Do What You Love

I’m not sure who originated this idea, but it goes something like this: Find something you love, get good it and you’ll find yourself a successful career that meets all your expectations. That’s great advice, but does it really work?

Sure, I can see it working for musicians and athletes, but what about the other 99.9% of us- the lawyers, accountants and sanitation engineers of the world. A better formulation would be find something you like and try to make a go of it.

How many of us really love the work we do? Do lawyers like their jobs?

When I worked in the big New York law firm scene, I would have said no. With the little free time we had, we would swap horror stories, complain of the long hours, and tell the success stories of the colleagues who made it to the investment banking world. We were young and immature.

Now, 20 years in and very far from that scene, I see it differently. When I am running an outsourcing company, 6000 miles from Manhattan and with a 7 hour time difference, I still speak to tons of lawyers and I hear little complaining. Maybe my team, applicants and my lawyer clients don’t feel comfortable opening up to me. I’d rather chalk it up to maturity. A pessimist might chalk it up to defeat.

But, if I ever get down about some of the more tedious stuff that lawyers have to do, I think about two jobs (among the thousands that, in my opinion, are worse than mine): police who deal with rioters and people who physically maintain the sewage system; and I thank God and my parents that I went to college, law school and I don’t have their jobs.

So, overall for lawyers the glass may be half full, or half empty.

But, there is something lawyers can do to steer their efforts to the stuff they love, or at least, like. Lawyers do a lot of tasks- they analyze, they research and study the law and they present arguments verbally and in writing, etc. Some lawyers are great at delivering an oral argument, but they don’t like the research. Some lawyers like the analysis, but they don’t like having to formulate it in writing. You get the idea.

What these lawyers can do is turn to an outsourcing firm where other lawyers are more than happy to fill in and do the less desired tasks. I’ll illustrate this with an example: I have one client who runs a small law firm. She’s great at dealing with clients and bringing in business. But, she’s one woman with 24 hours in the day. So, she looks to my firm (and other lawyers outside my firm) to do the things that she can’t.

It’s a win/win. She does what she likes, what she’s good at, and my team supports her effort to give his clients excellent service.

She does what she loves and succeeds.

Avrum Aaron, is the COO of Legal Outsourcing Partners, LLC. Check out the website- http://www.legaloutsourcingpartners.com or call him at 201-379-9230.