December 21, 2017
How to Achieve a Work-Life Balance in Your Legal Profession
By: Colleen Jilio-Ryan | Posted in: court reporter
The legal profession can provide you with an extremely rewarding career, but can also pose challenges in creating a work-life balance. It is a highly stressful field because of its fast pace, extreme pressure and demanding works hours. In the recent times many lawyers, regardless of the tenure of their practice, have realized the importance of work-life balance and desperately strive to maintain it.
Fortunately, many private practice firms are currently finding ways to improve the work-life balance and providing a productive work environment to attract the best talent and keep the present staff members from a potential burnout.
Here are some suggestions to upgrade on your present work-life balance within the legal profession:
Determine Your Priorities
On the basis of your career goals and individual situations, your preference for spending time at work may vary. Decide what is important to you before creating a plan on how you’ll achieve it.
Decide When You Will Communicate
Determine when you can still be contacted for work-related issues after hours. Communicate these hours to your clients and co-workers. The key is to stay honest in order to deal with the expectations that people have for your availability.
Be Organized and Efficient
Establish and assess your work schedule regularly to pinpoint where you can possibly fall behind time and where you can accomplish tasks quickly. Efficiency is key, which means staying on top of your plan and tasks through proper work delegation and prioritizing your tasks.
Utilize Better Technologies
You can achieve a lot from home because of computers, e-mail, and voice mail. Use these available technological tools to your advantage. However, set limitations to prevent work from conflicting with your family time.
Carve Out Personal Time
It’s easy to get into the trap of monotonously working, sleeping, and caring for family, and over a period of time all that leads to a recipe for burnout. Catch up on your favorite hobbies and activities, once in a while to destress yourself and improve your job productivity.
Attaining a work-life balance can be challenging in the legal profession but, by being proactive in setting limitations the balance between your work and personal life can be decently maintained.
Colleen Jilio-Ryan is the Owner of Jilio-Ryan, a Tustin based premiere law consulting firm. The firm along with its certified court reporters is dedicated to providing the highest quality deposition and litigation services to attorneys, insurance companies, and corporations. With her sincere efforts, Colleen is committed to meeting the highest standards of the legal industry, and is an industry leader when it comes to on-time court reporting and deposition scheduling.