Podcast Ep. 5: Boundaries

You would be surprised how often the lawyers I work with simply don’t realise that it is possible to speak up in a particular situation.  They presume they have no power and have to do exactly what is asked of them.  

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My name is Cecilia Poullain and I am a former finance lawyer who now helps women lawyers make partner with clarity, confidence and clients.

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5. Setting Boundaries:  A Delicate Balance

Hook:  We all know we should be setting boundaries.  People talk about boundaries all the time.  But the difficult thing, especially when you work in a law firm, is knowing which boundaries to set.  

As a lawyer, it’s easy to go to extremes. At one extreme, you can end up working all hours of the day and night, weekends, missing dinners, missing weekends away, accepting poor treatment, doing what partners or clients ask you to do. Or you can swing the other way and focus only on your own needs.  We all know people who say “I need” and it drives everybody crazy. The real challenge is finding the right balance.

In this episode, I’m focussing on two types of boundaries, time and behaviour. How you allocate your energy and your time and how you allow yourself to be treated.

But there are other sorts of boundaries, in particular ethical boundaries or deciding how to act when something clashes with your values - deciding what will you or won’t you do?  We’ll look at those in a later episode.

What happens when you don’t set boundaries at all? 

A senior partner in a major UK law firm told me about a brilliant young trainee.  The trainee had a dinner with her family on a Friday night, so the partner negotiated with the client that they wouldn’t get their email until Monday morning.  But then, the partner was annoyed to see that the trainee had skipped the dinner with her family and sent the email out to the client at 11 p.m. that night.  The following week, the partner reprimanded the trainee - the trainee was upset because she was so used to being perfect and she thought she had done the right thing.  But the partner told her this: if you keep this up, you’ll start to hate this job and you’ll burn out.  They will be the consequences if you don’t set any boundaries in relation to your work-life balance.

So that’s one example of somebody who wasn’t setting any boundaries at all.

If your aim is to become a partner in a law firm, you need a strong support network at home —people who are aware what it’s going to take to make it and are willing to make those compromises and be flexible, but not too flexible.   Sometimes your partner, your friends or your family need to be the ones saying:  this weekend you are not working. This wedding, this dinner, this event matters more.   Without that, the sacrifices of partnership can consume everything. 

And if two lawyers are in a relationship together that’s especially tricky. Without someone outside the system saying “enough,” neither of you puts limits in place.

Boundaries also show up in behaviour. One of my clients was working with a partner who often spoke to her aggressively or treated her badly - and unfortunately she is not alone on the receiving end of that sort of treatment.  For a long time, she simply accepted it.  She believed that she was meant to accept it.  But it had major consequences on the way she behaved because, in order to avoid a cutting remark, she was always second guessing his reaction.  So you can imagine how exhausting that was.

But after we’d worked together for a while, she finally built up the courage to say to him:  “listen, if you keep speaking to me like that, I’m going to leave the room.”  She was terrified when she said it, but it changed everything in their relationship - the next day, he was smiling, he was joking with her and he was treating her with so much more respect.  Young lawyers often think they have to do everything the partners ask of them - but it’s simply not true.  If you’re good at what you do, you have way more power than you think.  The partners need you.  They don’t want you to leave and they don’t want to have to find someone to replace you.  And that gives you power.

What happens when you set boundaries that are too rigid? 

I’ve been hearing lots of complaints that the latest generation of young lawyers who are saying things like:  “sorry, I have to go - I have a dinner tonight” and leaving the seniors lawyers to finish work that needs to be done for the next day.  This is exacerbated by remote working where sometimes the younger lawyers don’t realise that everyone else is still hard at it and they clock off even though they are still needed.  

When young lawyers do this, this has a massive impact on the stress of those who have to cover.  It means they lose trust in their younger colleague and it also means the client ends up paying partner or senior associate rates for work that should have been done by juniors.  And the partners are annoyed because they are working late on something that should have been done by someone more junior and they feel as though they had to work really hard to become a partner and that things ought to be easier now.

Some junior lawyers aren’t like that.  A partner was telling me about a meeting each week to make sure that work is fairly distributed across the team.  She realised that two of the more junior lawyers had way too much on their plate and redistributed their files off them. Within an hour, both those lawyers were back in her office asking her to give them their files back.  Those particular juniors were happy working until midnight because it was more important for them to get the experience.  

So what’s the middle ground? 

How do you know what boundaries to set?

The starting point is to listen to your emotions.  If something is starting to irritate you, that is a clear indication that a boundary is being stepped over - that, according to your unique value system, what is happening isn’t fair.  

But that’s only the starting point.  The next step is to look as objectively as possible at the whole situation.  What does the client need here?  Is that a “need” or a “want”?  How much negotiation room is there?  And the same with the partner or more senior lawyer - what is their position?  How much time do they need to review your work in order to meet the client’s deadline, for example.  It may be that you don’t have all the information.

And then think about what you might be able to communicate in the situation.  Very, very often, the lawyers I work with don’t even realise that it is possible to speak up in a particular situation - they presume that they have no power and just need to do what is asked of them.  

That’s why I do a lot of role play in sessions with my clients - so that they can start to see how it feels to express certain needs.  Sometimes, what they first say isn’t quite right, so they adjust until they have a phrase or phrases that they feel comfortable with.  I am able to reflect back how what they say impacts me - of course, it’s only my experience, but at least it is an external point of view.

It is incredibly powerful when you understand that it is OK to ask, and asking in a way that takes into account both your needs, the needs of your family, the needs of the more senior lawyer and the needs of the client.  

The message really is:  You don’t have to set boundaries all by yourself and in fact, you probably shouldn’t.  It’s by having conversations with the people around you that you can adapt, share information and define the right boundaries for everybody. 

The best workplaces are the ones where there’s trust to have open conversations. I’ve met so many women partners who create this kind of culture. Where juniors feel they can say: I’m exhausted. I have a personal commitment—can we work around it? Or even “I’m feeling stressed” without wanting the partner to do anything particular about it.  That openness makes boundaries work for everyone.

So setting boundaries isn’t about being selfish and it isn’t about accepting anything and everything. It’s about balance, communication and trust. Get them wrong, and you risk either burnout or a damaged reputation. Get them right, and you build a career that is satisfying and sustainable.

Conclusion

Just to recap. Here are the three big messages from this episode:

First, being irritated or angry is a signal that your personal boundaries are being stepped over. 

Second, boundaries only work if they take into account everybody’s needs in the situation and that requires communication.  

And third, balance is the goal. Not saying yes to everything, not saying no to everything — but calibrating between your needs, your team’s needs, your family’s needs, the client’s needs. As with anything, tt takes practice and you’ll sometimes get it wrong but if you aim to have reasonable boundaries, that’s where your career will be successful, enjoyable and sustainable.

Outro
That’s it for today’s episode of The Pathway to Partnership Podcast.

I hope you’re walking away with some practical insights and renewed confidence for your own pathway to partnership.

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