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If you bill by the hour, taking a full lunch at work is indulgent, in that it's at the expense of the other parts of your life, which I'll assume you enjoy more.
Yes! I have an almost 1 year old so at this stage of my life I rather eat lunch while working instead of staying another hour. I rush to get home to be with him. (I really dislike lunch with coworkers for this reason as well — maybe when he’s older I will more lax with my lunch but right now I want to be present with him as much as I can.)
I either skip lunch or eat at my desk, but that’s because I go 💯 so I can GTFO as early as possible.
Stay in touch with your law firm friends and associates who leave by having lunch with them. They will become your clients eventually. And it will give you a break from the grind. And yes, that means going into the office sometimes and getting your friends to do the same.
If you have the opportunity to eat in the firms lunchroom with partners, it’s a good opportunity to find out what’s going on
I go through an annual phase where I tell myself I am going to take a real break. It lasts about a week, usually coinciding with a day where I have 1 billable hour by noon because my least favorite partner keeps dumping nonbillable tasks on me and I would like to log off by 9 PM. Then I am eating with one hand and working with the other.
I’ve never seen an attorney in any firm I’ve worked at do anything different for a normal lunch. Where else would you eat?
Firm cafeteria
I sometimes walk to the church next door for 12:10 Mass. Or go downstairs to the office gym for an hour at lunch. But I’m in house and don’t bill. And as long as I don’t have meetings or deadlines, my day ends at 4.
My last firm, most of the attorneys, all left for lunch, mostly together. I hate being interrupted and leaving my desk during the day, so I always have just work all day unless there were firm forced luncheons. I'm still the same way working remotely, I don't go off and take breaks during the day.