Firm Lines: What are boundaries?

(upbeat music) - Welcome to Bar Review, a space where we talk honestly about life and the legal profession. I'm Carrie, and I'm Anika. Welcome to the conversation. Just a quick note before we get started, we are not your lawyers, and this is not legal advice. - And to the extent either of us are employed by the time this airs, this is where we share our personal opinions and not the opinions of anyone else, especially those kind enough to employ us. - And one more time for the people in the back? - We are not your lawyers. This is not legal advice. Thank you for listening. - Hello. - Hello. - So today I wanna talk about one of the buzzword topics, the professional worlds, and that's work-life balance. And the legal profession is not known for having this, is known for talking about it though. It is, yes, everyone wants to talk to you about work-life balance. They want you to go to a CLE, on work-life balance, they want you to go to CLE's on distressing, on meditating, on how do we keep this patchwork of people together so that they keep billing and making us money. So they keep working and not life-ing. - Right, and so how do you think of work-life balance? - I have no balance in anything that I do. - I am always just me, and I just do the next thing that requires my attention and my priorities. So as a mom and an attorney and now a podcaster, it's the next priority. Everything is on the same list. Everything is in one soup, and sometimes it's mom time. And sometimes it's lawyer time, and sometimes it's what we're doing right now. - So boundaries, do you have them? - No. - No idea how to make them, would love to talk about that. - So is this, do you think this is just who you are, or do you think this is who you've had to become in the environment that is legal practice? - I love that. What is life? It's definitely what I've had to become, but I wouldn't say it's who I've had to become since I became a lawyer. I would say it's who I've had to become, and I've been this way for a very long time. And also who knows if I had to become it, or if I thought I had to become it, and I just kinda did, but that the extent that I have boundaries, it's that the other thing I'm focused on is so pressing and taking up all my attention that I ignore the other things that are trying to press up against those things. I deep dive, and-- - That sounds very healthy. - Yeah, it's super healthy. I deep dive and elbow out everything else. And I think that you've made comments about how, like when I'm in work mode, when I'm in lawyer lady mode, I am maximizing my time. So no sips of water. - Yeah, no sips of water. - No food. - No food. Just adrenaline rush to the finish line, which is when I have to leave to go to daycare pickup. It's super healthy. And also by the way, then you see me later at night when we do this podcast, and what's the first thing I come over here and ask you for. - Water. - All the resources. Just nourish me, please. It's basically where I'm at. And I, like, no, it's awful. I mean, I have nothing left at the end of the day for myself. As you put it before, I'm in a season. I'm in like a spiral season right now, where I say the wrong thing to the wrong people. Do you know what I did last night, Annika? Do you know what I did? - I was there. Why don't you tell these folks what I did? - I don't know, it's like a hit in embarrassment is still real high. So everyone needs to know, Carrie's not a bad person. (laughing) - She just sometimes does bad things. She just sometimes doesn't think through everything, but she says, "And also, you need to know Carrie loves children and babies and pregnant women." - And Carrie had four miscarriages. So I get very excited for people's successful pregnancies. (laughing) - Let's just skip the story because you can't see it luckily, but I am in a massive she-inspiral. I feel horrific. I'm so, so, so, so sorry. Just the long and short of it is, don't ask women if they're pregnant. - Yeah, I think that's a really great rule to keep. - Just don't do it. We definitely don't do it. - And you learn the lesson in a painful way. - Yeah, so I have no boundaries. And I have no recognition of the boundaries of others. And this is how I live. And so do you want boundaries? - Yes, I'm thirsty for them. And when that woman checked me last night, hard did I absolutely wish that I had been respectful at the outset and not said the dumbest thing ever that deeply hurt her and hurt me to hurt her? Yes, and hurt you to be even like in public with me while I did it. Yes, all things, yes, I would love boundaries. It's just, if it's in my mind, I say it out loud, if it's in my next view of priority, I do it. And I do it to the expense of all other things. And this is it. I just, I enter deep dark wormholes and don't look out until I finish, which is great for reviewing discovered. - That is great for reviewing. - That's actually the dream for reviewing discovery. - Yeah, that's what I do. I wait until I can enter a wormhole and then I don't leave until I'm done. Usually it's a weekend. - I don't know how you do that. - I