I wonder if the nature of the legal profession might tend to crowd out personal life in favor of our practice. Success in the legal profession seems to require an inordinate investment of time and energy--even aside from the billable hours. The adversarial system, the duty to zealously represent a client, and the legal culture they generate create powerful incentives to prioritize our work over our personal lives. Furthermore, this dynamic seems like it might exist even outside of Midtown. Whether representing faceless companies, endangered species, or “The People,” a lawyer is ultimately just a hired hand, a role which probably does not lend itself well to cultivating real relationships in most cases.

My intuition is that the best marriage of personal life and professional practice can be achieved by representing a community you closely identify with, whether as a real estate lawyer in the hometown you love or as an environmental lawyer and avid hiker. This sort of arrangement seems like it might create meaningful opportunities for professional life to contribute to the personal, and vice versa. Even then, though, family relationships seem like they might be difficult to maintain.

-- MichaelDreibelbis - 30 Mar 2009