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Interwebs, I recently spent about six hours writing an article on Costa Rica for DICTA magazine, the Knoxville Bar Association's monthly publication. I don't even want to add up the opportunity costs associated with writing the piece, but my inner compulsive grammarian does not allow publication of any item without thorough (read: obsessive and time-consuming) editing. A holdover from my days as managing editor of The Washington and Lee Law Review, I guess.

At any rate, I'm going to cut my losses and use the DICTA piece as my contribution to the blogosphere today. If you find a grammatical error in the article, do let me know in the comments. At the same time, please also provide your physical address. That way, I'll know where to beat you senseless with my dog-eared Elements of Style.

Work-Life Balance FAIL

In hopes of discovering some measure of work-life balance, today I attended a Knoxville Bar Association work-life balance committee lunch. Most days I eat a peanut butter sandwich at my desk, so going out for lunch seemed like a good first step on the road to balance. Am I right? And the other lawyers on the committee were great--funny, smart, likable, all of the above. We ordered in salads, planned a bit, then laughed and commiserated. The whole thing took about 90 minutes.

That's N-I-N-E-T-Y MINUTES.

90!

Minutes!

In other words, 1.5 billable hours! The difference between waking up at 5:30AM and 7AM! The time it takes to read a Hemingway classic! A plane ride to Chicago! Most importantly, 90 additional minutes away from my family, who grow 90 minutes older every 90 minutes!

Although I do enjoy rousting myself to get out and see the larger world now and again, attending meetings on balance to achieve more balance is akin to that Zen koan about the sound of one hand clapping. Except my koan is, IN SEEKING BALANCE, BALANCE FURTHER ELUDES YOU, YOU SILLY FOOL.

And that, my friends, is the only wisdom on work-life balance I have to offer.

Now. I need to get billing.

Mars/Venus: Questions for the Ages

Why is it that every man I’ve ever shared a secretary with can't manage his own postage stamps? Is it just so he can shout from a corner office, “Hey [insert beleaguered secretary's name], bring me a stamp! No, bring two!”

I mean, how difficult is it to keep the stamps in the top drawer of your desk and—here’s the tricky part—take one out when you need it?

Isn't that a whole lot less bother?

Other questions for the ages: why professional men can't make their own hair appointments. Or purchase their own Christmas presents.

The Secret Lives of Accountants

I went to a dinner last night to celebrate the closing of a big transaction. I don’t go to these things often (East Tennessee’s not exactly M&A central), so this was a new experience for me. Frankly, I was kind of dreading it. I thought the dinner would be a fairly stiff affair, what with a bunch of lawyers, executives, accountants, and investment bankers attending. I expected to be home by 8PM, asleep by 9PM.

I was totally wrong.

This was all out revelry, Roman style. Cocktails for an hour, then a dinner that stretched on until 10:30PM with copious shouting, roasting, jokes of questionable taste, drinking, flirtation, and general over-the-top hilarity and celebration. The outwardly staid and conservative accountants turned out to be secretly subversive and incredibly funny. The executives flashed all the social intelligence and people skills that have undoubtedly helped them ascend the corporate ladder. The investment bankers (mostly women--SMART women, by the way) were the ringleaders in the partying effort, and even the lawyers joined in the fray. It got so out of control that the extremely loud people in the next room complained about all the noise our party was making. The whole thing was unexpectedly hilarious and eye-opening, and I never would have predicted it.

Don't underestimate those guys in the gray suits: THEY ARE PARTY ANIMALS.

I'm Dreaming of a . . . Corporate Christmas?

Ah, the season is upon us. The relentless commercialism. The fruitless quests for appropriate gifts. The insurmountable entertainment expectations set by Martha. THE DREADED CORPORATE CHRISTMAS PARTIES.

Don't get me wrong, I like and respect most of the people I work with. Some of them are brilliant, edifying individuals, and others are genuinely nice human beings. I bet a lot of them are fun to hang with . . . if only I didn't deal with them in a work setting. On a daily basis. For the last ten years. There's just something about a work setting that kills any desire to spend more time with a person (aside from the fact that I'm happily married, I'm obviously not a good candidate for a hot office romance). But one must attend corporate Christmas parties if only to be polite. And as a demonstration of thanks that someone other than you took on the task of actually planning such an event.

