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your host, Lindsay Busfield. When you decided to become a personal injury lawyer, you knew what went along with

it. Long hours, complex decision-making, and being constantly surrounded by

people struggling every day to get their lives back. That is just part of the territory. But just because you were

aware of it doesn’t mean that there aren’t physical and emotional consequences to living this lifestyle.

In fact, roughly half of all attorneys and 78% of all legal professionals

experience burnout at some point. Rob Lavine of Rob Lavine Legal Solutions and

Rob Lavine Law joins us today to discuss lawyer burnout, what we can do about it,

and how to avoid it going forward. Thank you so much for joining us today. My pleasure. Thanks for having me,

Lindsay. I appreciate it. Well, tell us a little bit about yourself and about your practice and about Rob Living Legal Solutions. Sure.

So, uh I have a very non-typical uh journey to becoming a lawyer. Uh when

I was 16, uh I became an EMT and started volunteering on a rescue squad. Uh and

then I became a military police officer. Um and then I went to college for criminal justice and then I became a

police officer. and the city that I was a police officer in or the state I should say in Rhode Island at the time

um paid for your bachelor’s, masters and law degree and they went to repeal the

law degree rule and you had to be either enrolled or accepted by a certain date. And so I thought to myself, free law

degree, I would be crazy not to apply. I already had my bachelors and my ultimate goal was to be a fed. So I either wanted

to do FBI or DEA, something like that. So having the law enforcement experience plus a law degree would have really

cinched the deal. And so I applied. I got into law school. And in my last year of law school, I got into a really bad

car accident while I was working as a police officer. So I was in therapy for a year, two herniated discs in my back.

And the doctor basically said, you know, you could try surgery, you have a 50% chance of recovery, or you can retire.

And so I thought 50% chance there’s no way you’re opening me. I’m not having surgery. And this was a long time ago,

20 plus years ago. So today I might take the risk. Back surgery is uh a much

greater chance of success than it was then. And so I retired and then finished law school, took the bar, and the rest

is history. Wow. That is a very different avenue into law. Usually we hear about personal

injury attorneys getting in from being uh on the defense side of it and coming in, but I love hearing a a new different

story. So, it sounds like you have been kind of involved in a very busy

lifestyle with a lot of I mean complex um

emotional and physical demands already even before stepping into life as an

attorney. Oh, long before. So along the way, I also became a paramedic. So as a police

officer and a paramedic, I can tell you the emotional toll and physical demands

in my opinion are way more stressful than being a lawyer. I I would imagine so. Uh but still that

doesn’t negate everything that you’re No, doesn’t negate it. as an attorney and a business owner and you’ve got a

couple of really thriving uh operations. But when it comes to professions that

have that emotional or physical toll, um there is a lot of burnout that comes

along with that just inherently because you are being overwhelmed by these

things that are taxing your body and your mental health. And there is so little room for you to be able to break

away from that and really separate yourself from that and just go sit on a couch and be completely immersed in

something other than what is going on with the other you know 16 hours of your life. So let’s jump into our discussion

on burnout. So when we are talking about burnout what exactly in your words are

we talking about? So, you know, burnout can be either physical. Uh it can be emotional, can be

your mental status at any given time. It could be just lack of energy, tired. It

could be your brain’s just not functioning 100% and you’re just tired of what you’re doing, right? You don’t

like what you do. There’s lots of lawyers uh who just don’t like going to work. And there’s people who end up in a

an area of law that just never liked it to begin with. It just

they got into this one role, they learned that role and by the time they decide this isn’t really for me, they’re

already gotten multiple raises. They’re making decent money and they think, “Oh, to switch, I have to start over and go

back to being a rookie, working 80 hours a week for somebody and getting paid minimal, and they don’t do it.” And so

then they’re miserable their entire career. So, you know, burnout comes in a lot of different faces. I think

it does. And that’s a really great point and it’s a great reason that a lot of attorneys do kind of get stuck and

stagnate and stay with something that they don’t necessarily love to do. And I

think in my experience in working with attorneys, um, all of these factors kind of play together. But this is a really

unique area one because people can get stuck and kind of feel trapped by the

the monetary pressures and the fear of having to start all over again. But what are some of the other unique pressures

of personal injury law specifically that contribute to burnout just from day in and day out of attorney life?

