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Pastimes : Don't Ask Rambi -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ilaine who wrote (17159)	1/28/1999 12:23:00 AM
From: Jacques Chitte	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71178

> was to be around people, and to help other people< I remember once you saying something about engineers. About not thinking like them or something. This proves it. Engineers would never say the above. Sure, engineers like to help an'all, but it's the "people" part. People introduce an uncontrolled variable which offends the engineer's sense of neatness. :-)

To: Ilaine who wrote (17159)	1/28/1999 12:45:00 AM
From: Justin C	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71178

CB, the Jan. 26 Houston Chronicle has an article in its Lifestyle section that appears to be relevant to what you are doing. The first few paragraphs go like this . . . For nine years, Stephen Braun was a practicing attorney who specialized in education law - - a good area, he thought, for someone whose strength lay in his people skills. Braun is the first to admit that being a lawyer has its advantages. But he also remembers the stress, the late-night panic attacks over heavy case loads, the lawyers he occasionally encountered who were so distracted they looked like deer caught in the glare of oncoming headlights. In the back of Braun's mind was the nagging question: Is this all there is to life? The answer, Braun finally decided, was no. Now the former legal counselor is a counselor/psychotherapist who, as part of his practice, uses his people skills and his law background to help other lawyers stay mentally healthy. He does that through counseling sessions, seminars on handling stress, and columns he writes for local law publications on everything from the perfection trap to handling stress. The problems, Braun said, include high rates of depression, suicide, drug and alcohol abuse, and job dissatisfaction . . .

To: Ilaine who wrote (17159)	1/28/1999 10:06:00 AM
From: DScottD	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 71178

Excellent. As you know, job stress/quality of life/substance abuse/etc. has been a major topic of discussion in the various bar journals over the past several years. When I was a novice attorney, I just assumed that those things was the price one paid to be in the profession. But there is a difference between the stress inherent in the job and that which is induced by the working conditions. I enjoy in a sort of perverse way the stress and anxiety that goes with working hard to meet a deadline to close a deal or prepare for an important meeting. I find that I can become very productive and somewhat creative in my thinking when I'm under the gun. But the aspect of workplace induced stress is an entirely different matter. In the first two years of my career, there were three incidents that now stand out as personal wake-up calls. Once was when I was buried in a deal where we had to make an SEC filing and a partner calls me into his office and gives me a research project at 4 in the afternoon and says he needs an answer by 9 am the next day. I told him that I was going to the printer in about 10 minutes to prepare an SEC filing for another of his clients and, based on other similar deals, I probably wouldn't be done until the early morning hours. Instead of saying he'd find someone else to do it, he said, "there's 24 hours in a day; we have a library here; the memo is on my desk by 9 or you can clean out your office, there are plenty of people who would give anything to have your job." Luckily, I was able to get online at the printer (it was the early days of Lexis) and I completed the research during the down time at the printer. The fellow was astonished when the memo was on his desk before he got in the next morning. A few weeks later, someone else questioned why I needed extra time to finish a document for him. I told him that we have all been very busy and I was almost done and just needed an extra few hours. He said, "You're not here at 2 in the morning, so you can't be that busy." Then, my favorite one. I worked all night on a Friday night until 6 Saturday morning to get documents to a client on Saturday morning for a deal he wanted to close on Monday. This came about when the client was in our office at 4 pm Friday and we had the other party on the telephone and, without asking the lawyers in the room, promised a complete set of acquisition documents by Saturday morning. Of course, all the other lawyers had social plans Friday night, so I was elected to stay and get the documents done. Which I did. When I called the other party's office Saturday morning to make sure he got the documents, someone answered and said that the package got there but Mr. Whoever was out of town for the weekend and he wouldn't be back in town until Monday. A week after I turned in a time sheet showing 21 billable hours on Friday, I got called to the carpet by our administrative partner who accused me of double billing. I told him the story and, rather than trusting what I said, he checked the guard log at the security desk to confirm that I left the building at 6 am on Saturday like I said. I resigned a month later. I am much more thick skinned now, so I don't let it bother me when I get criticized or someone edits my work. But being a lawyer in today's environment can be frightening. I have learned over time that there are ways to establish a good balance between the job and home and family. That you can say no and not have the world come to an end. The best thing I ever read was in the ABA Journal a few years ago. Someone wrote that, toward the end of life, you don't hear about people regretting that they didn't try more cases or close more deals or write more contracts. They regret that they didn't spend more time with their family, or didn't enjoy life more. I don't want to be a stranger to my kids. I don't want them to grow up thinking it's OK to miss important events because of work. I don't want to hear them say to me that a particular moment was extra special because I could be there that time. And I certainly don't want people to say my job killed me when I'm gone. I'm glad that there are people in the profession who speak up and say that things don't have to be the way they are. Hopefully, the mainstream bar will take notice of this and do something more than pay lip service to it.

To: Ilaine who wrote (17159)	1/28/1999 5:07:00 PM
From: Rambi	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 71178

Coby, I'm so pleased for you! I really hope you get some good professors who can make it all meaningful and worthwhile for you. We have a friend who lost his job a year or so ago---very high level sales- he has gone back to school in COnflict Resolution and loves it. It must be a booming field!! He's 49 or so and has two children in college, so this can't be easy for them. I think he's in a MAster's program. I really want to hear what you think of the classes. IN fields such as these, I would think age is a positive-- how can young people have much perspective? All the things you've gone through, all the people in your life! You have a much larger, deeper database on which to draw for knowledge. I'd like to know more about the field.