Editor's Note: This commentary was written in response to “Speed of Business leaves 'Nowhere to Hide,' but What Are the Dangers?” New Jersey Law Journal, April 29, 2019.

“Enjoy your vacation! You deserve it! We'll continue working on this when you get back.” Ten months after I opened my elder law practice in 1995, these are the words one of my clients said to me as I got ready to leave on a two-week summer vacation with my husband and our four little children. What an eye-opener! Being new to private practice, I was worried—I wasn't sure how my clients would “cope” if I went away from them for two weeks.

Since then, my full-time work-life balance has been great, and my clients have managed to wait until Monday or wait until my vacation ends. I don't give out my cellphone. I don't text with clients or log into office email to read—no less answer—questions at 10:00 at night. My workdays may be 10 hours long (or more), but I leave it all at the office at 5:00 on Friday and start returning calls on Monday morning.

The two or three weeks leading up to a vacation are brutal, of course, as I've always scrambled to complete and send out all the document drafts, opinion letters, briefs or motions. I call clients and adversaries to let them know if I'll be away. And after some years of calling into the office during vacations—only to be told by my incredible staff that everything was under control—I can just wait for the staff to call me. Amazingly, an actual emergency doesn't occur very often. It's all worked out beautifully and the practice hasn't suffered for it; a huge percentage of my many new clients each year are referred by former clients, and that's without my taking their calls on the weekends or answering emails at bedtime.

We should be very concerned about the pressures placed on attorneys to be available to clients at all hours of the day or night. What's the impact on their families? On their well-being? Is it truly unthinkable to tell a business client or a litigant that their issue will be discussed during weekday business hours? Can it possibly be that the RPC regarding “prompt response” means that response must be immediate and at all hours? From what I've seen, clients will respect their attorney's need to have time off-duty as long as they are reassured that the attorney will attend to their matter “promptly” when on-duty.

Attorney burnout and career dissatisfaction are substantial, well-recognized  problems. I believe that our profession can serve our clients well and protect the wellbeing of the attorneys at the same time without sacrificing quality of service. Perhaps it's time to take a fresh look.

Linda S. Ershow-Levenberg is the managing partner at Fink Rosner Ershow-Levenberg in Clark. She is a Certified Elder Law Attorney by the National Elder Law Foundation which is accredited by the Supreme Court of New Jersey.