Lee Rosen of Divorce Discourse posted on reaching a breaking point in family law. One of the readers commented that having another practice area can help and Rosen commented that it would only work for lawyers smart enough to handle two practice areas. My response was as follows:
I have never viewed it as being smart enough to handle more than one practice area but more of a necessity as a small town attorney. While there are practice areas which I do not handle, e.g. bankruptcy or social security, it is generally accepted in our area that attorneys handle more than one practice area. While reading your post I had the same thought as Mr. Sanderson that it is easier to avoid burnout when I can scale back my family law cases and take on cases in other areas. While I agree that it would be great to be able to focus on only one practice area, I believe there are some benefits to a varied practice so long as you are providing competent representation.
Your timeline seems accurate, I have been practicing for six years now and I do not do as much family law work at the moment. I have tried to do a better job of screening clients on the front end and establishing boundaries so I get paid and so I get fewer Sunday night phone calls when the visitation exchange did not go perfectly by the court order but the kid did come back in one piece. I think client screening is one of the most important skills regardless of practice area to maintain sanity in the workplace for attorneys and the staff that will interact with those clients.
————-
I highly recommend Rosen’s site and have linked to it from the inception of this site. For those of you interested in technology in the law firm, he has many excellent posts and podcasts that have helped me in my position as honorary IT manager of my small firm.