Some people do appear to enjoy these socially compulsory get-togethers. They eat and drink and socialize without appearing stressed about their mandatory nature. Others use the opportunity to "network" (i.e., feign friendship in hopes of commercial advantage). I, for one, am largely preoccupied at these events with controlling an urge to flee screaming out the closest exit. As you can imagine, it's hard to carry on a conversation under these circumstances, and it usually makes for a grueling night.

Here's a little song I wrote called, "The Question of the Corporate Christmas Party"; it's to be sung to the tune of "Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow":

The party's sure to be frightful,
And the food's only had by the biteful,
So if we're voting yes or no,
Let it go, let it go, LET IT GO.

Attorneys Need to Golf

Back some time ago, I complained a bit about golf on this blog. You know, how businessmen talk a lot about it and how my boss advised me to play it and how I'd rather shampoo my dog than spend any time trying to get that ridiculous little ball in a hole an acre away.

Anyway, today I received an e-mail from one of my favorite clients, a hard-charging woman I very much admire. I kid you not, this is what it said:

"[Name omitted] at [place omitted] is a LPGA pro and very good. Nice Christmas present for yourself. Attorneys need to golf."

Golf is inescapable.

Part-Time Is a State of Mind

I work what most would consider to be a full-time schedule: Monday through Friday 9:00AM to 6:00PM (frequently later). I rarely take more than 20 or 30 minutes for lunch, and I sometimes work on weekends. Although it sounds like a pretty full schedule, many lawyers--even Knoxville lawyers--would consider my schedule to be part-time. Because basically? If you're not regularly billing ten-hour days and working at least one weekend day, you're just not working hard enough.

As you can imagine, there's a good deal of tension between these kinds of work expectations and family life. I'm lucky that the work I do and my firm have allowed my schedule, at least to date. One colleague recently went out of his way, though, to ask at 5:45 PM if I was "burning the midnight oil"--a snarky hint that he doesn't think I work long enough hours. Although I would dearly love to kick him in the shins, I know what he means. I don't choose to work the 60+ hour weeks he worked at my age (or, for that matter, have a stay-at-home spouse tending the homefires, as he does). But if I did work his schedule, I would see my young children even less than the two or three hours a night I currently spend with them. And right now--at only 45 hours a week--I feel stretched pretty thin between work and family obligations.

I'm not treading new ground here; work/life issues are a well-known problem for lawyers. It's a particular concern when so many families have two parents who are both working full-time--like mine. What is the right balance? What expectations are reasonable? Who does the actual raising of your children? Won't you have regrets when they're grown and gone? Who set the 1800 billable hours/annum bar? Why is full-time work short of a 60+ hour week part-time? And when is it really OK to kick your colleagues in the shins? (JOKE, JOKE.)

All this is to say that, I worry about balance and meeting all of my obligations. And although this blog helps me vent my uncertainty and frustration, I don't actually have answers. Or, for that matter, the time right now to figure out a more palatable solution.

You see, I'm kind of busy--even though I'm only working part-time.

Female Laywers Earn About 78% of What Male Lawyers Earn

This, from the US Census Bureau's American Community Survey.

The Early Bird Gets No Sleep

Although I'm not in any way complaining about work (cf. Dooce), it seems a tad overzealous to schedule 7:00AM business meetings. Especially when the meeting place is 45 minutes away. I understand wanting an early start, but what a meeting like this means on a practical level is forcible extraction from bed at 5:00AM to be sure appropriate grooming and adequate caffeine uptake can occur. This, in turn, means a night of restless anticipation and intermittent sleep for fear of missing the 5:00AM alarm. So instead of a bright-eyed bushy-tailed 7:00AM start on the day, what we have is an exhausted, bug-eyed, caffeine-crazed lawyer staggering around in high heels, pearls, and a black pantsuit in the brutal morning light.

It's not a pretty picture.

