By: Alisse Houweling
The legal profession's demanding nature requires a careful balance between delivering exceptional client service and maintaining personal well-being. This blog series highlights innovative strategies adopted by lawyers and law firms to create environments that sustain high performance while prioritizing recovery.
In this installment, we feature Erin Durant, the founder of Durant Barristers, who reimagined traditional law firm practices to create an environment where she could confidently deliver exceptional client service sustainably while maintaining her well-being. After stepping away from BigLaw and declining offers from other firms, she founded her own law firm with a strategic business plan designed to promote sustainable high performance. This deliberate approach enabled her to prioritize her well-being while ensuring she consistently delivered her best to clients over the long term. This post delves into her journey and reveals some of the surprising insights she gained along the way.
Building a Law Firm That Prioritizes Exceptional Client Service and Recovery
For Erin, her vision of a sustainable law firm centered on blending exceptional client service with consistent opportunities for recovery—both of which she viewed as essential for long-term excellence. She recognized that sustaining high performance in law requires intentional recovery, as lawyers can only bring their best to work when they have adequate time to recharge. Her personal experiences with burnout and mental health challenges (1) highlighted the critical need for balance in such a demanding profession.
Practically, this meant reducing her hours compared to her time as a BigLaw partner. She accomplished this by strategically managing costs, business hours, and client relationships while aligning her approach with a broader and more holistic definition of success. For her, success is not just about financial returns, but about earning comfortably, enjoying flexibility, and working in alignment with her values.
Managing Costs Strategically
Creating the financial ability to reduce her hours required a careful and strategic approach to managing costs. To meet her dual goals of client service excellence and personal well-being, every expense had to justify its value.
This led her to limit investments to essentials that supported a thriving practice:
Deliberate Investments: She focused on tools and services such as laptops, a filing and docketing system, bank accounts, insurance, professional memberships, and a freelance bookkeeper.
Building a Supportive Team: Erin prioritized hiring a law clerk and an associate—resources she found difficult to access in BigLaw—to delegate effectively and focus on high-value work.
At the same time, she eliminated non-essential expenses and services common in traditional practices:
Avoiding Unnecessary Overhead: Instead of costly office space, she opted for flexible and affordable alternatives.
Cutting Non-Essential Services: Erin chose not to invest in non-critical offerings like marketing, social media management, or procurement support, which she had previously helped fund in BigLaw.
By keeping her startup costs under $10,000 and monthly overhead (excluding salaries) at around $5,000, Erin created a practice that aligned with her vision. This financial strategy not only allowed her to prioritize her well-being but also ensured she could consistently deliver exceptional client service over the long term.
Managing Business Hours and Clients Strategically
With costs under control, Erin is able to bill fewer hours and ensure regular opportunities for recovery. To achieve this, she implemented standard business hours and clearly communicated boundaries to colleagues and clients.
Her schedule—currently 7 a.m. to 3 p.m.—includes strict guidelines prohibiting emails outside these hours except during trials, hearings, or genuine emergencies. While many lawyers may think such a schedule is unrealistic, fearing dissatisfied clients or missed opportunities, Erin demonstrates otherwise.
In her Ontario litigation practice, she finds that most matters—outside of trials and emergencies—can wait a day or two without compromising quality or outcomes.
To uphold these principles, Erin’s firm employs the following strategies:
Setting Boundaries with Clients: During initial consultations, Erin clearly communicates her firm’s hours, preferred contact methods, and emergency protocols to new clients. For larger institutional clients, who typically operate within standard business hours, this alignment of expectations was fairly straightforward. This transparency not only sets the tone for the relationship but also fosters mutual respect and professionalism. She has yet to meet a client who has refused to accept these working arrangements. In fact, she finds that many clients enjoy not receiving emails and phone calls from their lawyer in the evenings and on weekends as their personal time is being respected by the firm.
Collaborating with External Lawyers: For large or urgent mandates, Erin partners with trusted external lawyers from her "friends of the firm" network, ensuring clients receive specialized expertise while maintaining flexibility.
