There are parts of practising law I don’t particularly enjoy. Some of the work is tedious, some procedures seem needlessly complicated, and occasionally I find myself doing something I think ought to be done quite differently. I can spend an impressive amount of time explaining why a task shouldn’t be necessary when I could have used that time to finish it. That’s one of the occupational hazards of being a lawyer. We’re trained to make arguments, and we’re often very good at making them to ourselves.
The temptation isn’t always to refuse the work. More often, it’s to put it off, give it less attention than it deserves or do just enough to get it off the desk. I know the difference between deciding that something can properly be done efficiently and deciding that I can’t be bothered to do it properly. The second can be dressed up to look remarkably like the first. It may even produce an acceptable result. But I still know what I was doing, which is what makes the distinction uncomfortable.
I don’t think the answer lies in becoming more obedient to an employer. I take my obligations at work seriously, and there’s nothing wrong with expecting an employee to carry out the duties of the job. But my professional standards weren’t given to me by an employer. They weren’t negotiated as part of my compensation, and they don’t expire when a position ends. I’m a lawyer first and an employee second. Always and forever. Whatever organization happens to employ me, I bring that identity to work with me. I don’t leave it at the door until someone decides to put it in my job description.
That matters to me more than my paycheque, although my paycheque matters a great deal. I don’t find that admission embarrassing. I work for a living, and the income I’ve earned from the profession is one of the important benefits of having chosen it. It supports the life I lead and the people and commitments that matter to me. I’m not interested in pretending I’d do everything for free, nor do I think a lawyer’s integrity is measured by how little they care about being paid. But the amount on a pay statement can’t be the measure of how carefully I prepare, how seriously I take an obligation or how willing I am to do a difficult part of the job. If it were, I’d have handed someone else the authority to decide what kind of lawyer I am.
There’s a difference between being paid to do the work and having a reason of your own to do it well. I want to take pride in the title I use and the role I’ve chosen, even on days when I’d rather be doing something else. I want to trust my own judgment about what a task requires without having to wonder whether that judgment has been quietly influenced by irritation, fatigue or an attractive opportunity to get out of it. An employer can set priorities, measure output and decide whether it’s satisfied with my performance. It can’t supply the self-respect I lose if I make a habit of giving less than I know a matter deserves.
Of course, lawyers have duties to clients and courts. We owe obligations that can override the preferences of the people who pay us, and we shouldn’t need an inspiring personal philosophy to comply with them. But I think there’s something beneath those familiar explanations. Not every unpleasant task feels connected to justice. Not every procedural step visibly advances a client’s interests. Sometimes the rules require us to do something we consider inefficient, or to participate in a process we believe could be improved. It would be dishonest to pretend that every one of those obligations suddenly becomes meaningful once we’ve described it in sufficiently noble language.
For me, a substantial part of the obligation comes from respect for the system that allows me to practise at all. The legal system isn’t arranged around what I happen to enjoy. It depends on people accepting responsibilities that continue to exist when they’re frustrated, unconvinced or simply bored. The courts and the rules provide a framework within which people with competing interests can be heard and decisions can be made. That framework has weaknesses, and I’ve never believed that respect requires silence about them. We can criticize procedures, challenge decisions and advocate for better rules while still taking seriously the responsibilities we have under the ones that exist.
There’s also the privilege of doing this work. Lawyers are permitted to occupy a place in public life that carries a degree of authority, independence and trust. We’re allowed to speak for people in circumstances that may profoundly affect their lives. We can ask a court to exercise its powers, question evidence and insist that decisions be made according to law. Those opportunities have brought professional satisfaction and a living to generations of lawyers, including me. It’s a considerable bargain, even when the profession’s demands make it feel like a rather uneven one on a particular Tuesday.
I can’t comfortably accept the benefits of being a lawyer while treating the responsibilities as negotiable whenever they cease to interest me. That doesn’t mean every rule is wise, or that my own criticism is necessarily wrong. Sometimes it may be entirely justified. But a criticism of the process doesn’t explain why I should bring less care to the work I’ve undertaken. If I think a rule should change, I can say so and work toward changing it. Quietly lowering my own standard won’t accomplish that, and I suspect I’d be the first to recognize the difference if I saw someone else doing it.