don't know how I do anything that I do because while I'm in it, I don't listen to any urge to do anything else, but the thing I'm doing. Do you have boundaries? - Yes, but I feel like my boundaries and my understanding of them have been changing over the past few years. And that's one of the reasons I wanna talk about work-life balance as a concept and boundaries as a concept. So I had no boundaries in college. Super-over-involved, did way too many things. Like, truly had to schedule fun. - Tell me more about that. - I joined, I was in a sorority, loved my time in my sorority, but I literally thought of it in my head as my scheduled fun time. - Did you put it in your calendar? - Yeah, yeah. So it was in my passion planner. It was in there. And I actually intentionally did not have a leadership role in the organization. So when I hit law school, I went to therapy in advance of law school and was working with therapists throughout my first year to manage this all and compassing universe of law school because you have these horror stories and people just get lost into it. And I was 22 when I hit law school. I mean, I was gonna spend my young 20s, which is a fun period of life and I wanted to be dating and I wanted to be going out and I wanted to be doing all these things. I didn't want to just be a law student. - So you basically graduated from college in May and started law school in September? - Exactly. And so I came into law school with incredibly hard boundaries. So I said, I'll get up early and I'll go to law school early but I'm leaving all of my books in the law school. I'm coming home at 6 p.m. I'm taking a day off every weekend and I was involved in other things and I did do dating and I did go out and I did have fun. And I really thought that the way to make life work was by having those really hard do not pass go types of boundaries. And I think I probably kept that through law school. I think that is pretty much what got me through law school. And when I met my husband and we were dating things would shift like I would say I'm gonna work late on Tuesday so that I don't have to work on Thursday but there are these set blocks of time. So I have an hourly employee if I'm gonna work an extra hour on Tuesday I'm working one less hour on Thursday because that's just how these boundaries function. - When you say blocks of time do you mean like jenga blocks or in your mind are you imagining an entry in your passion planner? - I'm imagining an entry in my passion planner. - And you live that way? - Yeah. - And still do. - No. Ooh, how is that evolved? - So that's what's evolved. And so this also goes into my career so I was not really sold on being an attorney when I graduated law school and part of that really was this idea of joining a law firm and like it just takes over your whole life. I think law school is the perfect training ground to breed law firm associates who do nothing but law firm. And occasionally sleep and have a glass of water. - Not water. - Why? - In a coffee or 12. - And just to be sleep, breathe law firm. I think that law school really rewards that type of behavior, right? Like I knowingly, I knew I was gonna take a hit to my GPA because I wasn't working all these crazy hours and I made that trade. And so that's also kind of how I thought about a legal career was that I'm willing to trade money and prestige and the shiny lifestyle. if I get to be a person. Why do I want to make all this money if the only time I ever get to spend it is like Uber Eats into the office? That's not, this is not what dreams are made of in my book. Well, depends on what you're getting Uber Eats to deliver to you. Well, it also depends if you can expense it. So I might not even be spending my money on the Uber Eats. I mean, yeah. I know people who part of their law firm life as New York City employees get car services after 8 p.m. to take them home. All expense. So I'm getting drive cleaning in the office. Truly, they just get so many perks that you're incentive to ever leave work just like falls. Right? Because if I could just work until 8 p.m. and get a car service home versus leaving at 6.30 probably just going to take the car service at 8. Yeah. So that I'm going to build an extra hour and a half while I wait for the car service. And maybe because you're already in something, you're not going to leave right at 8. Yeah, maybe it'll be 9 before I finish when I'm working on, maybe it'll be 10, maybe it'll be 1 in the morning. And then you get into the habit of it. And then that just becomes your life? Yeah, I didn't pay a cell phone bill while I was in big law. See, and from the outside looking in, none of that was ideal to me. And so that's where I just had these firm lines. It was like, it's just firm lines. It's just not that trade-off, it's not worth it to me. And then I got into being a lawyer and found out that I loved, you found love with it. Yeah, I found love with being a lawyer and being in a trial firm and being a trial lawyer. And in a firm that values being an entire person? Yes, so that is important. So when I started, I did have rose colored glasses