You Can Be Good at This and Still Struggle

October has always felt a bit like the beginning of the legal year to me. I opened the doors to my law office, fresh after graduating and passing the bar exam, on October 8, 2007.

Last month, my law partner and I presented our new associate lawyer for admission to the Sampson County Bar and the practice of law. Over the last few weeks, a new group of lawyers walked into courtrooms and law offices across the state carrying newly issued licenses and expectations about what being a lawyer is supposed to look like.

If you are one of those new lawyers, or if you are entering your 20th year like me, I wanted to share this with you: you can be a good lawyer and still struggle.

You can be smart, motivated, successful, and still struggle with anxiety or depression.

You can be completely organized in some areas of your life and completely lost in others.

You can be the friend or co-worker who everyone can depend on and still feel overwhelmed in your life.

You can be a great lawyer and still struggle with perfectionism, burnout, grief, family issues, major life transitions or simply a season when everything feels dark or harder than it should.

I know this because, at one time or another over the last 19 years, many of these things have been part of my own life. And, if you know me professionally, you probably would have had no idea.

I am the managing partner of my law firm. I serve clients I care deeply about. I am active in my community and serve in leadership roles. I show up for my friends, or for the attorney in town who needs a favor. From the outside, I suspect my life often looks fairly put together.

But lawyers are very good at looking “fine.” We learn quickly how to compartmentalize. We carry our burdens quietly because there are deadlines to meet and clients’ work to be done.

Early in my career, I believed that I “should” be able to handle my struggles. I believed that I was a good lawyer, and, therefore, I should be good at managing everything else too.

I should be able to keep up.

I should be able to handle the workload.

I should be able to leave personal problems at home.

Eventually, I had to learn to stop “shoulding” all over myself.

It is so easy for us to create unrealistic expectations. It has taken me years to understand that professional competence and personal capacity are not the same thing. In fact, one of the most important skills I have developed over the years has been learning to recognize when something is hard instead of immediately trying to prove that I can power through it.

Sometimes that means talking to my law partner and mentor or a friend I trust.

Sometimes it means asking for help.

Sometimes it means therapy.

Sometimes it means resting — even when I know the work is not finished.

And sometimes it means acknowledging that what I am experiencing is bigger than a productivity problem, or something I can just “fix” with a new system or software.

That is one of the reasons I care so much about BarCARES. I do not want lawyers to think of BarCARES only when they have reached the peak of burnout, or things feel as though they have fallen completely apart.

I want lawyers to understand that you don’t have to be in crisis to reach out for help. You don’t have to reach rock bottom or prove that your problem is serious enough. BarCARES exists because lawyers are people first.

So, to the new lawyers beginning their careers this fall, I hope this will stick with you as you venture into the practice of law: your goal should not be to become the kind of lawyer who never struggles. That lawyer does not exist.

Become the kind of lawyer who knows you do not have to struggle alone. Be the kind of lawyer who notices when a colleague may not be OK. And be the kind of lawyer who understands that asking for help is not evidence that you are bad at this, or that you have failed.

Give yourself permission to be both of these at once.

A really good lawyer. And a human being who struggles at times.

There is room for both.