It is common to pursue employment opportunities based on career advancement or salary; this is not unique to the legal profession. However, an increasingly critical factor to well-being is the alignment between your personal values and those of your organization. In The Importance of a Workplace That Aligns With Personal Values, Marian Evans highlights that working for an organization that aligns with your personal values can result in enhanced job satisfaction, improved mental and emotional well-being, increased motivation and productivity, stronger commitment and loyalty to the organization, and significant personal and professional growth.
There has also been empirical research that points to alignment in values and the protective factors outlined in the Study as being top factors for happiness in the law. Larry Krieger and Kennon Sheldon in What Makes Lawyers Happy? A Data-Driven Prescription to Redefine Professional Success sought to identify the correlation and contributors to the well-being and life satisfaction of lawyers. Data was collected from several thousand lawyers in four diverse American states; the States included a mix of urban and rural areas and “were also diverse economically, politically, ethnically, racially, and in their predominant religions.” The data showed that internal factors were far more important to lawyer well-being than external factors, and the traditional markers for what we perceive to be “success” that start in law school were at the bottom of the list. The following chart shows the results in numerical detail, with each factor measured for the strength of its association with well-being. A perfect relationship between the factor and happiness would have a correlation of 1.00.
(Chart shows the following numerical correlations: Autonomy - 0.66; Relatedness - 0.65; Competence - 0.63; Internal motivation - 0.55; Autonomy Support - 0.44; Intrinsic values - 0.3; Income - 0.19; School debt - 0.19; Class rank - 0.12; School rank - 0.05; Making partner - 0; Part of Law Review in law school - 0)
Most of the factors in the chart will be well known to law students and lawyers, perhaps except for “autonomy support”. This term relates to the context in which one person has more authority or power than the other. It also encompasses the extent to which the person in authority acknowledges the perspectives or preferences of the other, provides meaningful choices to the other and when choices are not provided, explains why that is necessary.
When you consider the values that are important in the workplace, keep in mind how they may or may not be compatible with the values you hold in your personal life. For example, having an income in the top percentile of the legal profession often means long hours and sacrificing time spent with your family, friends and community. To try to “have it all”, at least all at once, can be unrealistic and lead to more stress and burnout.
Ideally you want to get to a place in your career where instead of trying to fit your values and life around your work, you find a role that fits with the life and values you have defined for yourself. If you find yourself in a situation where you feel you have no choice but to sacrifice your values due to circumstances beyond your control, such as needing a higher salary with longer work hours to manage high student debt, know that your current situation doesn’t need to define your entire career. Lawyers today are highly mobile and it’s okay to move on to different opportunities as your needs and goals change.
Lastly, regardless of where you are in your career:
- Avoid comparing or worrying about what others are doing. We all have our own needs and goals and what works for someone else may not work for you.
- Do not make decisions in haste or when under significant stress. Research has shown that our brains are wired to be more reactionary under stress, resulting in binary choice-making and limiting the options available to us.
- Consider that you do not always need to make a drastic change to bring your work in line with your values. If your workload conflicts with your personal needs and values, your employer may be amenable to finding a solution rather than risk losing you. If your role is no longer serving you, there may be other opportunities within your workplace to pursue. If you conclude that you need to make a more significant change, you can do so in a way that lets you take one step at a time to help manage the stress and uncertainty that comes with that. Paul Karvanis’ The Happy Lawyer: The Blueprint to Avoid Burnout and Put Together Your Good Life Personally and Professionally is a resource you may find helpful in this situation.