Lessons From Year One: The Less-Than-Full-Time Lawyer Life

Attorney Susan Cohodes shares wisdom from her long career in small firm practice and her transition to “less-than-full-time” practice.
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In “A Life in the Law,” trial attorney Susan Cohodes shares pearls of wisdom from her long career in small firm practice and her transition to “less-than-full-time” practice. This time last year she was counting down the days until semi-retirement. Has the first year out gone as planned?

I’ve had almost a year now to reflect on not being a full-time practicing attorney and I have come to the conclusion that I really do like practicing law — just not all the time. I have also concluded that I do not like all the other stuff that comes along with working full-time in a small law firm.

Office “Stuff”: Pandemic Days

I work in a small law office, and during the pandemic, I was the one who went to the office every day. I didn’t have a dog to walk, and being the essential person at the office seemed to me like a good reason to leave the house back when we were all terrified of doing so but also bored and getting a little tired of loved ones who we were now seeing all the time. At the office, I opened the mail and scanned it to its appropriate destinations. I took care of banking. I answered phones and did whatever else needed doing.

Being a team player, I was happy to be the pandemic office person. I was also selfish in that back then, my files were mostly paper, and I didn’t have room at home to store and secure them properly. So, answering phones and opening mail was a small price to pay for the freedom to work at my office. Until it wasn’t.

Boundary Issues

When things opened up again, I continued being one who was at the office every day as others trickled in and out. I still did much of what I did during the pandemic. It had become my habit and everyone else’s expectation, so it just continued. Now, as I look back, I realize I don’t like doing any of that stuff. And now that I am not full-time, I don’t have to. In fact, I don’t even know how to. My office moved several months ago, and while I do have a key, I don’t know how the new phone system or copier or scanner works. And that is just how I like it.

All I have to do is handle cases and, it turns out, I really enjoy that.

Would I have continued to practice full-time if I had realized sooner that I don’t like almost everything about an office except doing my actual work and, of course, my colleagues? I don’t know. But I do recognize I am privileged to work the way I do now. I also realize that I could have been much better about setting boundaries long ago.

Water under the bridge for me. But for younger lawyers, the opportunity is there to set appropriate boundaries much sooner than I did.

A Mindset Shift

The reality is that I am probably working just as many hours per week on client matters as I did a year ago. I am still more than willing to hop in the car on a Saturday to meet with clients who prefer to talk in person rather than on Zoom. I still talk to clients in the evening when that’s the only time they are available. Much of my law practice is exactly the same as it was when I was practicing full-time.

What is vastly different is my mindset.

Now, I’m doing it because I want to, not because I have to, and that shift in my thinking has made all the difference … to me. I am confident that it has not made any difference to my clients. So, win-win. At the same time, I’ve taken more trips this year than I had in many years and have gone days without logging into the office even once. By the time football season is over, I will have been at six Packers games in Green Bay and one in Los Angeles. And, I am pleased to report that I felt much less of an urge to log in to my office in my travels than I felt when I was a full-time practicing lawyer.

I am also still volunteering to read with an elementary school kid. This year I’m working with a third grader I’ll call Alina. I may ask for CLE ADR credits for my work with her because she is a canny negotiator and has gotten lots of stickers out of me in exchange for reading. When I was a full-time practicing lawyer, I would have spent my time with her looking at my watch (yes, I still wear one). I’d be thinking about whatever I had going on in the afternoon or how quickly I would have to dash out of school to beat traffic.

Now, I think about how many stickers it is going to take for me to get her to read the next page in a story. (It’s usually more than I think, but we are making great progress, and I have lots of stickers.) I think about what else we can do so that by the end of the school year, she is reading at grade level. I also think about why she keeps beating me at tic-tac-toe, but maybe she is just better at that game than I am. (Or maybe it’s because when we play, she has to read a sentence before she can put down her next X or O. She’s a strong negotiator, but after all, I have spent almost 40 years negotiating, and she’s an 8-year-old.)

Inward and Onward

Maybe I would still be a full-time practicing lawyer if I had changed my mindset years ago and set more boundaries. Maybe not. That’s not the lesson I take from my year-end pondering.

What I have learned, however, is that looking inward was the key to my successful transition. Nearly one year later, I am a very happy, less-than-full-time practicing lawyer who couldn’t make a copy at my office if my life depended on it.

And that’s just fine by me.

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