So you have to remember that the population that the personal injury attorney is dealing with, right? So you

have clients who have been involved in catastrophic injuries um and along with

that they have all sorts of co comorbidities. to different types of illnesses and problems. Not to mention

people who have regular life problems like everybody else. They have drinking problems, drug problems, they have

family issues. They’re in the middle of a divorce. And their stress, right, gets

end up absorbed by the lawyer because your client is calling you. And obviously, we have a duty to communicate

with the client, return the call and see what’s going on. And and lots of people just want to and complain. And

where’s my money? What do you mean your money? You’re still treating. You just had an accident. Like we you haven’t even finished treating yet. And so how

come my car’s not fixed? Well, you just got in an accident 3 days ago, right? We haven’t even got the insurance company

to accept liability yet. So people, they only look at it from their perspective,

which is fine. I understand they’re the client and it’s our job to to take care of them, but they kind of forget all of

the other factors that are involved. And that puts a lot of stress on lawyers. And when you have a thriving practice

and you have lots of clients and you know there’s not enough time to make

everybody happy. And the reality is I think people forget you can’t make everybody happy. And you know one of the

things that I I learned early on right on a rescue is you can’t make somebody

else’s emergency yours. Like if this person is not going to go home at the

end of the call it’s not because I did something wrong. It’s not what I’m taking home. it’s something horrible

happened to them and I did the best I could to make a difference and either save them or or uh improve their

outcome. But in the practice of law, it’s the same thing, right? So no matter

what catastrophic injury they suffered and what’s happening in their life, the lawyer has to remember, I can’t take it

home with me, right? I can’t personalize it. They’re angry. They’re not really angry at me. They’re just angry at the

world because everything that’s happening in their life has made their their outcome today horrible, but I’m

doing the best I can to improve it. Right? And they’re angry at the situation. And beyond that, they’re

angry at a situation that they don’t even understand. They understand that they were in an accident. They

understand that they were injured. They understand that they need treatment, but they don’t necessarily understand the process. And so telling somebody to be

patient with a process that they have never been experienced with is a lot

like trying to tell a toddler to be patient while you finish making dinner. You can’t make the noodles boil any

faster. And you know, the same thing goes with law. You can’t force uh an

insurance company to accept liability any faster than they’re going to. You can’t move up a court date if it goes

into litigation. You can’t move this process along. and you can’t change the rules just because one person is having

a tough time making ends meet and they just can’t necessarily comprehend that

because they don’t have the skills to. They haven’t been in in this situation before. So, you’re dealing with a lot of

emotional angst and anger and the pain that they’re already feeling just by

being in these in this situation. And there’s not a lot that you as an attorney can do to make that any easier

on them. but you are the ear and you are the point of contact for this situation as a whole. So naturally that’s going to

come and and sit on you. But you’re right, you have to learn how to compartmentalize this because you cannot

take this home with you, you cannot personalize it. Um and so but clearly

people do. And so if you do allow this to eat you alive, what’s going to

happen? Yeah, letting it letting it eat you alive is definitely not the okay answer

because that just turns into a really bad outcome. But before I answer that, just to respond to what you were saying,

I think the the key for the attorney, and this is what we certainly teach all of our lawyers, is that knowledge is

power and that the more you inform the client, the more you educate the client,

the more you get them to understand what the expectations are and not necessarily only the end expectation, but here are

all the phases of your case and this is what’s going to happen as you go through each phase. and so notifying them when

those phases are changing and letting them know what’s coming. So we use a texting system. So we’ve recorded a a

gazillion videos and as the client’s case moves, we’re automatically sending them texts with videos and explaining

what’s happening, what’s moving in the next phase, what to expect. And we had we let our attorneys or recommend to our

attorneys to give out their cell phone number, which is something I did since day one because if the client believes

that, okay, they really know what they’re doing, they’ve explained to me the entire process and they’re telling

me that they’re always accessible and I have my cell phone, but just use it only in case of an emergency. It gives the

client that sense of comfort. So, they’re not going to drive you nuts. one because knowledge is power and you told

them what to expect and you deliver on it and two they know if they need to reach you they can 24/7 they tend not to

call that’s for me was when I used to answer when I did everything right so I don’t really talk to clients very often

anymore but back in the day when I was answering the phone doing the work speaking to the adjuster I gave out my

cell phone all the time and the number of calls that I got were far reduced than I have some attorneys who refuse to

give out their cell phone and they get way more calls. Well, and it’s funny that you say that and I love that you have this focus on

communication of the process and it reminds me of something completely unrelated to law but very prominent in

my life which is Domino’s pizza where early on in Domino’s development, they

would get people calling them all the time going, “Where’s my pizza? Where’s my pizza? Why is it taking so long?” And

so Domino’s, you know, maybe 15 years ago responded with the Domino’s pizza tracker. And so you can see step by step

where they are in the process that they’ve received your order, they’re preparing it, that it’s coming out of the oven, and that it’s going out for

delivery. And since they implemented this, it gives the customer a sense of control and knowledge. And so all of

their calls completely dropped off because people knew what to expect. And the same is true when it comes to the

legal profession. if you can clearly explain here is what the process is here

where we are here’s where we are within the process specific to you and at this

point I’m going to give you a call and let you know that we’re transitioning into the next phase then it can take

that fear away from your away from your clients and it takes that burden off of

you because you’re not getting inundated with calls all the time so I love that you you bring that up and set me up to

talk about pizza and now I’m hungry I used to deliver Domino’s Pizza when I was in college.

