Hustlers Don’t Always Win

Hustle culture plagues the legal profession. There’s this unspoken belief that if you clock more hours, bill more time, maybe stay later and show up earlier than everyone else, you will come out on top. And plenty of attorneys take this all or nothing approach, but nothing is free. The research shows that hustle culture is costing you your health and mental wellness. 

It’s time for a mindset shift: you can be successful in this field without sacrificing your wellness. And you’ve probably heard this often if you went to law school or got barred within the last decade. But no one is talking about what it actually means to not hustle in this profession. So, let’s talk about it. 

It’s Always the Right Time to Change Your Mindset

Let’s start with addressing the fear of change.

If you’re waiting for a sign, this is it. If you’re waiting to be in the perfect environment, at the perfect job, with the perfect leader before you do what’s best for you, you’re wasting your own time. The thing is, you don’t have to wait for the stars to align to reject hustle culture. Starting right now, you can choose to take a lunch break, put in that time off, not open emails on Sunday. You don’t need permission to start caring about yourself over your employer’s bottom line or the speed of career trajectory.

And the truth is, the legal profession is in need of a cultural shift, and that starts with all of us. Every time someone rejects the hustle, we are one step closer to the hustle no longer being the status quo. Rejecting hustle culture itself is the first step to wellness for yourself and your colleagues. That rejection looks like putting your wellness—heck, even your sanity—over your career.

Set Boundaries and Honor Them

Ending the hustle really just takes setting boundaries and sticking to them. Easy, right?

Not at all. Quite frankly, you probably already have personal values and boundaries you let your employer—or even yourself—cross all the time. Remember back in law school when you said you wanted a family and a career? I hope one didn’t end up on hold in favor of the other. How about after the bar exam when you decided you would dedicate some time every day to walking? I hope you are still getting those steps in and not just writing motions at a partner’s whim.

Setting boundaries isn’t easy, and sticking to them is even harder. But the reason it is so difficult for us to set and maintain boundaries is because we have been conditioned to allow career goals and bottom lines to dictate what’s important to us. It’s about time we start putting our values over external pressures.

A good start for setting boundaries is rooting them in your personal values. If you value your mental health and wellness, your boundaries might look like taking a dedicated and non-working lunch break, not responding to emails after business hours, or prioritizing your kid’s little league game over client meetings. And honoring these boundaries means committing to the consequences out of your control—the good and the bad. The good will be a significantly better lifestyle. The bad might mean finding out you don’t work in a supportive environment. Then what?

You Might Face Pushback

So, your employer thinks that going above and beyond is secretly the standard and is now wondering why you have not been immediately responding to Teams messages on Saturdays anymore. A partner calls you into their office to remind you that “not everyone is cut out for this work,” and “we work hard here,” as if working hard means having no life outside of business. Your supervisor reminds you it’s a “tough market year” and he needs everyone to “be all in.” And as you keep rejecting the notion that you need to do more and be more in order to move up in your career—even though you are hitting billing targets, meeting deadlines, and have happy clients—the firm tells you it isn’t working out.

Honestly? If this is your work environment’s response to you setting boundaries, maybe you aren’t cut out for this type of work; the type of work that disrespects your time and values; the type of work that doesn’t believe in humanity; the type of work that blames associates when the bottom line is no longer paying for the managing partner’s 3 vacation homes. Maybe—just maybe—you were built for something better than hustling and calling that success.

Now, don’t fear the pushback just because your current workplace is your dream, or maybe you are working towards your dream firm. I doubt your dreams included sacrificing yourself at the hopes of promotion, or missing out on the one life you were afforded to close that extra deal before year’s end.

Here’s the real bottom line: if your work is getting done, if your clients are happy, if YOU are happy, that’s success, baby. What’s great about life is we get choices, and that means you—and only you—get to define success for yourself. Don’t let hustle culture dictate what success looks like for you. You’re in control of this.