Many People Assume Self-Employed Lawyers Can Be Bothered During Work Hours

Self-employment is pretty awesome, and self-employed lawyers have substantial flexibility over their schedules and work life. Unlike people who work at larger law firms, self-employed lawyers generally do not need to report to bosses and can arrange their work schedules pretty much as they see fit. However, self-employed lawyers do not have unlimited flexibility in how they arrange their work time, and people should understand that they have many of the same limitations in their work life as people who work at larger shops.

I have been self-employed for a number of years, and people usually assume that because I work for myself, I can perform tasks during the workday that other people cannot complete. For instance, when there is a family responsibility that a group of people might need to complete, it is usually suggested that I do this since I have the most flexibility with my work schedule. In addition, people call me during the day for personal matters thinking that I can take the calls since I do not have bosses that I need to report to.

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However, the reality is that self-employed lawyers have many of the limitations that attorneys who work at larger law firms have. Self-employed lawyers need to attend all of the same court appearances and depositions as lawyers who work at larger firms. Indeed, self-employed lawyers might have more difficulty managing court appearances, depositions, mediations, and the like than other lawyers because they have fewer people to lean on in order to appear at all of these appearances. For instance, this week, I had four appearance scheduled in my lawsuits, and this occupied a substantial portion of my week. Lawyers have limited ability to schedule these appearances, and this makes it hard for self-employed lawyers to have flexibility in their work life as other people might imagine.

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Moreover, self-employed lawyers often need to occupy themselves billing hours more than some people who work at some larger firms. For most self-employed lawyers, the less time they spend billing hours, the less money they can expect to earn. This is not always the case at larger law firms in which there may be flexibility over the course of a large time horizon like a year when it comes to billing, and billing less in a given month does not lead to a lower salary. If self-employed lawyers need to take time off from work in order to complete personal tasks, they might not generate enough money in a given month to cover expenses.

Moreover, many larger law firms have organized methods for dealing with personal issues. For instance, many lawyers have an allotted amount of sick and personal days that they can use throughout the year to deal with a sickness (theirs or a family member’s) or to take time off just because they need to complete some task in their personal life. Generally, attorneys are allowed to take such time off without any impact to how people view their job performance and without suffering an adverse impact to their salary. A self-employed lawyer obviously does not have this luxury, and self-employed lawyers might be more likely to feel implicit pressure to work since they do not have a system in which they can seamlessly take time from work. This impacts the flexibility of self-employed lawyers to schedule their work time.

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Additionally, in small law firms, self-employed lawyers might not want to take time off to complete personal tasks because this could look really bad to their partners. Since partners at a small law firm all have an impact on how much money each of them makes, it is difficult for partners to be seen “off the grid” during working hours since this could indicate that they are not pulling their own weight for a firm.

I am a law partner with my older brother, so, fortunately, I get some slack when it comes to being fluid about work and personal responsibilities over the workday. However, at various points, I have scheduled golf outings during the day and other personal matters in which people would typically be working. It definitely did not feel good knowing that I was out on the golf course while my partner was in the office billing hours, and the implicit pressure to be at the grind at a smaller law firm can keep people from being more fluid about work responsibilities.

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In any event, it is undeniable that self-employed lawyers have the power to schedule their workdays more how they please than people who work as associate attorneys at larger law firms. However, explicit and implicit pressure can keep self-employed lawyers from having fluidity with their schedules.

Jordan Rothman is a partner of The Rothman Law Firm, a full-service New York and New Jersey law firm. He is also the founder of Student Debt Diaries, a website discussing how he paid off his student loans. You can reach Jordan through email at [email protected].

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