Mommy Law: Watch Those Corners!

“I arrived exactly on time and went inside.  Within minutes, a nanny came running in as another nanny went running out.  It was probably time for a shift change.  I entered the house and headed to the music room.  Three of the daughters came bounding in to show me their guinea pig, and I could hear the youngest daughter singing upstairs.  Since the parents didn't come to greet me, I knew they were still at work.  I began the piano lessons as usual.”

This was my life before law school.  I ran a piano studio.  I taught oodles of lessons each week, mostly from my home studio.  Occasionally I also played "ambassador of music" and travelled to my students’ homes to teach on their pianos.  In the process I came into contact with dozens of different families.  I watched, listened, and learned as they struggled with the same issues of balancing that I struggle with today.

With four girls, two ambitious parents, and guinea pigs, the family I just described was one of the busiest.  Some weeks when I arrived for our regular appointment the family wouldn't even be there.  Usually this meant that they had made other plans and forgotten to tell me.  This family was happy.  The children were well taken care of.  Both parents had ambitious careers.  In order for all of these things to happen, they were comfortable cutting corners on some of the details of home life.  And sometimes things fell through the cracks.

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...   

Balancing Acts

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

Balancing your career and your personal life is not always easy, particularly in the legal profession.  The panelists offered advice on how they have managed to balance their lives, as well as insight into the compromises they had to make and the pros and cons of making those compromises.  Below are seven strategies for finding balance and maintaining a healthy life: 

1. Visualize the different aspects of your life and the time you devote to each aspect. 
The panelists uniformly analogized the different needs of their lives, whether as a wheel, a pie or a seesaw.  Visualizing your life allows you to understand where you are spending time and where more time might need to be spent.

2. Prioritize. 
At some point we will all have to make compromises, so it is important to prioritize your life so that you do not compromise something important to you.  At some point we will all have to decide what in life we can let go and what we may never have a chance to do or see again.  Also, keep an upbeat attitude in spite of the sacrifices you’ve made – remember to focus on the positives that have come out of the sacrifice.  For instance choosing to live in an apartment in the city instead of a house in the suburb may be a compromise of space, but might allow you to see your family for longer periods of time.  

3. Delegate.  Remember that you do not have to do everything yourself!  Learning what others can do to help you is an important part of balancing your life.  Keep in mind what you feel is most important for you to do yourself and then assign as much as possible of the rest to others. This allows you both a chance to gain supervisory skills and to allow you more time to balance your own life.

4. Stay flexible. 
Life will not always happen just the way you want. Sometimes you will have to work late and sometimes your child will get sick. Maintain flexibility in your life.  Be patient and learn to rearrange your schedule as needed. 

5.  Build a strong support system.  Whether it is your life partner, your parents, your siblings, your friends or some combination of the above – build a strong support system and then learn how to lean on it when necessary.

6. Keep your personality in mind.  All of us do not function in the same way.  Some people are disciplined, doing a little of everything throughout the day.  Others work in bursts of energy, doing a lot in a small amount of time.  Remember to stay true to who you are and find your natural rhythm in order to maximize your efficiency and better balance your day-to-day life.

7.  Make time for yourself. 
Some people find work or family to be so stimulating or relaxing that they do not need any additional time for themselves. This is the exception, not the rule.  For everyone else, make sure that you find time for yourself to do the little things you find fun.  Some people knit, some people read, some people go to the shooting range – whatever
it is that lets you unwind, make time for it! 

Moderator: Deborah Epstein Henry, Founder and President, Flex-Time Lawyers; Cheryl Blackwell Bryson, Partner, Duane Morris; Shauna Boliker, Chief of Criminal Prosecutions Bureau, Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office; Karin DeMasi, Partner, Cravath, Swaine & Moore; Marcia Owens, Partner, Wildman Harrold; Stephanie Scharf, Partner, Schoeman Updike Kaufman & Scharf.

Successful Trial Practice of a Working Mother: Reflections from Virginia Grady

Ed. note: Virginia Grady is a 1983 graduate of Syracuse University College of Law. She is an Assistant Federal Public Defender in the District of Colorado and a Fellow in The American College of Trial Lawyers.

Jack Welch, CEO of General Electric, recently warned that women who leave their professions to stay at home and raise their children will be cut out of their professional competition. My first reaction was to ask what the hell Jack Welch knows about women who lead their professions. Why would he know much at all? The sad truth is that many professions are still not led by women.  Mr. Welch’s observations generated something of a bitter public debate, not because of what he said, but because of who he is – a working man commenting on working women. So factor Mr. Welch out of the discussion; the issue does not go away.  When I look around the legal profession – particularly among trial lawyers, women are significantly outnumbered by men.

There is nothing new about this phenomenon. I went to law school with some extremely driven, brilliant women who shamed me into sticking it out. They graduated with honors, while I was just grateful to be in the same diploma line. Many, and I mean many, then barely put their degrees to use. For me, a J.D. meant that, for the first time, I was well on my way to becoming financially independent, professionally respected and in control of my life. There was no way I was going to risk closing those doors.  Looking back, I now know that if I had chosen to put my legal career aside to stay at home with my two children, successful re-entry would have been damn near impossible.  This is a fact which has nothing to do with women; it is the nature of the profession.

After the jump: how Virginia stayed "in the clutch," became a better parent because of it, as well as her tips for those trying to do the same (including the advantage to practicing while pregnant!).

Working Mother Magazine and Flex-Time Lawyers Rates the Top 50 Law Firms for Women

Working Mother Magazine and Flex-Time Lawyers recently released its list of the top 50 law firms for women.  The firms "were evaluated on their workforce profile, family-friendly benefits and policies, flexibility, leadership, compensation, and their advancement and retention of women, among other factors."

The firms that made the top 50 have "more lawyers working reduced hours (8 percent versus 5 percent nationwide) and also employ more female equity partners, who share in their firm’s profits (20 percent versus 16 percent nationwide)."  To view the complete list of the Top 50 firms, click here.

Work/Life Balance Seminar Sponsored by Shipman & Goodwin, Featuring U.S. District Judge Vanessa Bryant

On Monday, March 30, 2009, from 6-8pm, Shipman & Goodwin, LLP will host “An Evening With The Honorable Vanessa L. Bryant, U.S. District Judge, District of Connecticut and Tracy L. Rich, Executive Vice-President, General Counsel & Secretary, The Phoenix Companies, Inc.” The evening's discussion will focus on the couple's work/life balance and their respective successes in the legal field. For Mr. Rich's biography, click here. For Judge Bryant's biography, click here. More information will be posted here once it gets closer to the date of the event.

Yale Law Women Sponsors "Opt Out" or Pushed Out? Conference

Yale Law Women will be sponsoring a two-day conference entitled "Opt out" or Pushed Out? on March 27-28, 2009. The conference will begin at 3:30pm on March 27th and end at 4:30pm on March 28th.

“Opt Out” or Pushed Out will address the controversial phenomenon described by some as “opting out," the supposed trend of professional women leaving the workplace to devote their energies to family care-taking, full time.

Work-Life Advocate Joins First Lady's Office

Michelle Obama recently announced that Jocelyn Frye will serve as Director of Policy and Projects for the First Lady. According to The Juggle, the selection of Ms. Frye suggests that Michelle Obama is "preparing to take an activist stance on such policy issues as family leave and flexible scheduling."

As general counsel for the National Partnership for Women and Families, Ms. Frye has been one of Washington’s most visible advocates of expanding family leave and ending pregnancy discrimination. She’ll bring 15 years of policy-making experience to bear behind Ms. Obama’s stated plans to emphasize work-life issues and aid for military families. Ms. Frye has a reputation as a consensus builder, a front-lines opponent of Bush-era efforts to curtail family leave, and a patient, articulate spokesperson for low- and middle-income families.

Sloan Work & Family Top Ten

The Sloan Work and Family Research Network listed their ten most widely read blog posts from 2008, many of which may be of interest to women lawyers. Here's the list:

1.) Action Plan for Working Parents Caring for Children with Disabilities
2.) Work-Family Issues for Employed Parents of Children with Disabilities
3.) A Legal Pitfall to Telecommuting
4.) Work-Life Flexibility and the Recession: Core Business Strategy
5.) Small Businesses and the Use of Flexible Work Schedules
6.) Top Ten Trends in Work-Life and Work-Family
7.) How Workplace Characteristics Impact Employee Wellbeing
8.) The Special Case of Military Spouses Returning to Work After a Career Break
9.) Technology: Beneficial or Detrimental to Working Fathers?
10.) Can Flexibility Still Work in the Current Economy?

If you haven't already seen it, they also have an encyclopedia piece by Joan C. Williams, Legal Professions and Job Demands: Implications for Work/Life Balance.

Is the Profession in a Crisis? And, Can Better Work/Life Balance Ride in on the Coattails of Reform?

There is an interesting article titled, Will a bad economy force more changes in the profession? by Diane Curtis on the front page of the California Bar Journal dated January 2009.  It opens with:

While some people hope the flagging economy will get law firms to rethink how they bill clients, others are warning that associates had better churn up the billable hours or face the prospect of losing their jobs.

The article explore many pressures that law firms are feeling today:

• Clients that don't want to pay associates at partner-level billing rates.  (The article says that large law firm prices jumped almost 75% over the last ten years.