Shifting Perspectives

There is a fundamental difference between being an attorney and being a writer that I have been pondering for awhile now.  It's primarily about time, and how time is viewed in the context of money.  Let me explain.

In much of private legal practice (which is what I did most recently), an attorney's time is spent in the billable hour system.  This means that attorneys track the time they spend on a certain case and bill that to the client.  What it looks like at a law firm is that every day, an attorney or paralegal's time must be accounted for in increments of 6 minutes, or a .1 of an hour.  Thankfully, there are software programs that work like a timer and automatically calculate your time and add it to the client's bill so you don't have to manually add it up (which I have also had to do, and takes an incredibly long time to keep track of).

This is all fine.  There are elements of the billable hour system that I actually liked.  For example, using a timer all day shows you how much time you've spent on each task during the day, and how much time you've put in total.  This can be interesting sometimes.

Then, at the end of the month, the attorney in charge of the case reviews the bill, cuts out time that is deemed unnecessary, duplicative, or in some way not able to be charged to the client and sends the bill to the client.  Depending on how many hours were cut, the profit from that client is going to be higher or lower than other clients.

The part that I have an issue with is the pressure to reach the highest profit margin on every single case.  To only do the work necessary to reach that goal.  While I certainly understand that law firms are businesses trying to make money, when the focus is so predominantly on the profit, it takes away from some of the underlying value that is given to the client when a little extra attention is given.  To me, it is worth it to put in a little more time and attention to some areas, even if that results in hours that can't be billed to the client and therefore results in a slightly lower profit margin. 

The other problem that the billable hour system created for me was that because there is always the pressure to bill more and push the profits higher to make more money for the firm (and thus, in some firms, become a more valuable associate), there is a constant pressure to put in billable time even if it means skipping breaks and lunches or working 12 hour days.  In other words, because there is no limit on one attorney's billable hours, there is only a minimum requirement and never a cut-off point.  If I could just eliminate my need to sleep, exercise, and spend time with my family, then the profits would be through the roof.  But that's not the kind of life I want to live.

On a side note, you might think that paid breaks are mandated by state law for all employees who work full time, and that should apply to attorneys as well.  And you'd be right.  But the reality is that there are still law firms today that do not pay attorneys to take breaks, and do not encourage them to take breaks at all, whether paid or unpaid.  Do I need my two paid breaks during the day?  No.  But when my employer is a law firm, I lose respect for them when they don't follow the law and at least give me the option that they are required to under the law.

And maybe I should have forced myself to take breaks more often, even if they weren't paid.  But I didn't want to seem weak, when I can just push through.  The problem is that after months or years of this relentless pressure, without breaks, the stress builds up.  There is a reason why so many attorneys die of heart attacks in their 50's.  I don't want that to be me.

The other part of this system is that I have never really been motivated by money.  I am careful with money and know how to scrupulously budget, and it will be so incredibly nice to have finally paid off my student loans from law school.  And yes, I am striving for financial security, even today.  But my goal in life has never been to reach the highest profit margin, to have money just for money's sake.  When I look at life through money's lens, I feel unfulfilled.

There has got to be something else that inspires me or motivates me.  What I have done must have some meaning other than just making a profit.  And that's where I fall back on my writing once again.  To pursue something for the pure pleasure of it.  To create something beautiful because it is satisfying to use my natural talents and add something of value to the world.

What is interesting is that when I first started this transition from an attorney to a writer, my brain was so hard wired in the billable hour system that I thought along the lines of "how quickly do I need to write and how much do I need to sell to reach X dollars per hour?" and wondered whether I should track my time to input this factor into the equation.  I quickly decided that no, I should not.

For one, it is a pain to constantly think in these terms.  And for another, it is a distraction.  My goal is not to "get in, get out" and obtain the highest profit for the least amount of time.  My goal is to enjoy what I am writing, fall in love with the story, and build a sustainable income off of it eventually.  I don't expect this to happen overnight and I expect to run into many dead ends in my writing that, in legal terms would be called billable time that gets cut at the end of the month.  Rather than seeing this as a costly mistake, however, I believe that these dead ends are just going to be part of the process.  I have a lot to learn - about my writing style, about the publishing and marketing worlds - and I am going to put the time in to do a good job, whether or not I think it will lead to immediate profits.

Similarly, when I first started this transition, I wanted to start reading more books for fun and I quickly realized how long it can take to sit down and read an entire novel.  This was not fitting into the "get in, get out, move on to the next billable project" mentality that I had cultivated.  This was a much slower pace than I was used to.  Of course, when I sat down at first, I thought, "I can't just sit here and read this book for hours, how am I going to justify doing that when I'm not making any money?"  And I'd put it aside in search of something more promising "for my career."  But I kept checking out books from the library.  And one day, I started reading one and just got sucked into the story.  Like I did when I was a kid.  And it didn't matter that it wasn't the most profitable thing I could have been doing in that moment.  It was refreshing, invigorating, enjoyable.  I enjoyed sitting down in large chunks of time over the course of a few weeks until I finished the whole book, not just a few minutes here and there where I could squeeze it in.

I once read somewhere that efficiency is a man-made construct, whereas nature is quite inefficient.  I think the example they used was of a tree producing hundreds of blossoms or thousands more seeds than it actually needs to reproduce.  Yes, it overproduces because so many seeds will get eaten by predators and it needs them to ensure that a single seed grows into another adult tree that can continue to reproduce.  But we don't look at the abundance of blossoms and seeds and think, "what a waste of time."  No, we look at it and marvel at its beauty.

 

Photo used with permission by Totororo.Roro.