A client driven business doesn't have to give in to every demand any more than a product driven one does.
David's contention is ultimately that work-life boundaries can result in better work than simply being on call at all times, because people are more productive when work is not in conflict with their significant personal relationships.
If David is right, then client driven businesses that maintain robust boundaries will perform better than those that do not.
If 24/7 responsiveness is the highest priority for your clients, the implication is that they themselves do not understand the value of work-life balance and that by going along with their demands, you are acting as a facilitator of a dysfunctional behavior that is also bad for you and your business.
It depends on the firm. Some legal and accounting firms offer 24/7 responsiveness to clients, and charge accordingly. Other firms provide work-life balance to their employees and make it clear to their customers that they won't be available after Xpm, or before Yam, and correspondingly charge significantly less for their services.
Moreover, the more-responsive firms compensate for the worsened work-life balance by paying their employees more. If employees would rather have work-life balance, they can always jump to a more balanced firm for a smaller salary.
It's the difference between optimizing for latency and optimizing for throughput. Clients tend to want to optimize for latency rather than throughput. To them, a "good enough" analysis by tomorrow morning (before some important meeting) is often much more valuable than a perfect analysis tomorrow afternoon (after the meeting is over).
This is true, but it sounds as though this is just because your clients are facilitating this kind of behavior in their clients by not scheduling the meeting for a time when the material can be prepared without people working in their family time.
Presumably they do this because they expect to be able to lean on you when the work needs to be done.
David's contention is ultimately that work-life boundaries can result in better work than simply being on call at all times, because people are more productive when work is not in conflict with their significant personal relationships.
If David is right, then client driven businesses that maintain robust boundaries will perform better than those that do not.
If 24/7 responsiveness is the highest priority for your clients, the implication is that they themselves do not understand the value of work-life balance and that by going along with their demands, you are acting as a facilitator of a dysfunctional behavior that is also bad for you and your business.