplash