Do you have a fcuking clue what you are doing?

Me = no.  Both professionally and personally.

I have wung it for 20-odd years without a fooking clue about what it is I'm meant to do.

Should I be granted another 20 years, can't see this changing tbh.

r u supremely confident in ur abilities as a solicitor and human?

Not really. Well, personally yes but professionally no. In some way, I have never quite gelled with professional life or found satisfaction in it. Time for a reboot.

don’t labour under the imposter complex. I’m sure you’re as good as or better than the next one. Being in the game and good enough to stay at it means you know what you are doing so cut yourself a break. 

 

My answer to this is ‘Yes’. I have a clue or two what I am doing and have battled away at that for now a startling 29 year since graduating, but is this the real question? At no time in recent years have I been able to answer the question ‘why?’ in a more than superficial or practical way, so I take no real pride in having got a grip on the technical question of knowing the what. What is just is just listen, watch, learn, apply, repeat, perfect. Machine learning and repeat action.
 

At the start I could rationalise it all based on aspiration and yearning for a chance . In the middle it was opportunity and ascent that drove me. Then it was economic necessity with young children and startling outgoings. Fear drove that phase. But that wears off. Now, what is it that drives? Why do it? 

I am utterly bogged in answering that. If I’m honest it is obviously affecting my mental health but not dangerously so, just creating a suboptimal permanent state and I am grumpy and annoying. I’m not proud of myself.  I can do this but that doesn’t mean I should do this.
 

At a certain point in time the rationale you rely on are the anxious or ambitious drivers, and motivation is there. In the last phase of a career you have to be able to speak honestly to yourself and answer the following questions:

- does this nourish all or enough elements of your purpose and values?

- are you keeping the company that you enjoy inside and outside work?

- is the impact on other parts of life proportionate?

- is this appropriately culminatory for the the effort and sacrifices made along the way (those times you chalked hardship or imbalance down to ‘getting there’ and wrote off the negative in anticipation of the positive - is this the positive?)

- are you still growing and learning and is this bringing out the best in you or are you simply delivering in response to demand because there is a need for what you know? In other words are you still stretched or are you coasting and is it benefitting you as much as others (eg clients, colleagues, partners, employers) are benefitting? 
 

- what are you not getting to do or be as a result of what is taking up your endeavour budget? Is this likely to cause long term damage (health, relationships, happiness)?

 

all of that.
 

If I had one piece of advice for people it would be to apply these questions sooner in life and have courage to tackle any where the answer is ‘no’. Don’t bury it under nonsense like duty, obligation, economic necessity, procrastination. 
That and sunscreen. 

"don’t labour under the imposter complex. I’m sure you’re as good as or better than the next one. Being in the game and good enough to stay at it means you know what you are doing so cut yourself a break. "

I agree with this

It is stunning that they wrote that lyric in their late 20s. Worthy of a Nobel prize for poetry.

one day 15 years ago I was driving listening to that song and had to pull over as I was suddenly aware of the meaning of the words and it really upset me. 

The economic one is hard though. If someone had told you 25 years ago you couldn't both support a family to the extent you were expected to by your wife while also not risking your long term sanity, you'd have done what we all did, ignored the advice and ploughed on.

Yes but it's all very well the multi millionaire boomer musicians being proved right about what they wrote in their 20s. History is littered with similar wisdom from those who died in poverty and/or obscurity.

Yes to both belter and hoolie on that

 

is this the RoF song then?

——

Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
Fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way.
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way.

Tired of lying in the sunshine staying home to watch the rain.
You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today.
And then one day you find ten years have got behind you.
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun.

So you run and you run to catch up with the sun but it's sinking
Racing around to come up behind you again.
The sun is the same in a relative way but you're older,
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death.

Every year is getting shorter never seem to find the time.
Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way
The time is gone, the song is over,
Thought I'd something more to say.

Home
Home again
I like to be here
When I can

When I come home
Cold and tired
It's good to warm my bones
Beside the fire

Far away
Across the field
Tolling on the iron bell
Calls the faithful to their knees
To hear the softly spoken magic spell.

Someone who I respect very much was a friend in our early years of law - he was a hard working fella who came from Westminster School and Manchester Uni where he got a first in English and then College of Law, got an offer from CC and took it, every department wanted him and he chose litigation. His dad wasn’t a lawyer but his uncle was and when he was NQ the uncle was in the Court of Appeal. The family pressure of expectation weighed heavily and he had conformed. But at 5 years PQE he dumped it all and started writing comedy. He is a successful scriptwriter but he endured a lot of difficult conversations with family, partners in the firm, judges, friends who were more cautious than him.  He now has a BAFTA.  

“Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way” impressed me a lot when I was 16.

But the truth of the observation becomes more acute as we age.

I was always more of a fan of Wish You Were Here, though. 

“We’re just two lost souls

Swimming in a fishbowl 

Year after year

Running over the same old ground 

What have we found?

The same old fears”

Miserable khunt, Roger Waters.

Jackofhearts06 Nov 19 09:05

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“Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way” impressed me a lot when I was 16.

But the truth of the observation becomes more acute as we age.

 

yes the problem is people think they're being noble, when often they're just being inert  

 

 

Yes Roger, we know your dad died when you were tiny and everyone’s really sad about that but you are now a world famous multi millionaire in his 70s so you might want to stop yakking on about it quite so much.

I do sometimes feel that RoF is a strange coming together of a significant number of the profession whose common theme is that there must be more to it than this

Wot mutters said for the most part. I am decent enough at what I do and on my day really quite good at some bits of it, particularly when I find a deal or a client or something that I actually manage to care enough about to make a proper effort.  Problem is finding the will to care, that gets harder as I get older and it's frankly only the fear driven by financial commitments that mutters described that drives me now most of the time. The resentment that stokes is definitely starting to hurt my mental health. Not in a 'I am about to have a breakdown' sort of way but again in the way mutters describes, I am becoming a less nice, less good, less compassionate, more selfish, more cynical person with each day that passes and using the fact I am 'forced' (which of course I am not really) to do something difficult and stressful that I don't much enjoy to justify that change to myself (and at times to others). 

To try to address some of this stuff I have cleaned up my lifestyle health wise a lot over the past 12 months and that has actually helped my mood and general outlook on life a bit.  Fewer hangovers and less morning after fear combined with more energy is great in one way but leads to more mental activity/space for thought/questioning of life choices. That is not necessarily great actually.

 

The trouble with all this is that it is a lonely monologue that turns into a complex fugue of thoughts and responses.  This in turn makes it very hard to explain to others so it stays internal, and that's no good for anyone.  There is an overwhelming sense that if anyone wants to get involved to help solve then they would have to go back and experience your entire career before they fully understood, otherwise their knee jerk answers seem so flimsy and naiive. They could never truly understand and you don't want facile solutions. Of course you've already crossed all these bridges. It's more complex than that etc. So you lurk pensively in a stressed cell of your own thoughts. This is the isolation cycle that is so common in stress and depression cases.

Generally I know what I am doing and I am good at my job, but I don't know everything (nor will I ever). Thankfully I do have staff who have a range of specialist knowledge that I don't have who are very professional and help me out with stuff like that.

Do I know what I'm doing with my personal life? I have no effing clue.

I never really think very hard about life.  I do what I do because the money is nice and I like the people I work with and enjoy laughing at some of the more surreal requests and expectations of clients.  I'm mainly doing it because it's what's expected and once my parents are gone I'll probably quit, sell pretty much everything and do something sailing related.  One of my issues with dating is that I don't actually want to end up with dependents and commitments so that I have to keep running round the hamster wheel.

"I'm mainly doing it because it's what's expected and once my parents are gone I'll probably quit, sell pretty much everything and do something sailing related. "

 

hmm

"This in turn makes it very hard to explain to others so it stays internal, and that's no good for anyone.  There is an overwhelming sense that if anyone wants to get involved to help solve then they would have to go back and experience your entire career before they fully understood, otherwise their knee jerk answers seem so flimsy and naiive."

I think the assumption that no one could possibly understand these feelings is a combination of self limiting thinking and arrogance. 

"They could never truly understand and you don't want facile solutions."

Ultimately isn't it more that deep down people don't want solutions?

The solutions are almost always facile which is in part the issue.  There isn't some complex solution which can guarantee you amazing wealth, interesting work and short hours.  You can get lucky and end up with a decent mix of the three - but if you're in a high earning, high stress role the solution is almost always a big pay cut.

Then you roll in the character flaws people have.  Desires for prestige, requirements for external validation, puritan work ethics, reluctance to / issues over pitching in domestically at home.  There are a host of things which will push you to the top in a high earning but ultimately shitty environment but then hobble you in attempts to run away and find something more sane.

Why hmm Mutters?  I've been working along those lines for a while and have a plan but if I start that plan too there will be too many fights and if I just wait a few years it will be 100 times easier.

I think the assumption that no one could possibly understand these feelings is a combination of self limiting thinking and arrogance. 

 

It is not the usual way of thinking, hoolie, it is the stressed mind in obstruction mode. This is not "I know best" but "it's all too complicated to explain". and yes, this comes over as self limiting and, above all, arrogant, though I am not sure it has its roots in the latter. I see a lot of very non-arrogant people struggling with this.  The greatest humility of all is to admit what society sees as failure and many people struggle with that and instead put up the barriers, delude themselves on this. I think it is defensiveness rather than arrogance.

sails

I just mean if you see yourself doing something out of obligation then that's not too wholesome and your view that you will have time to attend to what you want once people have gone, well I hope you get that lucky.

At work I do have a clue and I know what I'm doing. There are times when I do feel a bit flummoxed but that's generally in cases where I'm deciding whether to push a case to trial or test a point of law, something that genuinely could go either way and have repercussions. But in those cases I usually chew over it with a buddy and reach a decision in the knowledge that my team are behind me.

In my personal life I also think I have a clue and I know what I should be doing but that doesn't always translate to me getting it right.

I didn’t take the question to mean “do you feel competent at your job technically”. I always felt completely in command of the content of my job. It wasn’t very difficult, tbf. I thought the question was more like - did you feel the whole thing had any purpose?

arbiter's analysis is good too.

The solutions are in fact relatively simple, but someone in that fugue has a sense of shame for having got so tangled up that they are inclined not to accept that simple solutions could ever be the answer...they are not that stupid... if it was that simple then...etc. But it usually is a simple fix, though it is far from simple getting to the point where the person is inclined to take that step.

A big part of my thinking at the moment is also drilled into the human tendency of people to completely confuse the difference between whether something is simple / complicated and easy / hard.

Just because something is simple that doesn't make it easy and just because something is complicated that doesn't make it hard.

People tend to push towards complicated things that are easy, there is a real psychological comfort blanket in letting yourself get drawn into something that is apparently complex but actually very easy for you to fall into.  Sitting it out in a toxic work environment is complicated, I mean the works demanding there are hurdles to overcome, not everybody can do it, there are all these various elements etc. But its ultimately the easy status quo answer that you've generally drifted into through unrelated choices.

Quitting to do something less demanding for less money is generally fairly simple - but its also phenomenally hard with a bunch of other hard decisions that need to be taken alongside it and the support of family that you may need to obtain. All simple choices, all relatively obvious knock on effects (up to a point) but a really hard choice to make.

So to avoid the hard choices we look to complexity.  You can make better use of that time on the train so how about an iPad or a laptop to go with you.  There is a lack of time for personal health so lets get a personal trainer, thats an hour carved out now for exercise but now the day has to work around that with the consequent stresses of rearranging meetings and making excuses to avoid saying that you'er more important than your work.  Decision after decision that just further complicates life but because you're embracing that complexity you get an excuse for not having to take the actual hard decisions over what you should be doing.

Mutters once upon a time I bought into the expectations and thought they were what I wanted but as the years have gone by my views have changed but currently it's too hard to walk away from it all but that won't be the case much longer. 

The rest of life is awesome so overall I'm pretty happy with it.

Mutters were you not the roffer who didnt want to be a lawyer at all and had terrible rows with your father who wanted you to practice?

Apols if I have got this wrong. But if so, seems he knew you better than you knew yourself at the time, heart warming really!

I've got very little idea what I'm doing (have been doing what I am doing now for about 3 years). My boss is brilliant and has about 5x more experience but I doubt I would be able to be as good. 

I don’t think it follows that doing something for less money is less demanding at all, actually. Especially when viewed in the round.  Particularly if you are taking on any level of autonomy or responsibility. 

To answer the OP - the older I get the less I feel I know about anything at all. Shouldn’t that be the case? It seems to be either that or a gradual slow decline into a know it all cvnt with perspective carved into granite. 

Nearly but not quite Minks.

 

I was the roffer who didn't choose law because of him. The shadow was too great. But then I clutched my courage by the scruff of the neck and said I wanted to study law and he was really quite difficult about that but said if I wanted to do it then fine, off you go. I think he felt that I would be better doing something else.  I set off on a different course of lawyerishness (bar, crime) and that delivered sufficient separation. I followed my own path for a bit but then I realised I didn't want to be there, I wanted to be in something closer to what he did and it was at this point that it got quite dynamic.  He was quietly impressed by what I had achieved and felt I was throwing it away and pursuing something tricky. This of course spurned me on to show that I was actually quite good at that and was probably one of the major motivations for success.  The years went by and before he died he was really very kind about what I had achieved and we had a nice resolution of all our competitive frictions along the way.  But it then became clear to me that I had been defining what I wanted to do by how close or far away it was from the arena in which he had been a very big fish. With him dead, there was nothing but an obituary and memories, no live benchmark. His achievements became irrelevant to my future as they should have been all along but we are none of us perfect and many of us are very strongly the product of our parents' example so struggle to detach from that.  Now I have (mostly), the entire question of "wtf do I do this for" has resurfaced.

 

That’s an even better story, mutters.

When it came to choosing A levels, father wanted me to (follow in his footsteps) and choose French. I rebelled, because, father, huh. Then I had a think and decided, right, French, easy peasy, I’ll do French and I’ll raise you Latin too.

Which was certainly not easy in the end as my French was good but my Latin was merely above average.

It all worked out in the end though. ?

"I don’t think it follows that doing something for less money is less demanding at all, actually."

Oh I'm not saying that all you need to do is find a job that doesn't pay as well.  More that any job with less autonomy and less responsibility and less stress is likely to bring with it less pay - and that its the fight to find some solution to hold onto the pay whilst improving the other aspects that can be a block to people just moving on.  But that isn't universal though and what holds people into shitty situations can vary.  My mum used to own her own shop and it was frankly a massive fvcking millstone around her neck.  She made way less than minimum wage from it and would have been far better off financially just jacking it in and getting a job at a local super market.  I'm not even 100% sure she enjoyed it or how much it was a sense of obligation / refusal / reluctance to fail.

Not that anything is a panacea - I gave up my senior-ish role at a US Firm (rejecting the dangled carrots and offers to try and keep me) to take a junior role at a shitty little foreign bank with no prospects of promotion and a massive pay cut.  The first 18 months were horrific because of my new boss.

"To answer the OP - the older I get the less I feel I know about anything at all."

This 100% though.

I wish I'd told my parents when I considered joining Army Legal Services as it turns out my dad thought that was something I'd probably do and enjoy when I wrongly thought they'd try and talk me out of it.

With hindsight I’d rather have gone into a practice area which was more readily applicable to life at a small firm or outside London - private client pr property perhaps. However I can still probably find some kind of company/commercial role if I want to go down that route.

Thanks Mutters for 08.42 and thanks arbiter for 11.06.  I am churning exactly both these sets of thoughts around unproductively in the washing machine of my head at the moment. Seeing someone else do the same is cheering. 

The Indigo Girls lyric says "The hardest to learn was the least complicated " which I liked for years without understanding it and like even more now that I get the point of it. 

Oh dear, we seem to have moved on from Pink Floyd lyrics to serious topics again.

i chased the PP carrot for far too long. Now in-house at a reasonably respectable foreign bank and much happier.

To arbiter’s point, my new role is much simpler - no personal politics, management of my own time and workload, more law and practical legal thinking I enjoy, no faffing about with bullshit management crap and endless f*cking w**king on about BD by people who have a clue about neither law nor selling, actually being able to see my advice help people and make a difference.

That’s not to say it’s easy. And personal accountability is a bit sharper when you’re the only lawyer in a room of 30 people who all think they know about deals and have received some decidedly courageous legal advice from external firms at points over the years. 

I fondly imagine I might eventually flip back to PP if the right firm were interested, but the medium term to long haul where I am is interesting and fun. 

Interesting
I left private practice at 11 years PQE and went into a bank but it was not a foreign bank but the HQ of a London based biggie. I joined 3 years before the financial crisis so just about when I’d got orientated and made head of my department the shit hit the fan. I did 10 years of that. At no point in that process did I think I’d go into private practice but then I was approached and persuaded.

Looking at your criteria for what makes it bearable

no personal politics - have you been in it long enough / deep enough to reveal those or is it really such a haven? They are rabid at the upper end in banks where the squeeze is on.
Management of my own time and workload - yes to that. But this can just disappear overnight if you’re engaged in something big which causes Exco angst. They pull you about.
- more law and practical legal thinking I enjoy: the best bit of the role no doubt but beware of elevation. The ‘ no faffing about with bullshit management crap’ evaporates when you are a GC or head of deparmrmejt and do comp for a team and live in the land of HR spreadsheet mayhem
- endless f*cking w**king on about BD by people who have a clue about neither law nor selling, actually being able to see my advice help people and make a difference. Amen. Though banks have their own special version of those types. Change Operation Managers anyone?

I learned to adopt the mantra ‘A good lawyer does not necessarily know the law, but he knows where to find it.”

Many years ago (1990s) I used to advise in a law clinic in west London. People desperate for help would present problems. I would take their papers with the excuse ‘I need to photocopy these” then walk quickly into the back office and search desperately as to whether they had a hope or not. Moslty Landlord and Tenant.

One fella who was a year qualified told me a story that they were representing a council tenant in the Mags facing an eviction order. His client thought he was lawyered up. A (trainee) solicitor and a (newly admitted) barrister (actualy he might have been second 6). He recounted they were both furiously flipping through books outside the Court room minutes before the hearing trying to find judicial support for the case for their client. 

(He was a great footballer, offered terms by a Championship team, but rejected it because he would preferred to qualify as a solicitor...whatever was he thinking? 

But he told me he would never have made it. He realised that he was so one-footed that experienced defenders would have sussed him within a season. But he was good; the most gifted player I played alongside. He hated law though he became a real expert on the Hague Convention. A nasty aspect of law. Albeit necessary.  Last I heard he left law and emigrated with his gf to Australia.) 

H@foolio

Yeah, big fish. I have said this for years and everyone assumes I am describing his stature in business circles. I'm not. I was borne of the unlikely congress between my mother and a whale shark.

Thank you to the contributors to this thread - it makes for good and supportive reading. 

I have struggled for a while about wtaf I am doing as a lawyer - it gives me almost no personal satisfaction.  I am 15 years pqe and, although for the last 2 years I have had far more autonomy and no commuting, it still isn't working for me.  Law is my 2nd/3rd career and I try hard not to actively regret having embarked on it. 

I am going to reduce my hours in 2020 and take the time to write fiction, play more bridge, and do more stuff outdoors. 

The second best time is now.   

Amen to all the above.  Law is a great paying but brutal gig.  If you are lucky enough to find it interesting it is easier to cope, but no1 is infallible and all forms are run by the exact sort of person who should not be allowed a goldfish or long case clock from Elizabeth Duke.

Work wise i thought I did but then i didn't 

 

Then I did something else and now I do

 

Life wise: though I didn't but I did, had kids and now i don't but I'm happy. 

 

In respect of the above (esp Mutters), duty seems to be a right aunt. I have no sense of duty. I'd do anything for the many I love but never anything out of duty 

I really don't find it brutal but then I don't get paid what I suspect most of you do.  I could easily do this intensity till I'm 65

"you pays your money you takes your choice"

or take the money in this case 

I genuinely think all this my dad was a big fish stuff is tragic and not in a sneery way. It's actually sad grown men worry about living in dads shadow 

I also agree with bam re duty 

It's tragic is as much as it can be limiting or send people down the wrong path, but for some people it gives them an incredible drive that can be directed well.

