Forget the Linen Closet: Balancing Family with Your Legal Career

Many women entering the legal profession from Generations X and Y are pioneers in their families: the first to go to college, the first to go to graduate school, the first to do both of these and raise a family.

While we may feel like we're the first to struggle with balancing a legal career and a family, it's helpful to look around and realize that scores of strong women have blazed the trail and have done the hardest work of mapping the territory so that we would have a well-worn path to make our journeys a little easier.  

Choose Your Heroes Wisely... 

My mother once told me about a commercial from the 80's that featured a beautiful woman who enters her house carrying a briefcase and wearing a tailored suit.  She proceeds to put down her briefcase, let down her hair, step into the kitchen and prepare an amazing gourmet meal for her family. The tagline was, "I can bring home the bacon and cook it, too."

Choosing a fantasy or having some vague, idealized version of yourself as your hero can spell trouble and stress, because you will constantly be falling short of your own expectations - or those that you feel others have placed on you.     

Look for a Real Hero...   

Avoiding the Mommy Track: How Does Having a Family Affect Your Career

Editor's Note: Ms. JD's annual conference, Avenues to Advancement, was held November 20-21, 2009, in Chicago. These are six tips from the Motherhood panel.

One of the biggest questions a young female lawyer often wants to know is how having a family will affect her career.  Our panelists spoke candidly about how having families has affected their careers and offered tips for being having both a busy career and a busy family.  Below are six pieces of advice the panelists offered for making sure that having a family does not alter the career path you want to take.

1.  Make yourself missable.

Yes, this sounds a bit corny, but the premise is very important.  If you make yourself an integral part of the team and establish a reputation for doing the best work, then when you have to be out of the office for a period of time, you’ll be missed, not replaced.  

2.  Stay connected

Before you have a child, do things to stay connected to your co-workers and your supervisors.  Get your name out there and when you’re away, keep in touch with your network.  If you already have children, use your network as much as you need so you don’t miss out on the good work and the best opportunities.

3.  Find a mentor who will advocate on your behalf

This is very important.  If early on you establish connections with mentors who have leadership positions in your company or workplace, you can be assured that your name will stay in the game.  So find someone who wants to help you out, prove to that person you’re worth helping and then keep in close contact to ensure your name is the one being said when important work is being handed out and promotions are being considered.

4.  Manage your workload.

Moving up in a company or organization is about quality of work, not quantity.  Consider the difference between document review and contributing to a brief.  Sure, you may not always get the best work, but make sure you are doing work that advances your career to balance the work that may be more monotonous.  And when you have less interesting work, think about ways you can make the job you’re doing a more integral part of the bigger picture.

5. Build a strong support system.

Whether it is family, coworkers or friends, remember that you may have to rely on your support system a lot as you build your career.  So find a group of people that can help ease your load, whether it is at work or at home.

6.  Realize that your life may not take the path you expected.

As in so many other panels, the panelists here stressed flexibility!  Life will not always go the way you want and you may find that the job you thought was perfect is actually keeping you from doing things you find more important, so stay flexible and be open to opportunities that allow you to balance your life in the way you think is best.

Moderator:  Ellen Ostrow, Founder, Lawyers Life Coach; Asilia Backus, Associate, Littler Mendelson; Lauren Hennessey Breit, Attorney Human Resources Director, Kirkland & Ellis; Diana Doyle, Partner, Latham & Watkins; Stacy Smith Walsh, Associate, Day Pitney

"Whatever You Do Don't Get Pregnant"

Over the years I've grown accustomed to unsolicited advice from professional women. It has been my experience that women feel empowered to tell one another what they should be doing with their lives to a much greater extent than men (at least with respect to younger women).

That set of assumptions came to a screeching halt last week when my young male physician told me, "Whatever you do, don't get pregnant." This was my first appointment, so we were having the obligatory pre-exam, get-to-know-you, chat. I'm 27, a lawyer, single but in a committed relationship, and enjoying my job as ED for Ms. JD. His reaction to all this: stay that way. "You're doing good work. And you might be able to continue with a child, but ... probably not." Whoa nelly.

After the jump: the article that convinced me I should share this experience with the Ms. JD community and my thoughts on the matter going forward.

Scaling Back Career for Baby

In a recent post on her New York Times' Motherlode blog, Lisa Belkin turned a question she received over to her readers. Here's a snippet of Anna's letter to the readers:

I used to secretly look down on stay-at-home moms. I’m not proud of being so judgmental, but opting out seemed like the easy road to me, an excuse to avoid the 9-to-5. If I asked someone I just met at a party what she did for a living and her answer was “I stay at home with the kids,” I’d mentally check out of the conversation. Surely I had nothing in common with this person....Then my husband and I decided to have a baby.

...I returned to work last week, and I already feel like I am missing so much at home. When I lock eyes with my daughter during a feeding or rock her to sleep in the glider, it feels right — like this is what I was born to do. I know it’s not logical or even true, but I feel like I am the only one in the world who can take care of her properly...

What is the right thing for me to do?

Almost 400 readers responded in the comments, including some attorneys. The dialogue is quite interesting with a wide range of advice, opinions, and thoughts for Anna--and for any of us who have faced returning to work, leaving a new baby at home.

Wow! Great insight into Choices and Consequences Written by a Mother/Professor

All I can say is "wow". There is an incredible post titled "Choices, Consequences, Constraints" up on Scatter from this weekend. Click here to read it in its entirety, which I strongly recommend if you are at all interested in some perspective on what it can be like to be a mom and an academic at the same time.

The blogger writes about some of her choices and related emotions in her struggle to be a professional woman and a parent in a situation where both she and her husband worked. The post is gripping in its honesty and at the same time piercing in its revelations about the unfair nature of the burdens placed on mothers by our society. She writes...

When In Doubt About Going Solo, Look for Life's Little Affirmations You Made the Right Decision

This post is a little more intimate because I am going to share a personal story. But then, again, going solo, being an entrepreneur is a very personal and intimate decision.