Did you really? That’s And that was before the tracker. That was when you had the 30inut guarantee or your pizza was free.

So, there were so many lawsuits from that. They got rid of the 30-minute guarantee and went to the tracker and went to the tracker and it has

worked so well ever since. Um, and I mean, I’ve got a couple of little kids that are always like, “When’s the pizza

going to be here?” Well, let me tell you exactly when that’s going to happen. So the more communication you can put in at

the front end, the more you can take off of your plate and the more stress you can start to eliminate from your life.

And I think that’s a really great technique that attorneys can can implement that will yield real results.

Uh and so and so let’s um you know dive into the the burnout itself a little bit

more because it’s important to focus on what the risks are if you’re not addressing burnout. um because it can

impact so much of your life uh personally but also in how you’re able

to handle your existing cases and grow your practice. So, can we talk about how

uh burnout can really have a negative impact on those things? Sure. So, way back in a different life,

I was a substance abuse counselor in a detox. So I would say that um the worst

case scenario of severe burnout is people end up with addictions and so they either drink too much or they turn

to drugs um and they just don’t know how to cope so they self-medicate and for

people self-medication is obviously often drinking like lawyers use it as

you know a great way to socialize and get together with friends which is perfectly fine but when the stress

becomes too much and you start to use the alcohol in in order to think you’re

releasing that stress and a way to cope, right? Then that’s going to be the the

bad side of the slope, which is a slippery slope and it goes fast. So, uh,

less severe issues with burnout is obviously you find yourself burning the

candle at both ends. So, I can’t get my work done in enough hours, so I’m going to go to bed a little later, get up a

little earlier. Then you can’t sleep well. Then you end up taking sleep medication and you know all of the the

things that could happen to anyone in everyday life becomes compounded when

you are taking burnout and combining it with clients who are putting stress and pressure and you have to hit a deadline,

have to deliver something to the judge, have to explain to a client why things didn’t turn out as they were supposed

to, which all just compounds the effect and speeds it up even that much faster. So yeah, burnout can take a uh it’s a

it’s its face, right, in any form. It’s really what that person uses to cope

with what they’re feeling and how the burnout’s affecting them. Absolutely. And I mean those are some

very real uh issues that arise out of this burnout that can have long lasting

impacts. So, I mean, if you are turning to alcohol, if you’re turning to drugs, like that’s only going to make the

problem worse long term because you’re going to see that in your relationships at home. You’re going to see that in the

quality of work that you’re producing. You’re going to see that in whether or not clients are trusting you or they’re

satisfied with you and are willing to give you a referral to a um to a friend for a new case. So when you are making a

short taking shortcuts and just putting band-aids over the burnout, you’re not actually fixing the problem, you’re

making it worse. 100%. And so what are some of the early

symptoms of burnout so that if if an attorney is, you know, starting to head towards this, they can say, “Here’s a

point where I really need to check myself and start to do something about it.” So I think if we look chronologically,

it’s the first warning stage is you get up in the morning and your heat feet hit the floor and you’re starting your day

and you think to yourself, “Oh my god, I don’t want to go to work today. Not another day. I don’t want to deal with

another client. More problems.” If you’re already dreading going to work

before you get there as your day starting, there’s something wrong. I mean, I work a lot of hours. I have a

lot of clients. I have a lot of team members. You know, we’re constantly expanding and growing, but I love what I

do. So, I don’t feel burnt because I’m passionate about it. If I got to the

point where I thought to myself, “Oh, I just don’t want to be doing this anymore.” Then, it’s time to adjust,

right? I’m taking too much on too many hours. So, I would say that’s going to be the first indicator, warning light,

right? If you if you’re not happy, there’s something wrong and you need to change it because we all deserve to be

happy. Yes, absolutely. We only get one shot at this life. You may as well enjoy it and

find whatever it is that you’re passionate about and spend your time doing that, right? So, then next you’re in the

office and you’re starting to talk to clients and you’re either snapping at your clients or you’re snapping at your

team members. If you don’t want to talk to people as you’re walking in your office and you make a beline for your

door because you don’t want to talk to anyone that works for you, that’s a problem. Unless that’s your normal personality. I suppose, which you should

be adjusting anyway from the perspective of good culture. Um, if you snap at your

clients, that’s obviously not okay, right? They hired you and they entrust you to take care of them. You got to

treat them with dignity and respect. Um, if you’re drinking on your lunch break,

um, and I don’t mean just like, you know, some people go out and have a glass of wine with their lunch, but if they’re drinking in excess on their

lunch break or they keep a bottle in their drawer at work, um, any of those signs of self-medicating during the day,

