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[00:00:07] Scott Benton: Hey everyone, Scott Benton here. I’m the host of the Classroom 2 Courtroom podcast. How are you? We are here to help you transition from a law school student into your professional career as an attorney, and it’s where we make the practice of law fun.
[00:00:20] Scott Benton: Today we’re going to talk about how to quickly burn out as an attorney. How to quickly burn out as an attorney.
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[00:01:15] Scott Benton: It’s actually a really easy formula, and it’s one you probably already know, and yet it’s one that for some reason a lot of people take on. So if you want to burn out quickly as an attorney, that means you’re going to want to make sure that you’re bringing home a lot of stress and disorganization so that you can’t possibly enjoy your evenings or your weekends.
[00:01:36] Scott Benton: And you can’t recharge from the previous week to then go back to the office refreshed on Monday morning, finally rolls around and you’re just as tired as you were last Friday. Only now you have five days ahead of you before the next weekend comes along where you end up repeating. the exact same process.
[00:01:54] Scott Benton: So you get to work and you’ve got 35 cases on your plate and you have all those case facts and [00:02:00] deadlines and legal objectives bouncing around in your brain. And it’s during the week that there are several new developments that come along that you’ve also got to put in your brain.
[00:02:09] Scott Benton: You have to figure out how those new developments change the current status of your cases. You’re going to have to write some status updates that you send out to your clients. Those are going to help you keep on track for your cases, but overall, you put a lot of pressure on yourself to retain a mountain of information in your head and not mix it all up with another case that you’re working on.
[00:02:29] Scott Benton: Then Tuesday comes along. So you get to the office after a long, stressful and exhausting day on Monday night, you didn’t get much sleep because you were thinking about a hearing that you have on your schedule for that afternoon, Tuesday afternoon. And at night you were going through the case facts in your head for the hearing in the office.
[00:02:46] Scott Benton: You drink a bunch of coffee. You prepare for the hearing while juggling information in your mind about the 34 other cases on your plate. And then finally, So going in, you’re already stressed out about that hearing and making sure you’ve got [00:03:00] everything you need. You have the rest of your client roster on your mind while making sure you don’t miss any deadlines.
[00:03:06] Scott Benton: And you didn’t get much sleep and you were already tired from a busy week that you didn’t recover from. You’re thankful the coffee’s doing its job and it’s keeping you awake and you hope that it’s going to be enough to focus on your client’s hearing. Your mind is cluttered with all of this stress that has built up over the past several months, coupled with a loss of sleep and exercise.
[00:03:25] Scott Benton: And you want to get through this hearing so you can start the rest of your work that you need to complete for the day. And so this kind of disorganization and these kind of stress levels, they’re going to continue indefinitely until, frankly, the wheels are just finally going to fall off.
[00:03:39] Scott Benton: And if the burnout’s bad enough, you’re going to have to leave the firm entirely. Your cases are going to be redistributed to the other attorneys in the office.
[00:03:47] Scott Benton: And once you finally do recover, you’re going to find yourself back on the job market looking for your next attorney position. That formula is almost always going to guarantee that you’re going to reach a burnout of your [00:04:00] mental, emotional, and physical state as quickly as possible. But it really doesn’t have to be that way.
[00:04:06] Scott Benton: And one of the ways that we discuss here on this podcast is through the use of a formula. of attorney notes, which you sit down and write for each and every case that you have. You open up a new document. You call it attorney notes for that case. You write out everything you can about that particular case.
[00:04:24] Scott Benton: You just purge everything from your brain. Now the main problem is trying to keep all of those case facts for 30 to 35 to 40 cases in your head all at one time. When instead you could use these attorney notes as an important tool to help purge everything out of your head, which is going to simply clear your mind of unnecessary clutter.
[00:04:46] Scott Benton: It’s going to leave your brain available for thinking, which is what you want it to be used for. Now, these attorney notes, Keep in mind that they never go to the client when the case is over, so you’re literally free to [00:05:00] write anything you want about the case, and you don’t even have to worry about the editing.
[00:05:04] Scott Benton: But you want to make sure that whenever a new development comes along, maybe it’s an email from an opposing counsel, or it could be a decision about the case objectives that your client’s made, that you sit down and you date and time stamp each new entry and summarize that update. Now, this is also going to help Paralegals or law clerks or other attorneys helping you get up to speed as well.
[00:05:27] Scott Benton: And they can get up to speed quickly by reading your attorney notes. So you can see how valuable attorney notes are, not just for you, but for the entire firm. More importantly, it’s going to bring a great deal of organization to your caseload. It’s definitely going to reduce the stress level that you have of carrying around an ongoing avalanche of information in your head.
[00:05:46] Scott Benton: Which is also going to help you write out your to do list. It’s going to help you perform your legal services in a far more streamlined manner. And it’s going to help clarify your billing entries. So that your clients can read and understand them. And it’s going to be an [00:06:00] overall process that we like to call the success cycle.
[00:06:03] Scott Benton: It’s going to make you successful. You’re not going to be able to help it. Now that means you’re going to enjoy your evenings, it means you’re going to enjoy your weekends, and come Monday mornings, you’re going to show up at the office refreshed, you’re going to be thinking clearly, and you’re going to be ready to go.
[00:06:19] Scott Benton: So I hope that helps. I’m Scott Benton, I’m the host of the Classroom 2 Courtroom podcast. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. Now if you like this material, you can always go over to our podcast. website. Our website is classroom 2 courtroom dot com. You can sign up to receive an alert every time we send out a new episode.
[00:06:35] Scott Benton: Just leave us your contact information and when we post a new episode, you’ll receive an email.
[00:06:39] Scott Benton: You can also go to the many platforms this podcast exists on, and don’t forget to share and subscribe. That will also help you stay on top of all of our newest episodes. And until next time, we hope you’ll join us in making the world a better place, one client at a time. Thank you so much.
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