Most of our seven-figure attorney clients work Saturdays.
It's their power day. The one day of the week where they can work on their practice, rather than in it, without being interrupted. Strategy calls. Authority building. Referral relationship development. The high-value work that moves the needle but never seems to fit into the week.
But the attorneys stuck at $300,000 to $400,000 work Saturdays too.
They're playing catch-up. Document preparation. Organising discovery. Drafting routine motions. Work that should have been done during the week but couldn't be, because there wasn't enough time.
They sit in the office doing paralegal work while their families are out creating memories without them.
People talk a lot about burnout. Something we've observed over seventeen years of working with attorneys is that burnout isn't really about being busy. It's about choice.
There's a vast quality-of-life difference between these two Saturdays.
The first: you're working in your practice because the work absolutely must get done before Monday. The stress mounts as the afternoon darkens and the list doesn't get any shorter.
The second: you're working on your practice. Strategy. Relationships. The work that moves things forward. And you have the freedom to shut down the laptop any time and head home.
Spouse and kids heading to the zoo? You can skip Saturday and be part of the memories. Or do a few hours in the morning and join them for lunch. Or open a bottle of wine with friends in the afternoon. The point is that you're choosing. Not surviving.
In ten years, you probably won't remember what you were working on this Saturday. But your family will remember whether you were there.
This isn't an argument against hard work. It's an observation about infrastructure.
If you're spending Saturdays working in your practice because you have to keep the world turning, something structural is broken. Either you're not attracting enough of the right work, or you don't have the capacity to handle it during business hours. Or both.
The fix is getting help. Real help. Not another hat to manage, but someone who can take substantive legal work off your desk.
A good paralegal is one option. A growing number of attorneys are also turning to international licensed attorneys. These are practising lawyers overseas, trained in Common Law jurisdictions, who understand how legal systems work at a foundational level. They do remote paralegal work for US attorneys, and they do it well, because working with a US practice carries real prestige in their home markets. It's a model that didn't exist five years ago, and it's quietly solving the capacity problem for a lot of firms.
The seven-figure attorneys we work with figured this out. Not all at once. Not overnight. But at some point, each of them made a decision to build the infrastructure first. To stop being the most expensive paralegal at their own firm.
The freedom followed.
It always does, once the structural problem is addressed. Because it was never really a time management problem. It was a capacity problem dressed up as a scheduling one.
Next Saturday doesn't have to look like last Saturday.
But it will, unless something changes between now and then.
Richard Jacobs
Editor, The Inner Bar
President, Speakeasy Authority Marketing, Inc.
Author of Secrets of Attorney Marketing Law School Dares Not Teach. (Now in its third edition. Available on Amazon.com and in Barnes & Noble for $34.99. Request a complimentary copy.)