When I become Queen of the World, authoritarian civilizing measures will include a rule that business meetings may not commence before 8:00AM and will end promptly on the earliest of the following: (a) five continuous seconds of silence; (b) when anyone gets surly (no matter how little sleep she or he may have had); or (c) when at least one meeting attendee is actually asleep.

If the Train's on Time You Can Get to Work by Nine

I am chronically late to work. I find all kinds of things to do in the morning--feed the dog, make the sandwiches, put the wet wash in the dryer, water the plants, let the chickens out, unload the dishwasher, brush the kids' hair, pack the backpacks, yadda yadda yadda, the list goes on and on. All this results in my being very, very late to work.

This is how late I am to work: My colleague who lives 40 minutes away in Townsend broke both his front teeth tripping in the shower, dried himself off, got dressed, went to the dentist, got two caps AND a cup of coffee, drove all the way to work, and STILL made it in before me.

Oldtimer

On August 4, 2008, I will officially have been with my firm for ten years. I'll have spent an entire decade--all of my 30s--in the same office, basically with the same people. I started out as a legal neophyte fresh from a judicial clerkship in West Virginia, and although I'm always learning, I'm now a full-fledged member of the firm. It's a good, challenging job, and for the most part, I've enjoyed it. One of the perks has been working with people who are extremely bright; my boss, in particular, is a brilliant guy. Of course, work is hard, too; legal problems can sometime be difficult to resolve definitively. Often, there's no clear answer and you make an educated guess. And everyone knows the work-related difficulties of slogging through the daily grind or minding your manners when a colleague just doesn't play nice. There's been some of that, too. But mostly it's been positive. Plus all the free soda I could drink.

So I feel good about the last ten years. And to celebrate, I'm throwing the firm a pizza party.

More with the Golf

Just got back from a business lunch, and guess what we talked about?

Golf

In the past few days, I've spent a lot of time in meetings with men, and it's striking to me how many of them play golf. They talk golf with their clients and among themselves. They go on golf vacations. Golf even seems to be a valid excuse to miss work on Fridays. Given that I'm a woman in a largely male-dominated profession and "not from around here," it probably would be good for my career if I could learn to golf and to talk about it. In fact, in the ten years I've worked for him, my boss has offered me only two pieces of career development advice: Learn to play golf, and carry a briefcase.

There's one small problem: I LOATHE golf. Trying to direct a tiny ball into a hole an acre away is, in my opinion, a time-consuming, pointless exercise in frustration. The hours of practice time I would spend just to be a passable golfer could be better spent--oh, I don't know--shampooing my dog. Or cleaning the top of my refrigerator.

All this golf talk over the last few days has made me wonder whether there's a difference in what executive-level women chat about waiting for a meeting to start. I have to guess here, because quite honestly, I don't see a lot of executive-level women. Some are golfers, no doubt, and might talk about it. But not many, I bet. My guess is that most business women are too busy to golf. When they're not at work, they're home with children or taking care of elderly parents. Or cooking meals or doing laundry. Those obligations don't leave a lot of time for golf. Or much to talk about because, regrettably, discussion of anything family-oriented in the workplace is perceived as unprofessional.

So what IS the lingua franca for women in business? Current events? Too earnest and fraught with politics. The latest novel? Too intellectual. Fashion? Too personal. Kids' schools? Too domestic. The weather? Too dull. Celebrity gossip? Too trite.

I'm stumped.

Be Careful What You Wish For

After seven or eight years of living with what was basically a thin grayish-brown carpet on my office walls, I finally got the gumption to ask my firm for a painting allowance. Probably in reaction to the hideous drabness of the aforesaid wallcovering, I chose yellow as a replacement. Although it IS much cheerier, it's pretty much blinding in direct sunlight. And the combination of the yellow walls with the dated hunter green carpet is . . . unfortunate.

In connection with my office improvement efforts, I also bought three houseplants, which apparently came with a number of fruit fly larvae (I assume fruit flies come from larvae; it seems fitting that they would). The combination of blinding walls, the fruit flies swarming my head, and the floaters in my eyes have brought me to a new level of distraction.

I'm considering moving out of my office altogether.