Earlier this month, I participated in the American Bar Association’s Midyear Meeting in New Orleans. Aside from the obvious benefit of being in a great location I’ve never been to before, the meeting was a perfect example of some of the benefits of being active in the bar.

Of course, there were excellent CLEs and panel discussions. Not only did I attend an educational event put on by the ABA Criminal Justice Section, but I also participated in one at Tulane Law School.

There, I had the honor of discussing careers in criminal justice alongside a sitting U.S. District Court judge and the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Louisiana, which gave me an opportunity to learn and to hopefully impart something helpful to a room full of law students.

The ABA meetings are also an opportunity to recognize those attorneys and judges who are doing great things nationally and back in their home states. A member of Maryland’s delegation was awarded as a finalist for the ABA National Outstanding Young Lawyer Award. Recognitions such as these are important not only for the recipient but also for those in attendance as inspiration to do better in our profession and communities.

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Most offices are ghost towns during the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day. With partners on vacation and annual billables already calculated, it seems like the perfect time for a young lawyer to escape, right?

Well, maybe. It’s certainly a good week to vacation without losing much “face time” if that’s important to you. I’d argue, however, that the last week of the year is an opportune time for young lawyers to go to work.

With fewer people e-mailing and calling you, it’s a great time to catch up on all of the things you’ve been meaning to do but haven’t had time.

Want to write an article for publication? Start researching. Have a stack of files that need to be archived? Clean house. Wondering what’s new with your old classmates? Spend some time on LinkedIn and Google. Wishing folks a happy new year is an excellent excuse to reconnect.

Of course, there’s also the perks of having unbridled access to holiday party leftovers, and, if you’re really lucky, skipping the suit and tie. A lawyer I know works in a position where vacation days, not billable hours, are counted.

Instead of taking off during the last week of the year, he “vacations in place” and saves his paid leave for the warmer months. No matter what your motive, I think working during the last week of the year could be the best week of the year to work.

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Anyone who knows me knows I have awful luck with cars. It seems like every set of wheels I’ve had since I got my license was cursed — my first car caught fire due to a freak electrical short, another car was hit twice by drivers that didn’t leave notes and I’ve probably had close to a dozen flat tires.

I’ve had enough. Last week I sold my car.

My fiancé and I decided to be a real live city-living, one-Volvo-driving couple. His practice is primarily in Baltimore and he has always taken the bus to work. I’ll use the car during the week for my brief commute and hope there are no more car calamities.

So far (it’s only been a week) things are working out, mostly because our current schedules are relatively predictable. But I’m curious – are there any young lawyers out there who share a car or have given up car ownership altogether? Is it possible to practice law in Maryland without a vehicle?

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On Saturday, I will be in Bristol, N.H., to run my eighth marathon. The past few months have been a truly difficult balancing act between finding time to train, meeting the needs of clients and trying to spend time with my family.

This week has been especially brutal, because of a mid-week arbitration in New York and a couple of evening events earlier in the week. (In all honesty, I’m barely getting this blog written in time, but a commitment is a commitment.)

Attorneys are on the high end of Type A personalities. I make lists for my lists and continuously analyze everything. For example, when I started running, I decided to run a marathon. I had never run long distances before making this decision. But I couldn’t settle for a 10K or a half marathon or anything less than 26.2 miles.

In order to be successful, I had a training program to get in shape so I could do the actual marathon training program.  At some point during my first marathon, in Baltimore, I knew that I was going to finish and a sense of relief came over me. Relief and joy (to know that I would finally be able to stop running).

What’s my point? I don’t really know. It could be that everyone can do something if they put their mind to it. Maybe it’s exercise is good for all of us and when you find something that you like to do, you should find time to do it.

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After an August and first half of September that included double-digit depositions, extensive travel for work, three stitches for my oldest son after a bucket full of Mr. Potato Heads hit him above the eye at day care, two days at GBMC for my youngest son because of complications with an ear/sinus infection, a District Court trial (victorious!), and a two-day Circuit Court trial that was placed on the standby docket (and subsequently postponed), I needed a vacation.

Unfortunately, for a number of reasons, including the fact that my wife used most, if not all, of her leave caring for the sick kids (since I was crushed at work), I had very limited options.

So I am on the Megabus leaving Baltimore and heading to Philadelphia with my oldest in tow. We are going to visit the in-laws and I will be able to get a little break.

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Do you take a one week summer vacation or a more extended one? I’m considering doing two weeks next year and I have been thinking about how that interacts with work commitments.

For the past few years, we’ve rented a house for one week right on the Delaware Bay. By the time we really get settled in and start to relax, it is just about Wednesday. And we leave on Saturday.  So we’ve been thinking about getting away for two weeks next year.

This year, I probably billed about five hours total over the course of the week-long vacation — pretty good, I think (from the vantage of trying to spend as much time as possible with my family).  I monitored a number of things, but I ignored (or at least held off a substantive response to) a lot of non-urgent e-mails.  Being gone just a week allows you to hold people at bay until you get back. But I know that a two-week hiatus does not.

If we do end up taking two weeks, I assume that I won’t be able to avoid most standing conference calls and I would probably have to do a few half-day stints of working (if not more).

So, which is better? Taking one week and REALLY escaping from work? Or taking two weeks and still being required to have a decent level of connectivity?

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