How To End Your Day (What They Don’t Teach In Law School)

Law school teaches you everything you need to be a lawyer. It teaches you constitutional law. Criminal law. Contracts, torts, wills & trusts, civil procedure, legal research, and legal writing. Yet it doesn’t teach you how to end your day. It doesn’t teach you how to stop.

Too many legal professionals lack a meaningful work-life balance. They don’t feel like they can turn ‘off’ lawyer mode. They go home, only to have one foot in the office. And that can be an albatross dragging their mental health down.

Part of maintaining an effective balance for your mental health is having ‘transition’ time. Time that you can unwind from the stresses of the day, whatever they may be, and feel comfortable in your home environment. This transition time allows you to decompress from the ‘fight or flight’ function stress creates. Without that transition, the stress continues to accumulate.

For some legal professionals, they recognize the danger before they get to burnout. Some experience burnout and realize they need support, and some don’t get help before it is too late.

If you feel this is describing you, know that you have the skills to change it. The discipline that helped you get through law school, that taught you how to divide up your day into 6 minute intervals, that same discipline can help you learn to set time aside to turn off the lawyer mind. Maybe it is 30 minutes engaged in your favorite hobby. Maybe it is quality time with friends or family. And maybe it is getting help from peer support.

Our peer support services aren’t design to help you process the stress or trauma that might be associated with it, that is the work of a qualified clinician. However, we’ve been there before and we can help you develop strategies for decompressing and develop times for your body to decompress. And our services can help you set boundaries to protect that decompression time. Because just like a diver coming up from the depths, your body needs time to decompress. It isn’t just a suggestion, it is crucial for your health in many cases.

If you are dealing with a lack of transition time and a lack of work-life balance, know that you’re not alone. There is support available. There is help available. And there is a better way to protecting your mental health as a legal professional, even if they don’t teach you it in law school.