You Won’t Succeed If You Don’t Love Family Law

Do you love practicing family law? Are you passionate about it. Do you find yourself reading litigation tactics books on vacation? Are you studying collaborative law articles while in the bathroom? Do you pore over every edition of Family Advocate?

If you don’t then you should get out. You should move on. You should find the thing you’re truly passionate about and go do it.

Family law is way to hard to do if you don’t have it in your bones. You can’t stand up to the client abuse, the judicial abuse, the peer abuse if you aren’t totally getting off on what you’re doing.

Far to many family law practitioners sit around the courthouse whining about the clients, the judges, the difficulties of managing associates, the challenges of collecting fees. They seem to hate what they’re doing. They seem to find little joy in helping a client, in performing in court, in pulling the rabbit out of the hat in a mediation.

Here’s the deal – if you’re not happy, you’re never going to do well. You’re not going to make money, you’re not going to find satisfaction in your work, your not going to find contentment. You’re screwed. Be miserable or get out – pick one.

I’d suggest you get out. Run, don’t walk, toward something else. There are lots of other possibilities. Maybe one of them is your thing. Maybe one of them will get you firing on all cylinders. Maybe one of them will keep you up at night with excitement about the next day. Seriously.

Some people love what they do. They’re always going to succeed in some form or fashion. If you hate it – you’re going to fail. Life’s too short.

If you’re that person complaining, think about what it means. Think about whether you hate family law or just love to complain. If it’s the former then pack it in, move on and find the place where you belong.

Related articles:

  1. Family Law – Love It or Leave It
  2. How I Know You’re Going To Succeed
  3. 11 Things You Can Do That Will Make Clients Love You
  4. Six Reasons to Love the Cloud
  5. What to Do When You Can’t Take Family Law Anymore

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  • Jack Lebowitz

    I’m an environmental law/energy/utilities lawyer and I’m getting out, not because I don’t love the WORK and have had stupendous RESULTS, but because I HATE the BUSINESS, which is barnacled by the same corrupt race to the bottom as the rest of the FIRE (finance, insurance, real estate) sector of the economy.  Truly a “market for lemons” (read the wiki; it’s actually a Nobel Prize winning economic thesis).  

    Considering the Occupy Wall Street protests, and our sclerotic political system, are you surprised?I just did a Venn diagram with one circle being “Try to make livable wage until statutory retirement  (4 years)” and  the other being “Strenuously avoid doing evil; Hopefully help to create better world, society”.I’ve also marched on Wall Street with union workers and in my own weekly demonstrations in my upstate NY town.  Working with some of my friends to organize a consumers food coop.I agree with you that you should love the work, but even the work has become increasingly difficult as the finance types have disdain for the environmental regulations and government because of their conservative ideology.  That puts me at odds with them, because i believe in the efficacy of the laws and they don’t…they don’t understand why you shouldn’t take the shortcut of lobbying and paying off legislators to weaken the laws rather than comply with them which has been the accepted practice since Nixon’s day.Maybe family law practitioners just have it better, as much as you complain.  (And I did plenty of complaining about clients that didn’t pay too…there seems to be a widespread thought that the invoice is just a suggested contribution, negotiable.  Not too different than the idea that rich folks are often lousy tippers, and we all know businesses are about cutting costs, including living on their suppliers while they hoard cash and thinking you want to work for them for free for the “relationship” and exposure.  Feh.

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