One of the big things about being a barrister is self employment and the 'flexibility' that at least in theory comes with it. Being self employed has two effects.
The first is that you work when, how and where you want, subject to the constraints of (a) getting everything that needs to be done done (more or less at least) (b) being available to your solicitors when they need to be in touch (c) the practicalities of having access to all the papers and/or textbooks etc. you need to get your work done and depending on your chambers and how archaic your clerks are (d) facetime with the clerks.
That is the upside. How flexible you want to make that will depend on your chambers resources, your own preference, and the sort of practice you have. Obviously court work happens when and where it happens - there's no flexibility there, so if you're in court 4 days a week there's only so much flex you can build in!
My approach on this end of flexibility is 'very flexible'. I rock up to chambers when I damn well feel like it (generally somewhere between 9.30 and 11, often doing some work at home before I set off, occasionally dropping an email at 10 saying I'll be on my home number/mobile/email that day). I leave chambers when I am done for the day, whether that is brain death at 4.30 or still humming with activity at 8. If I'm knocking on the door to 8pm and still have things I need done before tomorrow, my stuff gets bundled up, I hit the road, have a proper meal and then get back to it either that evening or at 5.30 the following morning.
As far as I can tell this approach has generated no complaints from either clerks or solicitors. Things go from inbox to outbox and no-one really cares how they got there. I am slowly training my clerks out of prefacing every call put through to my mobile with 'I'm sorry to disturb you but can you talk to so and so'. If I'm available on my mobile I'm available on my mobile, and I expect to be called if a call comes in. I suspect most of my solicitors aren't even aware they've been patched through to my home number.
But there is a dark side to self employment. That is the direct link between a new piece of work and a reward in the form of a nice shiny cheque attached to it. When you are self employed its really hard to say no to work. You have at the forefront of your mind the difference that one piece of work will make to your paycheck at the end of the year and unless it is patently impossible it is very tempting to say 'I'll do something else a little later' or 'I'll squeeze an extra hour out of myself tomorrow' or whatever. To any normal person £300 is a lot of money, and you can't help thinking of the treat you could give yourself with that one extra bit of work (even once Chambers and the tax man have taken their cut!). The result is the proverbial feast.
You have more work than hours in the day, everything is constantly urgent because if it isn't it gets bumped in favour of something that is, and your flexibility becomes... well... non-flexibility because you don't get everything that needs to be done done unless you work every hour god sends. That 'feast' will last as long as work flows, or, just as often, until you collapse under its weight and fry yourself. That is not healthy, and the hardest thing a barrister ever does is walk into the clerks room and say 'stop'. But that's what you should do - it's all well and good working like that for a week, or even two, but any more than that and you will start dropping balls, your clerks will start fielding chasers from solicitors constantly, you will piss people off (in and out of chambers). Clerks and (even worse) solicitors who don't know if they can trust you to do something when you say you will are bad for your practice and, in the long run, bad for your paycheck.
The flipside is famine. Nothing has ever caused me more anxiety than clearing my desk ahead of a two week holiday (for once completely clearing my desk!) and coming back to find NOTHING had come in in the meantime. I worked a couple of hours of admin, poked my head in the clerks room, said 'I'm off now, nothing to do' and went home. This went on for two weeks, with the odd little scrap coming in, being turned round within a day and the terrifying void of nothingness resuming. At this point your flexibility is enforced. You do your Christmas shopping two months early. You get your hair cut. You repaint your nails every day. And you worry. Is this a sign your career's fallen off a cliff (in my case this was a very real worry: I'd just ticked over into my 3rd year of practice, our new pupil had just become a fully fledged tenant and I thought for a horrible few weeks that I had completely failed to establish a practice before my unannounced, sudden and total weaning off unallocated work happened).
It passed. But those are the enforced peaks and troughs of self employment, and unless you are willing and flexible enough to take the benefit of the feast when it comes (without allowing it to overwhelm you) and patient and prepared enough to make it through the lean times - this just isn't the sport for you.
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