Brian Glass’s “Closing Argument”

And recognizing that our industry is near the top, if not at the top, in terms of anxiety, depression, suicide, alcoholism, divorce, all those things that you want to avoid. But we also make a lot of money. And there are ways in your career to pull two levers, to make more money and to spend less money, to create options for yourself, even if you’re somebody who graduated law school with $150,000, $200,000 in debt. And life is all about having those options so that when you get to pivot points, you can say, no, I don’t want to do this anymore. I don’t want to do this kind of law anymore. I don’t want to live here anymore. And creating the ability to go and, you know, kind of live the life that you want to live. I call it “Living Life by Design.”

And so one pivotal moment for me and the reason that I joined my dad’s firm back in 2019, I was at a firm, I was a partner, I’d been a partner only for about 18 months. My name was on the door. A couple of things happened. We had somebody quit. We made a decision not to expand office space into the office next door. And then my wife, when she gave birth to our third boy, like almost died. 16 units of blood transfused. She was in the ICU for a couple of days. He was in the NICU for 10 days. And at the time my dad was 60 and I just thought like, if I don’t go and do it now, I might never get a chance to go and practice with them.

And having the ability in your life to make those kinds of life altering decisions is really important. And knowing, at the end of the day, what it is that you want. And one of the things that I wanted before we got to the end of my career was a chance to practice with my dad. And he’s gone through a little bit of a health scare this year. And so we’re working through that and we’ve built here now a firm that’s grown 4X in the five years that we’ve been here and it’s a lot of fun.

If you find yourself in a practice and it’s not a lot of fun, you want to have the flexibility and the capability to hit the reset button and go and do something that is, because that’s why we’re here. So I’m 40. Statistically speaking, I’m half way through my life. But by the time you’re 65, you maybe can’t do all the things that you can do at 40. And so not putting off until the end of your life, the travel and the time with family.

Most lawyers were just not very intentional about our careers and our lives. And so I would challenge lawyers to spend a little bit of time thinking about what the hell do I actually want out of this thing? And then what would I have to sacrifice in order to get it?