And don’t forget the personal game of Twister® going on in the background! Those circles include:

• The self-care circle: sleeping, exercising, eating, grooming, and so on;
• The relationship circle(s): connecting with a spouse or significant other, dating, hanging out
• with friends, etc.;
• The commuting circle: a twice-daily necessity for most of us;
• The family circle: especially pressing for parents or children of aging parents;
• The relaxation circle: vacations, reading, playing sports, or whatever refuels your batteries;
• The housework circle: laundry, housecleaning, etc.;
• The financial circle: paying bills, dealing with investments and taxes, researching and making financial decisions;
• The spiritual circle: attending a house of worship, spending time in nature, inspirational reading, etc.; and
• Many, many other circles depending on your interests.

Now, think about playing Twister®: if you’re in reasonably good shape, in a reasonably good mood, reasonably flexible, and playing with people you like and trust, it’s a lot of fun! Sure, it’s physically challenging, and it can even be mentally challenging to figure out how to balance while moving from one circle to another. Under the right circumstances, it’s a stretch (in the most literal sense) and it’s a good way to pass some time.

But imagine trying to play if you’re in a bad mood or feeling pessimistic. Imagine what it would be like to resent the game or the person giving directions everytime you had to stretch out to another circle. Or, worst of all, what if you didn’t even want to be playing Twister® and got yourself into the game just because you’d attended the party and everybody expected you not only to play, but also to be great at playing and to enjoy it? And if, to add in some serious pressure, people were counting on you to manage every stretch and to maintain every pose flawlessly, with no complaint? Yech. Recipe for disaster.

I see two ways in which the practice-as-Twister® presents serious challenges to lawyers. First, in the preparation for the game: wanting to play, being flexible, knowing the rules and the techniques, having the physical and mental strength to maintain some pretty uncomfortable poses for a time, and choosing to play with trustworthy and talented people. And second, being forgiving enough to recognize that sometimes, it just isn’t possible to touch all of the circles required at the same time and checking to see how important each circle really is. The preparation part is critical, but let’s focus on the second part for today.

Lawyers often feel they’re going to collapse as a result of trying to put enough time in each of the Twister® circles. The balance becomes too difficult to maintain, because unlike a game, the practice of law deals with serious requirements: it isn’t just a red circle, it’s your client’s business (or life), or your own business, or the health/happiness/wellbeing of your family or yourself. The stakes are high, and most of us intend to show up ideally to meet every demand. And sometimes, that just isn’t possible.

Do you ever feel as if your mind and body are rarely occupying the same circle—worrying about home when you’re at work and worrying about work when you’re at home? Do you wish that you had more time for important activities like planning your future, or more time for "selfish" pursuits like working out? How often do you say out loud, or even just think to yourself, "Well, I’ll get around to it one of these days," even though you know it never happens?

Too many lawyers feel trapped in their game, unable to satisfy all of the demands they face and yet unwilling to make a change. Maybe you’ve been there, or maybe you’ve tried the common tactics—work harder at "time management" (but the cleverest systems fall by the wayside, crushed by the burden you’re shouldering), contract for the help you need (but no PR agent will make new business contacts like you can, and does your spouse really want a substitute partner?), or just cope with "reality" and recognize that life isn’t perfect (perhaps anesthetizing the voice that reminds you of all you want out of life with another glass of wine or a brownie, even though you know the voice won’t go away—and yet you fear that it might) . . . .

It’s time for real change.

So push the "pause" button for a minute, and consider these questions.

What do you want? Just for a minute, release the expectations that your partner, your parents, your children, your colleagues, your friends, or even society at large may have of you, and ask what you really want from your life. What values do you want to express in the way you live? If family is your top priority, how will you choose to honor that? If work is at the head of your list, how does that square with your behavior?

What would your life look like if you honored your priorities? What changes would you have to make? And how would you go about making them?

When would you make the changes?

Whether you engage in career/life satisfaction reflection on your own or you work with a coach or some other assistance, these are the kinds of questions you’ll examine. You’ll find your own answers—and they won’t be like anyone else’s. The solutions to the traps in which lawyers can find themselves are as varied as the attorneys in practice. With guided exploration, strategic approaches to overcoming the obstacles that face you, careful attention to designing an environment that support you in making the changes that you desire, and being held accountable for what you say you want to do, your success is almost guaranteed. And you’ll find your own way to play Twister® . . . and find satisfaction in it.

Lawyers Weekly now publishes The Internet Lawyer. ALM publishes several glossy periodicals with computer/internet biases, including Law Technology News. Over 136,000 listings appear on Google under the search tag "internet lawyer" as those claiming the specialty beef up their meta-tags.

None of this is especially amusing, except the irony that for most of us over age 50 writing an e-mail, sending docs online to the Bankruptcy Court (with great reticence) or checking out an old acquaintance on classmates.com just about exhausts our techbilities.

But just as a patent lawyer might specialize in chemical engineering questions, they now might specialize in process algorithms: a bread-and-butter aspect of computer and internet law. Detectives who chased that stolen purse are now chasing down stolen credit card numbers. Alas, even journalists who had a week until their next issue are scooping themselves daily in weblogs and on their affiliated media sites, lest they be scooped by others.

One of my mentors, an ex-COBOL programmer—who, seeing how his mentee turned out, requests continued anonymity—summed up the revolution in internet usage this way:

The internet is not the information superhighway, it is the information McDonald's. The value of what it offers is based on its accessibility rather than its quality. The result is a population of squinty-eyed, info-fat, knowledge anorexics who measure truth by Google ranking.

But he’s right: accessibility coupled with the pace of information disclosure, the relative anonymity of its source—not always accompanied by a substantially lesser degree of confidence in it—and the judgment-proof nature of so many of the miscreants makes for significant obstacles in obtaining justice for the defamed, the ripped-off. A legal system used to horse-drawn communication speed has difficulty responding quickly to search, appropriate, cut, paste and spam.

Substantive law aside, it is dealing with these challenges of speed, anonymity and proofs where the online lawyers will, or won’t, carve out a real niche.