I would say are definite signs of burnout. Um, and if you’re just working too many hours, like, you know, you’re

not going home for dinner and seeing your family and you’re working until 9, 10, 11 o’clock at night and you do that

repeatedly. Oh, sure. If you’re a trial lawyer and you’re on trial, that happens. But if that’s your life in and

out every day, that’s going to burn you out for sure. I mean, there’s only so many hours in a day and you can’t only

work, right? Absolutely. because that’s going to have a ripple effect on everybody around you, whether it’s your family or

the other people on your team and your clients. Of course, it’s going to impact everything that you touch if you are you

have a sense of negativity about you and you aren’t able to give the best version of your passionate self to whatever it

is that you’re doing. And so, you know, let’s say a listener is, you know, hearing some of these symptoms, starting to see that in themselves. What can they

do now? what actionable step can they do now to help stop the bleed, help stop

the burnout? So, first of all, every bar association

in the country has different health wellness programs. So, you can reach out to the bar and ask for contacts and

help. If you don’t want help from that kind of a an association, obviously you

can call a therapist, right, and talk about ways to manage stress, ways to manage anxiety, things like that. You

can reduce your workload is an easy obvious one, right? Hire people, right?

Bring in people to help you. There is easily ways to figure out based on

exactly what kind of personal injury law you do with whether it’s pre-lit or lit, what the metric should be and how many

cases you should be handling and what’s reasonable and what’s just overload and how many cases your case manager should

have, how many cases your lawyer should have, right? Based on different values of the cases. There’s a million ways to slice it, but the bottom line is bring

in help or reduce your case load, but you got to do something and recognize the change, but the the first is to

recognize it. Like people bury their head in the sand. They don’t pay attention to the signs and they wait until it’s too late and they’re just

completely stressed out, which means now they’re either having problems at home and you know, you look at the divorce

rate for lawyers, it’s through the roof. So, you got to address it before it gets

ugly. That’s so true. And I mean, addressing it early on is critically important

because the longer that you let it go, the the bigger um step you have to take

in order to address the impact. If you address it early on and say, “Oh, you know, I need to start taking more

regular breaks. I need to cut back my case load. I need to cut back the hours that I’m spending.” That is one

adjustment. It might feel huge at the time, but it’s a lot easier to manage that adjustment than to have to manage,

you know, alcoholism or have to manage a spouse who now wants to have a get a

divorce because they’re not seeing you or, you know, family strains with your kids or any of these um issues that are

created out of that snowball effect. So, addressing this early on is imperative

uh before it starts to have that ripple effect on the rest of your life. But even if you have gotten to that point in

your life where your wife is ready to leave, your kids relationship is strained, your clients aren’t happy, and

you’re not happy, I want to make sure that we’re echoing that, you know, absolutely still take action. Go find

help. Go talk to that therapist. Um, now before it becomes even bigger. Uh, and

so I think that that’s, you know, a a great asset. So, thank you for the reminder that the bar associations have

help available for those who need it. Um, and let’s talk a little bit about corporate culture and what we can do

inside of our law firms and our companies to help our employees avoid burnout um and create a corporate

culture that sees us as valuable and important. But that’s a great point because we’re really been talking about more from the

individual perspective as opposed to looking at the workflow in the office and how it affects other people and so

culture is important right so I mean I present a lot around the country and

often when I’m talking on different topics like let’s say change management or culture and I ask right from the

start basic questions how many law firms here have a mission statement value statement

And it’s it’s rare. There’s lots of law firms that they have no mission, no vision, no values. And so what I remind

them is that part of the hiring process and part of the onboarding process and

then making sure that that person’s a great fit is that you decide what you stand for and believe in. And so if your

goal is not to burn out your employees, right, that you have values that you

want the fur to live by, then you have to have people who follow your values

and then you have to live and breathe them. So you should just there should be a number of hours that you expect

lawyers to work, right? So the whole theory that I’m going to hire a new lawyer and I’m going to make him work 80

