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BEYOND THE BILLABLE HOUR ™ - Making the Hours of Your
Life Worth More ™
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Issue # 14 - How to Work From Home Without Turning Home
Into Work
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Index: 1. "The Unfinished Agenda"
2. A Word About Coaching
3. "How to Work From Home Without Turning Home
Into Work"
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Ellen Ostrow, Ph.D., Editor
Ellen is the founder of LawyersLifeCoach.com ™
Personal and Career Coaching for Lawyers Determined
to Achieve Professional Success AND
a Fulfilling Life
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OUR PERSPECTIVE
Most attorneys -- especially women -- live impossibly busy lives.
Finding a balance between work and life without sacrificing
professional success, deciding on the best practice area or
work setting, and making career transitions can be a daunting
task, even for the most gifted and accomplished lawyer.
Just as every person deserves the best possible legal
counsel, every attorney deserves professional, dedicated
support in accomplishing her most important goals.
You know how hard you've worked to get where you are --
you serve others, both personally and professionally.
You've earned the right to both career success and
a fulfilling life.
This newsletter is intended to help you create a
satisfying life -- within, or outside of -- legal practice.
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1. "The Unfinished Agenda"
If you haven't already seen it, I'd strongly recommend
that you read the ABA Commission on Women in the
Profession's "The Unfinished Agenda: Women and the
Legal Profession."
You can find it at http://www.abanet.org/women
The Commission on Women's report identifies obstacles
to women's full participation in the legal profession
and provides suggestions for resolving them.
If you have reactions, comments or suggestions that
you'd like to share with the "Beyond the Billable Hour"
community, please send them to me at:
Ellen@lawyerslifecoach.com
Sharing your experiences - both of obstacles and
successes - will benefit many others facing similar
challenges.
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2. A Word About Coaching
"Why would a lawyer hire a coach?"
I'm often asked this question. Although corporate
America has been using executive coaching for quite
some time, recognizing its effectiveness in promoting
the success of the individual executive or employee,
as well as the business, the legal profession has been
slow to embrace coaching.
Hundreds of women lawyers have attended my Women's
Bar Association sponsored teleconferences, and many
feel discouraged. They've tried all kinds of about
time-management, life-balance and self-promotion
suggestions only to discover that while ideas
looked great on paper, they seem impossible
to implement given the realities of legal practice
today.
I couldn't agree more - general strategies are
usually not enough. They're not tailored to the
individual lawyer's unique circumstances. They
don't advise you about coping with the unexpected.
Although you have the best intentions, it's often
difficult to implement your plan. Real behavior
change, skill acquisition and performance
enhancement are far more complex than most people
realize. All too often, people blame themselves
or their circumstances for their inability to
accomplish their goals. But it's much more likely
that they simply were not trained in the ingredients
of changing for good.
A coach is trained to help you develop and carry
out an effective plan for accomplishing your goals.
Your coach can assist you in sticking with your
goals even when unanticipated crises seem to
create impenetrable barriers to success. The
trouble-shooting and support provided by a coach
can turn an "idealistic notion" into a reality.
In a field where there are a paucity of good
mentors for women attorneys, your coach can
be your advisor and champion. A coach is
an expert in behavior change and performance
enhancement. You may believe that it's simply
not possible to take care of yourself, have quality
relationships with friends and family, demand civility
at work, or market successfully, while still
accomplishing all that your job requires. Or, you
may be daunted by the prospect of changing work
settings, going solo, getting the promotion you deserve,
managing transitions in your organization, leading
your practice group, developing a business plan
to justify a part-time schedule in your firm, or
mapping your career future. A coach knows how to help
you systematically analyze your situation, craft
an action plan and successfully accomplish your goals.
If you have questions, please feel free to take
advantage of our free half hour consultation.
Contact Ellen at Ellen@lawyerslifecoach.com or
at 301-578-8686.
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3. How to Work From Home Without Turning Home Into Work
Electronic communication has freed many attorneys
to do a significant portion of their work from home.
You can telecommute part of the time if you work for
an organization. Or you might be running a solo
practice out of your home.
The advantages to working from home are obvious:
you can be far more available to children or elders
who need your care; you may be able to pay less for
child care; you don't have the hassle of a daily
commute; you can continue to work effectively
even if health problems limit your ability to travel;
you're spared at least some office politics; you're
often able to focus without interruptions; and you
have greater control of your physical surroundings.