towards what just being a litigator was going to be and that there would be some more boundaries and that it would be Friday at 4 p.m. and I'd be logging off because that's just my personal rule and looking back that is so laughable. Because that's just not. Well, I log off every day at 3.30. But you then log back on at night sometimes, right? I do. More likely, I log on at 3 a.m. than I log on at night, but yeah. But there's this shift that's happening. It's not fitting within really clear, you know, 8 to 5 lines. Litigation is unpredictable. Sometimes things just go off the rails, things come last minute. When you're in trial, nothing exists in the universe of that trial. So I found that I was actually really liking that experience, though, of being in this all immersive trial and kind of left me like, how do I marry this up with my understanding of work-life balance? Because I feel like I'm. I have no balance because I'm just going fully immersive into this trial. So how. what does balance look like if I'm okay with this immersive experience? And I should want that to happen. How does that fit into this image of work-life balance? It sounds like you have discovered my deep dark wormhole. No. No. Because now, what I think about it, that just sounds like chaos, what you do. It's just kind of like a manic energy. Whatever absolutely has to be happening at that moment is what we're doing, but we're not necessarily thinking through things strategically. It's just happening to you. That's interesting. No. That's not what's happening. Sometimes, the most urgent thing that has to be done in the moment is some sort of strategic thinking about something. So that's kind of interesting and funny. Like, I will lay around and think about my cases. I will like lay around and think about things and then, "Ha! This is cool. I need to better show you what I mean by wormhole." Yeah. So, okay. So the way I think about it, maybe we think about it the same way and we just don't know. The vocabulary is not that hard. It's different. I think about it now as work-life harmony. And how do I check the boxes for what I need, personally, out of life, what my relationship with my husband and what our family and my dog, like, what is that need from me and then what does work need from me? And how do we get all of these things, all of these needs met in a universe that isn't clearly defined. There isn't going to be, you know, eight to five as my work needs five to seven as personal, seven to nine as my marriage. Like, that's not how life is going to be structured. So how does everything float together in a way that all the needs are met, but it's not a super clear, pretty picture as it happens. Yeah, I think on some level we're seeing the same thing. The, when I say the most urgent thing in front of me, it's a meeting the need in front of me. So, when there's a diaper that needs to get changed, I'm changing that diaper and when there is an email that needs to be sent or a brief that needs to be written, and the diaper has already been changed, that's the next thing I'm doing. I don't, I agree with you though that what did not work for me and what will not work for me is this idea that between this hour and this hour, I'm lawyer version of me and between this hour and this hour, I'm mom version of me. I am always my son's mom at all times, no matter what. The natural hierarchy of needs kind of falls into place and. But you want to stop you? Yeah. Because the need you didn't mention that hierarchy is yourself. Yeah, no, I never think about that. And I burn myself out all the time. Yeah, so that's what you got to stop doing. I agree. I agree. I don't know how. I will say the survival mechanism that I have developed up till now quite frankly involves making the bed and streaming up the house before it involves me remembering any typical brush my teeth. Yeah, that's, I think not ideal. I agree. Because you can't pour from an empty cup, right? So you have to be taken care of yourself in order to meet the needs of everything else around you and on your plate. So how do you, how do you fill up your cup? So I actually think that is where I've had to kind of blend my past practices of really firm boundaries. And this new idea of this harmony. And so I realized about a year into litigating, I was not doing well. Right? So you've heard the story of I went to a yoga class and you were vibrating. I was vibrating. Like I could not, the thought of not seeing my phone for an hour was causing me to switch. And so that was a really eye opening moment because I was like, that's not good. We don't want that. That's not balanced. That's not healthy. That's my needs are clearly not being met in the way this is all going down. And so I joined yoga studio that's also a bar studio and that is a regular part of my routine. Now it's not as rigid as I would like. I mean there are times when I make the call that I'm not going to go to that 430 class because something in work has to happen. And it just, it isn't always perfect. But I've had to learn to accept that you can't like perfect be the enemy of good. They're