Rest as Resistance: How Solo Practice Taught Me to Recenter Myself

When I first opened my own practice, I didn’t fully know what I was stepping into. I had ideas about how I wanted to show up and the practices I believed were important, but it wasn’t until I was actually in it that I realized just how much everything depended on me.

My mind, my energy, my ability to stay grounded—those weren’t just personal things anymore. They were the foundation of my practice itself.

And what I learned, through intention and trial and error, was that rest isn’t optional. It is essential. It is part of the work. Especially in these uncertain times, choosing to rest is one of the most radical things we can do.

Protecting Your Well-Being

The culture of lawyering doesn’t always leave space for that kind of realization. From the moment we enter the profession, we’re trained to measure our worth by what we produce, the number of hours billed, filings submitted, and how far we’re willing to push ourselves past the breaking point. Even in workplaces that offer support and mentorship, the broader expectation often remains the same: go harder, do more, and prove you belong by sacrificing yourself.

But solo practice offers something different. You move from being part of someone else’s structure to creating your own. You are no longer one piece of the puzzle; you are the whole puzzle. And when you realize you are the system, you begin to understand that protecting your well-being isn’t self-indulgent. It’s critical.

For lawyers like me—lawyers who are in the trenches, working on the ground with real people, navigating injustice and trauma and systemic failures every day—that understanding hits even harder.

This work is emotional. And it should be. If you’re a lawyer who truly cares about the cases and the clients, it becomes impossible to separate the strategy from the humanity. This doesn’t mean we carry it all on our backs but means instead that we hold space for it, and that space takes something out of us.

A New Approach to Lawyering

I recently completed a month-long homicide trial. The stakes were high, and the emotions in the courtroom were higher. A few years ago, I would’ve approached that kind of case with frantic energy, sleepless nights, skipped meals, and survival-mode tunnel vision. I thought that’s what it meant to be a trial lawyer.

But this time, I did it differently.

The day before trial, I visited my client in the morning, packed my trial bag for the next day, and then went to yoga. I sat in the sauna. I took time to breathe. I made myself a real dinner. I played with my dog, and I gave myself space to just be.

And throughout the trial, I intentionally kept returning to that sense of stillness. I box-breathed in courthouse hallways. I went to Zumba after court to move through the energy I had absorbed during the day. I gave myself permission to care for my nervous system just as much as I cared about my client and this case.

Rest became part of the trial strategy.

We’re living in a moment where so much feels fragile. Many of the things we assumed would be there, such as loan forgiveness, financial stability, and even access to resources and basic systems of support, now feel conditional and precarious.

There is a collective unease, especially for lawyers, and particularly for those of us doing frontline work. And when there’s no guaranteed financial, institutional, or emotional safety net, we have to become our own.

That means rest isn’t just a break. It’s a boundary. It’s a form of resistance in a profession that too often rewards burnout and punishes balance. It’s a refusal to sacrifice ourselves in order to be seen as worthy.

It’s also a form of sustainability. We talk about long careers, about building lasting legacies, but we rarely talk about what’s required to survive the work. Especially when you experience secondhand trauma as a part of your daily life and your cases carry deep emotional weight or when you are advocating within communities that are constantly under attack, you learn that the only way forward is through care. That care starts with you.

Solo practice gives us a chance to create a culture that reflects our values. For me, that culture includes emotional intelligence, movement, breath, breaks, and the recognition that my body and mind are part of the team.

Clients don’t just need a lawyer who’s skilled; they need one who’s present. Presence requires capacity and capacity requires rest.

I’m not suggesting we give less to the work. I’m saying that if we want to give our best, we need to stop treating ourselves like machines. We need to stop seeing exhaustion as a badge of honor. We need to start protecting ourselves so we can keep showing up, day after day, with our full selves intact.

Rest is not a reward for surviving the grind. It’s the refusal to participate in the grind in the first place.

It’s the strategy that lets us do this work with clarity. It’s the boundary that allows us to care deeply without being swallowed by it. It’s the investment that fuels longevity.

Rest for Sole Practitioners

So, if you’re in solo practice or thinking about it, let this be your reminder that part of your job is protecting your ability to do the job. The motions, the court appearances, the client meetings, they all matter. But none of it happens without you.

You are the business. You are the brand. You are the practice.

And when you build rest into your foundation, you don’t just preserve yourself. You strengthen your voice. You sharpen your vision. You make it possible to keep showing up—again and again—for the clients, causes, and communities that matter most.