Lawyers tell us that the practice of law is easily all consuming. The Florida Bar 1997 Opinion Survey reported that most Florida lawyers took two weeks or less vacation in 1996. Most also reported that they had more than enough work to do. One reason for this is the practice of charging for legal services by the hour. Hourly billing, unheard of a century ago, has made every lawyer a participant in the race against time.
Lawyers cope with sleep deprivation, law office economics, biological clocks and taxes.
While we do so, we literally see our lives slipping through the hour glass with no room for joy, family or recreation while we sell our lives in chunks of six minutes each. Americans work more than workers in all the remaining western countries and lawyers work more than other Americans. Bruce Bartlett reported in The Detroit News this past Labor Day that the average American worked 1,904 hours in 1997, according to the International Labor Office in Geneva, Switzerland. Only the Japanese worked longer than Americans, about 1,990 hours per year on average. Germans worked just 1,573 hours in 1997.