If not, you may want to take a look at Dan Hull’s post yesterday over at What About Clients? on only taking clients you do like. He is so absolutely on target, that it is a shame that more firms are not like his. Please take the time to read his post.
Professional happiness is not an over abundant attribute among practitioners in the legal industry. What a shame. Further, it isn’t anything new.
As I have reported before David Maister in his book True Professionalism shares the results of his informal surveys of lawyers in many law firms about their attitudes toward the work they do and the clients they do it for. He consistently found that a majority merely tolerate or truly dislike both the work they do and the clients they do it for.
What a double shame?
And according to The Times (of London) Online in a story earlier this month, 25% of lawyers “want to leave the profession because of stress and long hours.” My guess is that a lot of the stress is related to unhappiness in what they are doing, and most likely the clients they work for. If you enjoy what you are doing in life the less stress comes into play.
The solution? Short of leaving the profession (which may be the right move for some) is to focus your legal marketing and business development efforts toward landing clients you would like working for, and practicing the kind of law you enjoy doing. Granted it may require a change of direction, but that is not a bad thing. Life is truly too short to be doing things for clients you don’t like.