Work-Life Balance

There is a discussion in progress on legal blogs about the fading concept of "work-life balance" ("shorthand for the widespread sense that the demands of a legal career had outstripped the personal benefits it conferred"). The concept had some growing currency during the boom, but in a harshening economy, those who always derided it as a sentimental notion have re-asserted the upper hand that they never really lost. It is predictable that within the legal arena, the notion of a rounded life is perceived as some kind of soft fuzzy nonsense: Like the business world in general, the legal profession is what blogger litlove (whom I quoted in a post the other day) calls "hubristically masculine," all yang, no yin. The big cities where BigLaw is practiced decidedly have that same bent, across the entire spectrum of professions. By contrast, something I notice here in small city America is that the need for work-life balance is taken for granted --it's as ideologically ingrained as the idea of working crazy long hours is in big cities and big firms. No one I know at any professional level in Northeast Wisconsin would assent easily to being told at 4:30 on a Friday afternoon, Forget your weekend. Weekends, evenings, the kids' soccer games, the family vacation -- those are sacred! The funny thing is, even CEOs benefit from this, and are much more relaxed here than in population centers -- or maybe the relaxation-minded CEO-types opt out of the hustle-bustle and gravitate to smaller cities and smaller companies, I'm not sure.

In any case, I've put forward enough negatives about small city life that it is only fair that I note this essential sanity about where work fits in the bigger picture. As blogger Jordan Furlong quotes his dad, “There’s not much point in earning a living if you can’t live the living you’re earning.”