Hoolie

It applies to whoever is a large influence in a life and it is only one thing, but the capacity to influence of any parent, role model, coach, mentor, bully or abuser should not be underestimated, and I am not sure that many people can legitimately claim they have not had to extract themselves from some sort of shadow or pressure (actual or perceived) if we are honest.

And anyway, the point I made about that was that when he died which was a long time ago now, that all turned to dust with him anyway.

 

---

the duty point is right. But that is what legal practice feeds on. The "discretionary engagement" gold dust.  I must go the extra mile etc. This comes from within, and from those who lead you and from clients.

 

I think again This is where being a public school kid is a disadvantage. 

If you had stuff you feel there's an obligation to give back.  Which is admirable if it's checked. 

I felt continually let down by schools, housing (never parents) and saw them in shit jobs constantly let down by bosses or economy. fook duty 

You may or may not feel an obligation but you’re certainly told at some schools that the obligation exists, contrary to what some of rof’s keyboard activists who’ve never been anywhere near a public school will tell you. You excepted Bam, that was a fair comment. 

But the fact that so many of them try to get into politics. A combination of arrogance and misplaced civic duty. 

 

Their economic model might be catastrophic for most but the intention is there to serve. 

"contrary to what some of rof’s keyboard activists who’ve never been anywhere near a public school will tell you. You excepted Bam, that was a fair comment."

 

meaning - Bam is completely correct, and Hoolie agrees with bam, but cookie will still attempt to engineer a way in which I am wrong and thick 

Cookie, it is no more complicated than some guys with everything going for them feeling sad to end up mediocre. And I mean it is possible to be earning six figures and be utterly mediocre. Daddy probably doesn't care either way, tho, it's a weird excuse.

People with a genuine sense of obligation or social import don't do law for commercial clients.

Historically bam the idea was that MPs should have an independent income, wasn’t it? So they were not in it to enrich themselves as is now the case. I don’t think a sense of civic duty is ever entirely misplaced, is it? Surely we want to encourage as many people as possible to serve? But from all parts of society. The reality is that Britain is still largely a white middle class society, and parliament will reflect that overall, like it or not. And I don’t like it any more than you do.

the reason why lots of MPs etc come from public schools is because they know other people that did it - so it becomes normal.

Some git daahhhnn at the local comp probably doesn't give being an MP a thought - and if they did, would have no clue how to get into that world. 

Same with anything.

That's why you don't see many Etonian's working in KwikFit etc.

Hoolie you’re always wrong and thick faod. That’s a given. You’re welcome. 

Clergs you really need to work on that sense of failure a bit more. It’s not really getting you anywhere is it?

I don't think these public school w**kaz who infest our politics are in it out of a sense of duty. They are in it out of a sense of (a) entitlement and (b) mistaken belief as to suitability.  These two things are sadly a hallmark of many from the private education world. There is a strange hark back to the Days of Empire "Yes, I shall go forth and run the Indian Railways"  "But Stephens, you're 19"  "I know, but it's not too late to be important in the eyes of the world, so here I go and what could possibly go wrong?" etc.

Yeah you're right there re civic duty

 

I do get quite sad when I walk past a Peabody or Guinness housing estate and think that today's billionaires don't do what the Victorians did. 

I'm not ever that wound up by the make up of the commons to be honest. I get annoyed when useless people have important jobs if all th3 Commons were full of white middle class experts that served every one equally I'd be fooking delighted 

 

I don't have a sense of failure at all. Maybe that was your point? Anyway I have contempt for private schoolboys (it's always boys) who bang on about it 40 years later.

My one reservation about sending my son to a public school is that he may think at 60 that it was the happiest/most significant thing that ever happened to him in the way so many of the denizens of rof do

I will be dead but he is does it will be sad max 

You've never heard me say that.

I had a good education and it set me up well, but I could have got that elsewhere if I had been motivated (which I wasn't)

I learned to live alongside arseholes which is a good preparation for life generally and law firm life in particular

I otherwise just muddled through and was as pleased as fook when it was over.