90 hours a week, I think that’s less and less. We see that, but that’s just not okay. somebody can’t work that many

hours and be healthy. So, you know, there should be a cap. This is what the expectation is and it should be shared

and we share it at our law firm depending on what position you’re in, what role you’re in. It’s this is the

expectation. Uh if you have find yourself having to work more than those

hours to keep up with your work, then you need to communicate that to your team lead, your manager, whoever you’re

reporting to, so that we can discuss, right? Maybe your workload is out of control. Maybe you have a bunch of big

cases that’s taking more time than we anticipated. So, it’s really just about

communication, right, is is the key to be able for both sides to be able to

freely feel like they can share with each other and be open and transparency. So, if you’re hiding in the closet and

not coming out and talking about what the issues are, then nobody knows, right? And they nobody knows it can’t be

fixed. And when somebody is feeling burnout because they think that they are

expected to work too much or, you know, they’re expected to put in all of these hours, they are probably not alone. And

knowing that, and well, not just knowing that, but creating a channel of communication and a corporate culture of

communication will really enable your employees to, you know, voice, okay, to

management, here is where I’m realistically capped. Here’s where a standard employee is realistically

capped. And the big problem that I see with a lot of organizations is if you

are not creating a corporate culture that supports realistic expectations of

your employees, you’re going to have a lot of turnover. And from a business perspective, it is so much more

expensive to backfill these positions and find good people to fill these

positions than it is to invest in your existing employees. Make sure that they are taken care of. appreciated in the

ways that they need to be appreciated and then not overworked. So I think that um what you have been

saying about creating that dynamic is so important right and the the cost right law firms

often don’t recognize the cost of the turnover right whether it’s an attorney

or a case manager isn’t just the rehiring and retraining which is expensive it’s the referral piece right

so the the biggest value to a law firm is obviously its clients and So repeat

clients, right, are uh what makes the bank, right? So we don’t have to pay for advertising dollars. They come in and

there’s no overhead. So when you have turnover, it creates a really bad image

in that client’s mind, even if it’s their case manager. So I do consulting to different law firms and when we look

at what the average number of case managers someone has over the life of their case and you some law firms are at

three. I’ve seen four like those clients are never going to come back and they’re

never going to say anything good about the law firm and lots of them end up leaving because we obviously look at the

the percentage of of of lost clients we’ll say. So not because you dropped it

because there was no insurance but literally the client said I’m taking my file and going somewhere else. So, a transfer. And so, the higher that number

is, you’re you’re losing whatever your average fee is, 10,000, 20, 50,000 a case. For every one person that leaves,

let’s just say it’s 10 grand ahead. You lose $10,000. So, if even you only lost

one person a month, it’s $120,000 a year. That’s a huge number for a small

firm. That’s absolutely a huge number and one that can be easily avoid avoided

by having the right systems in in place by having the right values in place and to really make sure that you are paying

attention to the needs of your employees both from an appreciation side but as well as from an avoiding burnout uh

piece. So, if you were to give one last piece of advice either to an attorney who is starting to feel the pressures of

burnout or to an attorney who is wanting to build that corporate culture that uh

is invested in sustainability of their employees, what would you say?

So, I would start with probably the right culture so that number one, you

have a team that feels supported um is capable of having open, honest,

transparent communication. so they can share issues with you and not just to prevent burnout, but for everything to

improve and grow the office. You can’t scale if your team is isn’t talking to you. And then obviously if you recognize

that you have team members that look like they’re approaching burnout, which there’s lots of systems that you can put

in place to manage, right, your team members and and see how they’re performing and watch when there’s a dip.

And then you have to talk to that client, that employee and say, “Hey, this is something I’m noticing. What’s going on?” and talk to them about it and

then help them correct it. And then when you missed the dip and now you’re into burnout, whether it’s yourself or a team

member, then the key is just to get help, right? You have to be open about it. You’ve recognized it. Now you got to

do something about it. So make a change, right? So don’t let it get to the point where you’re drinking, where it’s

affecting your family, there’s divorce, because then it’s it’s just painful. Those are painful experiences. You want

to address it before you get there. And I think that in either case, whether it’s, you know, a corporate culture or

the individual, the first piece is awareness. So, as you listen to this podcast, check in with yourself and, you

know, try to figure out, you know, am I feeling that lag? Am I feeling that bit of burnout? Have a conversation with the

right people and make sure that you are addressing it before it gets to a point where it’s going to have larger

ramifications later on. Well, thank you so much, Rob. I have really enjoyed having you on the show talking about

this that is so important and I think so relatable to the attorney community um

as a whole and I am hoping that it fosters some really great conversations and some corporate culture moving

forward. It was my pleasure. Thanks for having me.