You're a whole person - your life can't be
compartmentalized into separate boxes of work,
family, etc. Working from home affirms this
reality by allowing you to integrate work with
other aspects of your life.
But working from home has its down-side. The absence
of physical distance between work and home can
sometimes allow work to take over your life. It's easy
to find yourself perpetually running to the phone or
fax, checking your e-mail, thinking, eating and
breathing work. And therefore, you're never really
with the people who motivated you to stay home in the
first place.
Here are 10 things you can do to keep work from
overtaking your life:
1. Place
Designate a private work space. Even if you meet
with clients elsewhere (for example, a conference
room at a law firm), your home office needs to
be separate from the living space in your home.
Psychologists have long known that your environment
serves as a cue for a particular behavior. You
want your work space to signal you to focus on
work - this will make you more efficient and
effective. Similarly, you don't want think
about work when you're reading to your children
or trying to go to sleep - so keep work cues out
of those spaces.
It's also easier to stay organized if you have
one space for your work equipment and materials.
You'll need phone and fax lines separate from
those for your family. You don't want to be
waiting for your teenager to get off the computer
when you need to e-mail a client, or have
your three-year old answer a client's call.
Maintaining an office space - preferably
with a door you can close - allows you to manage
the "spread" of work into all corners of your
life.
2. Time
Plan your work schedule together with all of your
activities, including work and non-work activities.
This is most effective when you've written
out your goals for each of your life roles,
as well as the activities that will enable
you to accomplish these goals.
Designate specific hours when you will be
working and communicate these clearly to your
family. If family members don't view your
time in your home office as equivalent to
the time you'd spend at an office away from home,
you'll be dealing with ongoing interruptions.
The accumulating frustration you'll feel is
bound to interfere with you concentration and
efficiency. Trying to deal with both clients
and children simultaneously can easily make you
resentful of both.
Decide beforehand what constitutes an emergency
for which you're willing to be interrupted. Teach
your child-care provider about your rules for
privacy and interruption. It may take your
children a while to get used to the idea that
you're not available when you're still in the
house - but if you and your care giver are
persistent, your children will adapt.
Sometimes it's helpful to actually change into
your "work" clothes before going into your home
office. Even casual outfits will communicate
to your family that you're really going to work.
It's also another cue for you to focus.
3. Accessibility Outside of "Work" Hours
Managing schedule creep is difficult for every
attorney. To combat those clients or partners
who expect you to be available according to their
own needs, decide when you won't work. Establish
criteria for emergency interruptions during these
hours. Learn to say things like "I'll be happy to
get to that on Monday" when you're asked at 4:45 on
Friday to write a memo immediately.
If you receive a business call when you're at home
but not working, first decide if the matter is
sufficiently urgent for you to work during your
family or personal time. If it is, take the call
in your home office.
4. Be Up-Front With Clients
Most attorneys who work from home find that
their work with clients benefits from being
clear about their work circumstances. Clients
may worry about your accessibility when you
decide to work from home; being responsive to
their calls reassures them that your commitment
to providing them with the best possible counsel
remains unchanged. Informing your clients about
your work arrangements saves you from having to
explain why they hear your children playing in
the background. As your clients see that the quality
of the service you provide is consistent, they'll
learn to tolerate the household sounds.
5. Find Other Ways to be Responsive to Clients
If you're not available to respond to a
legitimate client need, make sure someone else
can. There's no reason why you can't share
responsibility for client coverage with one
or more other attorneys in your organization.
As long as you coordinate schedules so that
someone will be available to provide an appropriate
and timely response, you can be sure your clients'
needs will be served without having to sacrifice the
values that led you to work from home.
6. Stay Connected
Whatever the reasons for your decision to work
from home, it's essential for you to stay connected
to your professional community. If you continue
to work for a firm or organization, stay active in
committees so that you can have some control over
your perceived presence in the firm. Since it is
typical for a partner to assign work to the first
person s/he sees after a need for work arises,
maintaining your visibility is necessary. If you're
not physically present, you must have some way of
staying on the mental radar screens of people in your
organization. Maintaining regular e-mail and
phone contact, scheduling lunches, and alerting
partners to your interest in and availability for new
projects are useful ways of ensuring you don't become
"invisible."
