Juggling It All: Exploring Lawyers' Work, Home, and Family Demands and Coping Strategies. Report of Stage One Findings. LSAC Research Report Series.

Lawyers' work, home, and family demands and their strategies for coping with those demands were examined through telephone interviews with practicing lawyers from Calgary, Alberta. Of the 121 lawyers interviewed, 56 were men and 44 were women who worked full-time and 21 were women who worked part-time. Sixty-seven percent of them were associates or partners at law firms. While the lawyers worked an average of 50 hours per week, more than half regularly worked evenings and weekends. Most considered their long hours necessary to meet client demands, professional expectations, and/or billing requirements, and many expressed considerable dissatisfaction with their job's time demands. Those time demands most often interfered with the lawyers' family time. The difficulty women face in combining a successful career and a balanced family life proved a general concern. Their division of household tasks appeared fairly traditional, with the wives tending to do more "female tasks" and husbands tending to do more "male tasks." About half those interviewed indicated that most of their stress was due primarily to work. Coping strategies cited by the lawyers included turning to their spouse and family for support, attempting to keep their work in perspective, and trying to place limits on their work time. The interview protocol is appended. (Contains 38 references.) (MN)