Professional identity also has to be distinguishable from loyalty to an employer. Employers have their own pressures, budgets, schedules and definitions of success. Sometimes those priorities align comfortably with what good professional work requires, and sometimes they don’t. An employer may be pleased that something has been completed quickly when I know it deserved another careful look. It might also demand work that isn’t justified, and I have a responsibility to exercise judgment rather than simply agree. My obligations as a lawyer don’t disappear because a manager wants something done, and my standards don’t become irrelevant because a manager doesn’t care how it’s done.
I’m fortunate, though, to work for a company I genuinely want to see succeed. That feeling doesn’t come from stock options or some other financial incentive tied to its fortunes. I want the company to do well because I believe in contributing to its success, and because it has given me good reason to care about the place where I work. It understands that I occupy two roles. I’m an employee with responsibilities to the organization, but I’m also a lawyer whose professional identity and obligations exist independently of it. The company respects that distinction. It allows me to take pride in my position and recognizes and rewards the dedication I bring to the processes it’s chosen to put in place. I don’t take that for granted.
My workplace isn’t perfect, either. I don’t imagine anyone else’s is, although I’m increasingly unsure what a perfect workplace would actually look like. Perfect for whom? A system that suits one person’s idea of efficiency may frustrate the person who needs more time to do something carefully. A process that looks sensible from one desk may seem unnecessarily complicated from another. People disagree, priorities change, and sometimes the thing that’s irritating me is a genuine problem. Other times it’s simply that the world has failed, once again, to organize itself according to my preferences.
I have particularly strong views about office coffee. If I arrived at work to discover that the first person in hadn’t turned on the coffee machine, I’d be inclined to treat that as an actionable offence. If I were in charge, there would probably be a policy in place by lunch. The fact that nobody has entrusted me with that particular rulemaking power may be evidence that my definition of a perfect workplace isn’t universally shared.
The more serious point is that perfection is a poor condition to place on loyalty. I don’t have to agree with every decision or enjoy every procedure to recognize that I work somewhere worth supporting. Nor should I confuse being respected with getting my own way. The company can listen to my judgment, recognize my obligations as a lawyer and still decide that a particular organizational process should be followed. I can offer a different view, push for improvements when they’re warranted and then do the work properly. Respect has to be capable of surviving disagreement if it’s going to mean anything.
I should be careful about how all of this sounds. I’m not trying to write a shameless endorsement of my employer, and I’m certainly not offering myself as an example of unusual virtue. I’m human. I get impatient. I put things off. There are occasions when I open my computer, see a task waiting for me and immediately begin thinking about all the things I’d rather do. Sometimes my thoughts about that task are less than charitable. Writing about professional pride doesn’t make those reactions disappear, and I’d be suspicious of anyone who claimed never to have them.
What has changed as I’ve grown older is my understanding of what happens after that first reaction. I’ve become more conscious that several things are acting on me at once. There’s pride in the profession I’ve chosen, respect for the system that gives it meaning, responsibility to the people who depend on me and a desire to be worthy of the trust that comes with the title. There’s also loyalty to a company whose success matters to me, gratitude for the way it respects my professional independence and a very practical appreciation of the living my work provides. None of those things makes an unpleasant task enjoyable. They do, however, make it harder to justify giving the task less than it deserves simply because I don’t feel like doing it.
None of this calls for exhaustion or unquestioning compliance. There are legitimate reasons to say no, to seek help, to insist on reasonable boundaries or to leave a workplace that’s no longer suitable. Being a lawyer first doesn’t require being an employee every hour of the day. My family is entitled to more than whatever time is left after I’ve satisfied every possible demand at work. Friends, relationships, health and the ordinary pleasures of living matter. The obligations I have outside the office are among the reasons I want to conduct myself properly inside it. They remind me that my choices affect people who may never see a court file or know what a particular task required.
I don’t want to turn every piece of paperwork into a moral test, either. Most of the time it’s just paperwork, and I’ll be quite happy when it’s finished. I can dislike a requirement, complain about it and still deal with it properly. I can decide that a task warrants 30 minutes instead of 3 hours without compromising anything at all. What bothers me is the point at which my dislike becomes the reason for that decision. I don’t want my standards to depend on whether the task has managed to hold my interest.
There will still be mornings when I sit down to something I’d prefer to avoid. I may have a few unflattering thoughts about the process before I begin. I may even have a perfectly respectable argument for why someone should change it. But I’m still the lawyer responsible for what I do next, and I’m fortunate to be doing that work for a company I want to succeed. The older I get, the less I feel the need to love every part of the job before I can give it my full attention. There are enough reasons of my own to do the work properly.