And if you don't work in an organization, it's
crucial to maintain your network. Stay in regular
contact - both electronically and in person - with
people in your network. Continue your efforts to
expand your network based upon your strategic career
goals. Schedule regular lunches; participate in Bar
Association activities and committees; attend the
trade association meetings of your market. Not only
is this good for business, but you'll need the
stimulation only colleagues can provide.
7. Do a Thorough Assessment of Your Technology Needs
To work at home, you must be equipped to work
effectively. Make sure you have state-of-
the-art technology necessary for providing quality
client service. And if you work for a firm or an
organization, make a business case for why they
should provide the equipment. (You don't need to
become a technology expert - there are plenty of
people to advise you.)
8. Consider Virtual Assistants
Find ways to gain access to the support staff at
your firm or organization. If you can't, consider
hiring a virtual assistant. Virtual assistance
is a fairly new administrative profession.
Virtual assistants (VAs) provide administrative
support using phone, fax and e-mail. They
support their clients without having to set
foot inside the clients' offices. VAs understand
all confidentiality requirements and are highly
skilled. By using VAs to handle administrative
issues, you will be making the best use of your time.
To find a well-trained VA go to:
http://www.assistu.com.
9. Make a Backup Plan for Caregiving
If you're working at home in order to assume
caregiving responsibilities, you'll need to have
a backup should a legitimate work emergency arise
during your "off" hours. You need to be as free of
worry as possible at all times - free of worry about
work when you're providing care; and free of worry
about loved ones when you're working. This is the
best way to be efficient, effective and successful
in all of your efforts.
10. Get Support and Guidance
Remember - you are a pioneer. Previous generations
did not do what you are doing. You're negotiating
balance issues, convincing partners and clients that
this arrangement will benefit them as well as you,
and coping with isolation. To help you cope,
consider joining a support group of other attorneys
working at home. And a coach can help you craft
a plan for a work-at-home arrangement that works for
you. The ability to work from home can offer
wonderful advantages - as long as you master the
challenges.
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>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT: A brief phone call is all you need
now to find out more about Ellen's
coaching. Call 212-461-2749 and
hear Ellen interviewed by a woman
lawyer and forensic psychologist.
You can learn about Ellen's coaching
practice and get a sense for what
virtual coaching is like, just
by listening to the recorded
interview. This is available 24
hours/day, seven days/week.
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BEYOND THE BILLABLE HOUR ™ is published monthly by
Ellen Ostrow, Ph.D., founder of LawyersLifeCoach.com.
She brings 20 years of experience assisting women
attorneys to her work in Lawyers Life Coach ™.
LawyersLifeCoach.com is a professional and personal
coaching firm specializing in working virtually (by
phone with email and fax backup) with women attorneys
interested in developing strategies to find greater
satisfaction in their careers within the law or
in exploring career alternatives for lawyers.
Ellen Ostrow, Ph.D. established Lawyerslifecoach.com
to coach busy lawyers who might benefit from the
insights gained from 20 years as a psychologist
combined with her experience and familiarity with
the legal profession.
Ellen holds a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology
from the University of Rochester and is a managing
member of Metropolitan Behavioral Health Care, LLC.,
a multispecialty, multidisciplinary psychotherapy
practice in Washington, D.C. and suburban Maryland.
She is a member of the International Coach Federation
and a graduate of the Mentor Coach Program ™.
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NOTE: BEYOND THE BILLABLE HOUR ™ is intended
for informational and educational purposes only.
It is not a substitute for a personal consultation
with a mental health professional and should not
be construed as a form of, or substitute for,
counseling, psychotherapy, or other psychological
service.
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CONTACT INFORMATION
Ellen Ostrow, Ph.D.
LawyersLifeCoach.com
Phone: (301) 578-8686
email: Ellen@LawyersLifeCoach.com
Web: http://LawyersLifeCoach.com
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(c)Copyright 2000 Ellen Ostrow. All rights reserved.
Distribution Rights: The above material is copyrighted
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Reprint permission will be freely granted upon request.
Advance written permission must be obtained for any
reprinting of this material in modified or altered form.
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