“As chief legal officer for Anheuser-Busch InBev, [Sabine] Chalmers estimates she spends 50 percent of her time circling the globe in order to execute her lawyerly responsibilities.” It aches just to read that (See my post of July 16, 2009: frequent travel demands stamina; and July 17, 2009: circuit-riding visits to remote offices.) in the ACC Docket, Vol. 27, Dec. 2009 after 64.
That amount of peripatetic travel means (a) your home life is a wreck, (b) your body endures extreme time zone disorientation and sleep disruption, (c) health problems from re-circulated air increase, and (d) the stress of air travel. Aside from plush hotels and indulgent meals, to fly is to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.
Travel obligations arise from deals, from a desire to meet with key counsel, and from the need to knit together the unraveled law offices of a multinational legal team. Satisfying those obligations exacts a toll.