What are reasonable boundaries when you’re highly paid? How do you make work/life boundaries that you and others in your life respect?

Readers had a few great threadjacks on just this topic — one on reasonable boundaries when you’re in Big Law, and another one on reasonable boundaries when you’re charging $$$$/hr.

What Reasonable Boundaries Look Like if You’re Highly Paid

Although obviously there could be multiple fields where you’re charging 4+ figures an hour, this is most notable in the legal world, where these days even associates could be billed at $1,000 or more per hour. So, a number of readers who are in-house counsels responded in that thread. One noted:

I think as the client you can expect a near immediate response except in the middle of the night, but I wouldn’t necessarily expect the partner himself to be doing the substantive work if he’s on vacation or it’s a major holiday.

Another in-house counsel noted:

If I’m working into the evenings on a deal and am paying expensive outside counsel, I expect them to be there with me (metaphorically).

I do not expect that if I send a random late-night email when I’m digging out of my inbox, that I get an immediate reply!

And a third in-house counsel noted:

My expectation as in-house counsel for outside counsel is that you will respond to me within one business day acknowledging that you got my request and letting me know by when you can complete the work. So, reasonable boundaries would be whatever allows that responsiveness.

{related: when is a lower salary worth it?}

Reasonable Boundaries in Big Law In General

The first threadjack was prompted by an Ask a Manager column about work-life balance (the AAM letter writer resented Gen Z colleagues who were trying to make better boundaries), and readers were guessing the letter writer worked in Big Law.

In general, people thought that regular work/life boundaries don’t really apply to Big Law; one commenter noted: “Yeah, you can draw and have to draw boundaries regardless of where you work, but in Big Law those boundaries are ‘I won’t answer 3 am emails immediately’ not ‘I only work 40 hours/week.’”

We’ve talked about this a lot about work-life balance over the years — in our discussion on answering work emails at home, one reader shared a story of a senior associate getting chewed out for not answering a work email at 9 p.m. His reason? His daughter was watching a movie on his phone and didn’t hand it over when the email came in. This was actually a cause for a big debate among readers, at least back in 2016. (For my $.02, I find that a little surprising — phones exist if there’s something urgent, yes?)

(Actually, that entire discussion is really fascinating — in 2016 they recognized very little wiggle room to not answer emails immediately “except at insane hours of the night.” Those of you in BigLaw, do you agree in 2023?)

Back when I was fresh from BigLaw, my own advice on keeping work/life boundaries mostly boiled down to stuff I could do myself, like changing into jeans when I got home to feel like I could be a more relaxed person than I was at the office… in other words, protecting my mental health against the “always on” mentality of BigLaw. I remember thinking I was being so rebellious to not get notifications from my work email from 12 a.m. to 6 a.m., but that was mostly because the firm’s spam filter regularly sent out notifications at 4 a.m., which would wake me up in my little studio apartment.

Readers, what are your thoughts? What are reasonable boundaries if you’re highly paid in this day and age — whether your time is being charged at $1,000 an hour, or you’re working in an intense industry?

(This post is admittedly focused on BigLaw, but readers noted that healthcare and intelligence/security are another two industries with major ramifications if one tries to enforce boundaries…)

Stock photo via 123rf.com / BeritKessler.