Your body gets so trained to working so much as a junior associate that you no longer feeling the sinking feeling of stress and being overwhelmed. It’s not that the work is backbreaking, but you sometimes have to go the distance. As a result, you’re a lot more calm when crises and big assignments hit. The benefit of that is that you get to, as the old cliché goes, work hard and play hard.
When you have a free window of time, maybe on a Tuesday night, you take it. It’s an interesting phenomenon. You see a lot of big firm lawyers who are willing to go to big dinners, go out for drinks, or see movies on Monday and Sunday nights because they have to seize time when it comes their way. If you know you’re going to be working five nights of the week, you make sure your Saturday will be a blast.
I socialize a lot with big firm lawyers because their experiences and their schedules are similar to mine. We are patient with the fact that sometimes our scheduling is out of our hands and someone may need to flake out. At the same time, you’re well compensated and you get used to taking windows of opportunity to be social and have a great time.
I always have room in my schedule to go to dinner, always, no matter how hard I’m working. I’d rather go to sleep an hour later than miss dinner with a friend. The body needs a break and I don’t want to sacrifice my social and long-term professional life. You’ll find time to tend to your social commitments, just make sure to grab it when you get the chance.
You definitely can’t be as social as you were in undergrad or as in law school; but you will find and make time for social commitments, which makes them more meaningful. I was just approved for vacation to Mexico for a weekend. There’s always a chance that I might have to cancel at the last moment, but that chance is very small, less than 5 percent. I’ve never had a trip cancelled because of work. In addition, I’ve never had the stereotypical experience of someone dropping something on my desk as I’m about to leave at 5pm on Friday. Part of that is a litigation-unique experience since matters are longer and more predictable in litigation. Corporate is a little more sporadic because the timelines are more abbreviated. You’re dealing with a corporate calendar rather than a court calendar, which means a client may ask you to work Saturday or Sunday. In litigation, you can still work on a weekend, but deadlines won’t be set then.
There’s more predictability and space to plan in litigation. Firms have enough institutional knowledge to warn you a couple days in advance if you’ll have to work over a weekend.