Referring Unsustainable Mandates: Erin refers resource-heavy projects, like 24/7 mandates, to firms better equipped to handle them, staying true to her commitment to sustainability.
Creating Revenue Outside Billable Hours: Erin’s team collaborates on financial goals and maintains a diverse portfolio of client work, including revenue-generating products and services not tied to billable hours like educational videos, webinars, books and other legal resources. To promote the development of these tools, she provides financial incentives to her team members so that they can assist in the creation and marketing of new initiatives.
By rethinking costs, business hours, and client strategies, Erin demonstrates that sustainable high performance not only promotes well-being but also allows lawyers to deliver better client service. Lawyers who are well-rested and supported bring their best to work, ensuring long-term success for both the firm and its clients.
Bolder Step: Carving Out Space for a Sabbatical
Erin took another bold step in her pursuit of sustainable high performance by carving out space for a four-month sabbatical. This idea was inspired by her associate, a former member of the Canadian Armed Forces, who emphasized the importance of sabbaticals in the Canadian Armed Forces and other workplaces for decompressing after high-stress roles.
While lawyers may not face the life-and-death situations of physical combat, they engage in other forms of high-stress conflict that can require substantial decompression. As a litigator and investigator of high profile matters, Erin often supports clients and other individuals through conflicts representing some of the most stressful periods of their lives. This dynamic takes a significant emotional toll, compounded by the intensity of work required to deliver exceptional client service during trials, hearings, and emergencies.
Initially apprehensive, Erin found that clients were overwhelmingly supportive of her sabbatical plans. By thoughtfully communicating her intentions and ensuring seamless coverage from her associates and “friends of the firm” during her absence, she built trust and confidence with her clients while allowing herself a much-needed period of recovery.
Insights from a Reimagined Legal Practice for Sustainable High Performance
Erin’s commitment to sustainable high performance has revealed valuable insights for others striving to create workplaces that embrace this philosophy:
Growing Demand for Well-Being-Focused Workplaces: Erin’s firm has received significant interest from Bay Street lawyers eager to join her team, highlighting the rising demand for workplaces that prioritize well-being. When her firm last hired a lawyer, she received over 150 applications from candidates - many from Canada’s largest law firms and established litigation boutiques.
Clients Value Work-Life Balance: Clients appreciate that Erin’s firm adheres to a set schedule and avoids weekend work. By communicating with clients and completing work during work hours, the firm respects the personal time of clients. This alignment has strengthened relationships and demonstrated that balanced schedules benefit both clients and legal professionals.
Referrals Build Stronger Networks: Referring work outside her firm has cultivated a robust referral network, meeting client needs while fostering collaborations that lead to mutual growth.
Mental Health Advocacy Deepens Client Connections: Erin’s openness about her mental health journey has resonated deeply with clients, encouraging trust and mutual understanding while attracting new business.
Clients Support Sabbaticals: When Erin shared her sabbatical plans, clients overwhelmingly supported her plan highlighting that sabbaticals are possible and supported by strong client relationships.
Conclusion
The legal profession is inherently demanding, with significant stress that often takes a toll on mental health. To address this, law firms must do more to prioritize lawyer recovery, recognizing that their greatest asset is their people. By fostering a culture that values both exceptional client service and professional well-being, firms can create meaningful, lasting change—not only for the legal profession but also for the individuals who sustain it.
For Erin, building her own firm was the most effective way to harmonize client service excellence with lawyer well-being. However, existing firms can still make meaningful changes. By rethinking business plans, strategies, policies, and practices, firms can create more opportunities for lawyer recovery—an essential foundation for sustainable high performance. As Erin’s experience demonstrates, cultural shifts like these not only offer a competitive edge in attracting and retaining top talent, but also set the stage for delivering exceptional client service over the long term.
Interested in reading more blog posts in this series? Check out the links below.
Know someone reimagining their legal practice or firm for sustainable performance? We’d love to hear from you—please reach out to [email protected].
(1) Durant, E.H. (2022). It Burned Me All Down.
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