Editor's Column

Go on Vacation (it will be OK)
By: Joel T. Towner

I remember distinctly the first time as a lawyer that I should have taken a vacation.  I was blessed to have a healthy amount of time off between a judicial clerkship and starting private practice.  So I took a long vacation, traveling as cheaply as I could and stretching it out longer than even I thought was feasible.  I didn’t take a vacation as a first-year lawyer, and it did not bother me in the least.  So it never occurred to me that I should take a vacation my second year.

I was working steadily my second year.  My bandwidth for work was comfortably at capacity, and I thought I was on pace for another smooth and satisfying year.  Then it happened.  Like a freakish confluence of events, nearly my entire docket suddenly wound down.  One major case after another ended in quick succession: surprise settlements, a grant of a long pending summary judgment, an automatic stay in bankruptcy.  In about a week, my workload went from comfortably at capacity to a drought-stricken stream.

I surveyed the rest of my work for a day and thought I needed more cases to work on immediately.  So I did what I typically do when I want more work.  I struck up conversations with various partners about what was going on with their dockets at CLE lunches, morning coffee, around the elevators at lunch.  Word of an associate with time to spare spreads around any office like wildfire, and soon I was staffed back up on plenty of cases.  In retrospect, my response was more a knee-jerk reaction than a decision.  I never thought there was anything I should have done other than fill up my docket.  I should have taken a vacation. 

What I didn’t realize then is that dockets of cases rise and fall.  Neither litigation nor transactional practice is an even flow.  Even with extensions, lawyers will inevitably be busier at some times rather than others.  Don’t try to fill the downtimes.  Let them be.  Whether vacation is buckling up the kids for a trip to Grandma’s, throwing the tent in the truck for a trip to nowhere, a long weekend trip to somewhere you’ve never been, or a trip to the other side of the world, just go. 

And your docket doesn’t have to be empty.  While cellphones, e-mail, and network technology often hurt the ability to “un-plug,” the upshot is that few, if any, emergencies cannot be dealt with from anywhere with cell service and Wi-Fi.  This year an opposing party raised a new issue in a brief filed a day before I was scheduled to leave the country for a long weekend.  The hearing was the day after I returned.  With Wi-Fi, a laptop, and an international calling plan, I drafted a response, held a phone conference with the client, got executed affidavits and filed without being in the country.  (And I still had three and a half days to enjoy the long weekend).

It may be rare that a lawyer’s docket vanishes as suddenly as mine did.  And in retrospect it may not be as obvious to you as it was to me that there was time to recharge.  However, the ebbs and flows of practice will always be there.  When the downtime comes, don’t fill it with work right away.  Go on vacation first.

If you took a vacation this summer, the State Bar wants to see your photos! Click here to learn how to participate in our #lawyervacay photo contest. Don’t wait! Submissions are due August 31.