This review of "The Lawyer's Guide to Balancing Life and Work," gives hope to the possibility that you can be happy in life and at work. Rediscover your personal goals and motivations for practicing law by forming a personal action plan for change. At last, you could find a work/life balance with success and happiness.

Stress and work pressures are part and parcel of the practice of law, and as a result, many lawyers struggle with balancing life and work. Most lawyers acknowledge the need to do a better job of balancing life and work. But at the same time, they say it is a real struggle to make the changes necessary to find an appropriate balance.

If you are looking for help in finding more balance in your life, The Lawyer's Guide to Balancing Life and Work is for you. In this book, George W. Kaufman offers practical examples and exercises to help lawyers reconcile their goals and expectations within the realities and demands of the legal profession.

But Kaufman, who was a successful and seasoned partner for forty years at a large U.S. law firm, goes beyond the usual review of steps you can take to reduce stress. Using personal anecdotes and stories, he takes the reader through a deep and personal journey of self-discovery.

The book is divided into three parts. The first part will help you trace your history from childhood to your current work. This is your story. We are all a product of our parents and our upbringing, often in ways we don't appreciate and recognize. This book will help you appreciate who, why and what makes you you, both at home and at work. This appreciation is the first step to making changes and finding more balance in your life.

The second part of the book walks you through your story and helps you evaluate what is good and bad about your work and habits. It will make you reflect on what you find is positive about the practice of law and how the practice of law affects you in negative ways. This part of the book will help you identify the sources of stress in your life and give you tools and strategies to cope with them.

The third part of the book brings it all together, and as Kaufman puts it, asks, "How the law fits in you, not how you fit in the law." The book is self-empowering in that it gives you a true understanding of what really makes you tick. You will figure out what your key personal values are and how to prioritize them. This understanding will, in turn, help you understand how and where you need to change, whether it means changing how you practice, shifting your practice to something different, or leaving the law altogether. The last chapter helps you build personal action plan for change.

Updated and revised from the first edition, this book will help new and long term lawyers achieve better work/life balance, as well as professional and personal satisfaction in their career. Included with this 280-page book is a CD-ROM, which contains the exercises found in the book. It is very reasonably priced at US$39.95.

For more information on this book and the other excellent ABA LPM Section publications go to http://www.lawpractice.org/publications.shtml.

© 2007 Lawyers' Professional Indemnity Company. This article originally appeared in LAWPRO Magazine "Aging Boomers: a wakeup call for lawyers," Winter 2007 (Vol. 6 no. 1). It is available at www.lawpro.ca/magazinearchives