Working oneself to death

 This is not the typical post for this Blog, but I though it most appropriate.

We have all heard, and possibly used, the phrase "...working oneself to death" - - perhaps lightheartedly; but, that phrase has more truth in it than jest.

This fact was highlighted in an article written by Elie Mystal ofthe Skadden Firm (a global law firm) about the recent death of a young lawyer in that firm - - Lisa Marie Johnstone, age 32.

Here is that article:

"For the past week, a conversation has percolating around Sakaden that has made its way into the ATL inbox. A Skadden associate, Lisa Johnstone, died last week. Her obituary ran earlier this week in the San Diego Union Tribune. And her memorial service was yesterday. She died of an apparent heart attack, though we understand that her autopsy has not yet been completed. She was 32.

We’re talking about Lisa Johnstone’s death because reports indicate that she died while doing legal work from her home office on a Sunday. We’re talking about Lisa Johnstone because for over a week, Skadden associates have been talking about just how many hours Johnstone had been working. We’re talking about Johnstone because while the root cause of her death my never be known, many Skadden associates and others who know the story are taking this as an opportunity to assess their lives and their mental and physical well being.

And that’s a good thing. The best advice I ever received in Biglaw was the partner who said: “You don’t have a thermostat..."

If you talk to Skadden associates in Los Angeles right now, they are understandably angry. The people we’ve spoken to in that office say that in the weeks prior to her death, Johnstone was pulling 100-hour weeks and was under intense pressure. Multiple sources tell us that she had her vacation cut short after being called back to work.

Sources also report that Johnstone had shown some disturbing signs of overwork. Multiple people told us that she was suffering from hair loss. Again, we don’t have the autopsy report, but multiple sources speculate that under these conditions, Johnstone had turned to “the lawyer version of performance enhancers,” just to stay awake.

Now, if you’ve never worked a day in Biglaw, these stories might sound like “horror” stories. And maybe they are. But they’re not “novel” stories. We can’t be sure of what happened to Lisa Johnstone, but we can be sure that this kind of stuff “happens to” Biglaw associates all across the country.

I’ve pulled a few 100-hour billable weeks. I still remember them, as I imagine one would remember spending a week in prison, or a week marooned at sea. On one case, a senior associate on the team (who, incredibly to me, was working harder than everybody else) passed out in the office — right in the middle of the conference room everybody was working in (the partners were, you guessed it, out of town at the time). We had to call an ambulance and everything. And when they carted her away, the rest of us went right back to work — because that’s the mentality that had brought us through law school and into a job like that in the first place.

Luckily, she was fine — just “exhausted,” which until that time, I did not know was an “official” medical diagnosis. And that case pretty much clinched partner for her so, you know, I guess it all worked out based on the logic of Biglaw life. But later on that week, our team was addressed by the partner in charge of the case. He gave us the standard blah blah blah about taking care of ourselves and all that. But then he said (and I won’t forget this until the day I die): “You guys, you don’t have a thermostat. Nobody knows how far you can go before you blow.”

… Now, understand, at the time I was angry. Enraged. I felt much of what these Skadden L.A. associates have been feeling this week. Here was a colleague of mine, a person I liked even though we weren’t friends in the social sense, who had just been pushed to the brink. Here was this colleague who had just gone down a road I did not want to go down, and the firm — who at that point was the thing I had dedicated my freaking life to — was doing nothing to help her. And by her, I of course meant me. A thermostat? Are you kidding me? Why is the goal to push me to the absolute breaking point without actually causing me so much harm that I can no longer stand up? That’s how people treat horses, not men and women.

But over time, and after I quit, I came to understand that the partner wasn’t actually saying the most callous thing in the universe. I mean, it was still a pretty cold thing to say, but it wasn’t totally devoid of feeling. He was also reminding us that we ourselves don’t really know how much we can take, until maybe it’s too late.

We treat ourselves like horses sometimes. I know I did. I never took some of the stimulants available to enhance my “alertness,” though I certainly know a lot of people who did. But as I’ve discussed before, I did find myself filling out prescriptions for drugs that were supposed to make the anxiety go away. When my colleague collapsed, I didn’t think: “Wow, there are limits.” I thought: “Oh nononononono, we’re a man down, I’m going to have to work even harder now.”

When I quit, it wasn’t just because I felt like the firm was going to work me into the ground. It was also an admission that I was not wired to stop it from happening. I didn’t, at that point, have the skills to tell the firm: “No, I’m not billing 100 hours this week. Not now, not ever.” But I didn’t know what would happen to me if I kept working like that, and I didn’t like what was happening to me already. So I quit, consequentces be damned. I didn’t have a thermostat.

My story is the one I know about. I don’t know Lisa Johnstone’s story. We don’t know what kind of pressures she was feeling. We don’t know if she was being pushed, or if she would have naturally found a way to work as much as she possibly could. We don’t know if her heart could have given out sitting on a beach sipping a cocktail, just like it apparently did sitting in her home office trying to get work done. She’s gone now, and we can just hope and pray for her family and friends.

But we, the living, are not gone. We still have choices to make. If in Johnstone’s death somebody else out there can find a moment to recalibrate his or her life, that can be a good thing.

These Biglaw jobs are hard. Insane even. You literally can no longer pay me enough to do one. But if you are putting yourself in the middle of this pressurized insanity, please remember that you don’t have thermostat. Nobody knows how much you can take."

                                                                     Elie Mystal of the Skadden Firm

Jerome M. Bame, Esq., Coach-Mentor-Confidant to Lawyers, 10061 Talbert Avenue, Suite 200, Fountain Valley, CA  92708; Telephone (714) 962-4477; Email jmb@PracticingLawSucks.com

Comments

[Anonymous Biglaw Wife]

Yes, no one has a thermostat.

My husband was a biglaw partner. He did the whole corporate work till you drop transactional nightmare for years, keeping himself going on sugar and high caffeine soda until one day he no longer could. No, not heart attack or diabetes or anything else you would expect. It was dementia, young onset at age 48, which stopped him by the time he was 50. All those years of billing, and really working, the benchmark in Texas biglaw firms, 2400 hours a year, netted him no great accolades but only a vegetative state by age 58, a miserable life, and a decade of terror for his young children. Care and comfort from his firm or the Bar? Are you kidding?

Was it worth it? You bet not.

[American Dreamer]

I dont think you should overgeneralize based on one lawyer's story.

I worked at Skadden's LA office for many years until just a year ago and most of the lawyers were gone by 8 o'clock at night. In fact the average billing for an associate was just 1,500 to 1,600 hours per year. It was not a sweatshop.

It sounds like Lisa may hae been on one particularly difficult deal. It only takes one deal to be working around the clock. But I dont think you can generalize that everyone at Skadden's LA office is working around the clock. In fact Skadden's NY office had a one year paid leave of absence for associates because there was not enough work.

The people in the LA office who got to the top did so on the quality of their work not by working around the clock. Noone there did.

[Yeoman]

I don't think it's only big law, but the law in general any more. The law is requiring more and more hours like this, at least on the litigation end. Pretty grim situation.

It's easy to stay just stop, but how? After you are in this for awhile, it seems to me, that your practice area is what you are qualified to do. If you are on your own, that's one thing, but if you have done this job for a few years, it's your field, and if your family is depending on you, how to you avoid working yourself to death?