just because I'm not going to five yoga classes a week, which is my dream. Doesn't mean that the two I make it to aren't worth something. Yeah. And so trying to adopt much more of that philosophy, but also I do put them in my calendar. So I have to make a conscious decision of, okay, if I'm going to scuddle something, you know, for 430 or 5 p.m. I'm going to miss this class to try to give myself an opportunity to check in on, do I really want to make that choice? Or should I go to the work class that I know will make me feel better? I love cooking out of baking. So I incorporate that. I make my loaf of bread every week, assuming I have the time. I very rarely don't have the time. I try to make it happen. I try to make meals. Because that's something I enjoy doing. Building that into my routine has helped bring a lot of the personal balance back in that was missing. And I think it has made a difference. I'm able to be a better me in all the other places because I've put up boundaries to take care of me. That's well, so it's interesting though with those two boundaries. Our one is literally a scheduled activity in a class at a set time with other people. So is that helpful to you to cheat by it being a class in and of itself, by being something that isn't a, I'm making this up right now? But we're not having a utility at home. Exactly. Yeah. That has made a huge difference to me. So I've tried many, I've done many different types of workouts. And many different types of approaches throughout the past few years. And what I found really works for me with this studio is the opportunity to go to a third location. So it's not my house and it's not work. And they didn't even know I was a lawyer until I had been there almost a year. And they accidentally found out. And actually, who helped them accidentally find that out? I think it might have been you know when he came to a class and was like, "Yeah, she's really stressed because she has trial next week." And they were like, "Oh wait, trial?" Yeah, I made your world's collide. But it was, you know, you've been there. It's super calming. It has lovely, neutral colors. There's always hot tea. The women that own it and run it are just lovely human beings. Getting to go into that environment. I really look forward to going there. Where there's no, there's no outward calendars. There's no lawyers. There's no one knows me. And everything. everything just kind of calms down a few notches and I get to have my hour and then I go. Well that's what I'm finding so interesting about this, that what's almost peaceful for you about it is that there's a set time on it. Yeah, like would you be able to just leave the house without a phone and not know what's going on on your calendar and not know who's calling you and not know who's emailing you. And if the answer is depends on the day then the answer is no. No. And also because yeah the fact that it's a set time means my calendar is blocked. So everybody that might want to contact you has to be respectful. I know is that I'm somewhere else. Yeah. I just find that fascinating. I mean what did we do right before we started recording today? You woke up your sourdough starter. And I don't even know what that means. Yeah because it's a living organism. You have to feed it so he can keep it alive because the yeast eats the things and it can kill itself if it runs out of things to eat so you have to keep it alive by putting more flour into it. You mean it can kill itself? He's just a living organism. No I know that. What do you mean it can kill it? So it's a closed universe right so it lives in that jar and there's a mix of flour and water and I did mine as a free starting sourdough starter so I didn't buy anyone's. You can buy dehydrated sourdough starter and use that to make your own mine. I just mixed water and flour together for every single morning for a couple weeks and just the natural yeast in the flour and the water start to breed and then you get a living yeast colony and it eats the flour and then it literally makes gas. That's what that's how bread rises. The yeast eats the things and farts and that puts air bubbles in your bread and that makes it rise. And so if it runs out of flour you can kill it. We'll have nothing else to eat and so it dies. And so the metaphor that we live with today is feed your yeast its flour. Keep your sourdough starter and yourself alive. By feeding yeast. No by feeding flour. Wait no you feed the yeast the flour. Well yeah but the yeast is technically just flour and water. No it's yeast. But it came out of flour and water. But now it's a whole new thing. Yeah now it is a whole new thing. Thanks for joining the conversation. You can find bar review wherever you get your podcasts. Please subscribe and share. Want to keep the conversation going? Follow us on social at bar review LLC. On it we'll see you there and she'll tell me all about it. Not a question you want us to tackle in a future episode? Send it our way. We try to read every email. And just a reminder we are not your lawyer. This is not legal advice and these opinions are just our own. Cheers.