The Art of Juggling
We all have to juggle at one time or another, but I think it is safe to say that the fine art of juggling is usually honed in the service of business. Sometimes we are forced to juggle work and home life and God knows I’ve had my share of that, with work winning more times than I care to admit. These days, that particular juggling act is much easier since everyone I work with knows that I am retired and that I work because it pleases me and not because I have to do it. It’s nice to finally be in the drivers seat on that issue and when I tell a client that I have something I have to do with my grandchildren, I never get any pushback. But juggling also takes place between work priorities. With a reduced workload, that clearly happens less often, but it does still happen.
Over the five years of my doing expert witness work, my book of active cases has continued to rise. At this moment I have nine cases that are open and being worked on and another three that have been discussed with me, but have not yet been engaged. Of the nine cases, I have given testimony one one and am in the process of giving rebuttal testimony right now. Four others have gone through the deposition stage and may or may not go to trial and require further testimony. That leaves four that are still in the evidentiary analysis stage or report-writing stage. One has a report ready to be finalized and another has a report on its second draft (that one is on pause due to being switched from an arbitration setting to a civil court proceeding). The last two are awaiting download of discovery materials so that I can begin the preparation of my analysis, opinions and report. It’s become a bit of a scheduling game to know when things will heat up with any one case. At this moment, I would say that I have three that are active, two in the on deck circle and four that could reactivate at any time.
As with anything in business and life, things can change with one email of phone call. And like any consultative business, it is good to be busy and look to be in demand, but it is equally important to be available when needed and show a certain degree of priority for any given client. No one likes thinking they are fighting for some mindshare or time on your schedule.
This morning I have been listening to testimony by an opposing witness. This is a guy who graduated from Dartmouth in 1964. By my calculus that makes him about twelve years older than me, or 82. He stopped his activity in the industry (Wall Street brokerage) over thirty years ago and has been focused on doing expert witness business ever since. He claims to have been hired for 1,800 cases over that time. If we spread that out evenly that means he has handled about 60 cases per year over those thirty years. When questioned he said that he had 18 cases that he was actively pursuing at this time. The case I have been listening to has gone on for over two years and I have almost 400 hours invested in. From the sound of it, he has as much and likely more hours invested since he has listened to all of the hearing where I have listened to perhaps half. By my math, if he has spent 200 hours per year, that would imply through extrapolation that he puts in something like 12,000 hours per year, which further translates to 230 hours per week. Hmmm? Even if he is putting in twice as much on this case as others, he would still be putting in115 hours per week. In other words, to say the least, he has a pretty full-time business of his expert witness work.
My average number of cases worked on during a year has built steadily since I became this activity five years ago. This year so far I have worked on seven cases. The average case for me lasts about 200 hours. Since I probably only complete five cases per year at that pace, that implies that I’m working an average of 20 hours per week. Unfortunately, that does come at me smoothly and evenly and there is a good deal of lumpiness in the workload. The best news is that I can do about two thirds of those hours in the evening while sitting in front of the TV (only half-listening and NOT watching any subtitled movies that require more visual attention). When I have only one case to work on at a time, this is all very civilized and does not cut into my personal life very much. But of course, as they say, it’s not a perfect world and invariably, I have more than one case on my plate at any given time. For instance, I am listening to a hearing on one case today and doing edits on the report for another case more or less simultaneously.
All of this means that my days of work juggling have not ended. Quite the contrary. I seem to be forever telling one client or another that I am not available on such and such a date due to a conflict. I do it with enough advance notice so that it usually is not problematic. I do the same thing when I have personal commitments. I think getting out ahead of conflicts on the schedule is the best way to avoid bad feelings by clients. It is also the best way to control personal stress. Nevertheless, every once in a while, all my best efforts fail me and I have a morning like yesterday where I have to juggle calls and requirements of two clients at the exact same time. It reminds me why I am glad to be mostly retired because I can feel that surge of adrenaline that comes from trying hard not to disappoint a good client and to be highly professional in handling my business. I don’t know that being an “expert” is the exact reason for feeling the need for all this extreme professionalism, but I suspect it has something to do with it. Expert just seems to coincide in my parlance with professional, whether it is supposed to or not.
At this moment I feel like a kid in summer school, trying my best to listen attentively to the hearing testimony I am supposed to observe and take notes about. I will be doing this again tomorrow for another eight hours and I will say that sitting and listening for 16 hours is harder than I remember it to be. It helps a little that the case I am attending is on the Central Timezone since that means we started earlier and are ending earlier. At this exact moment, I have about an hour to go and to stay in keeping with the summer school analogy, I have ants in my pants and am anxious to step outside and take a deep breath of the day and perhaps go water my garden. So I guess I would suggest that I am still busy juggling the needs of life and work and the work side is winning at the moment, but the life side will prevail in just another hour. Such is the art of juggling.