7 Truths that Every Working Woman Should Know Before Having a Child -- Part VII

Finally, the 7th and final installation of the series that I started many months ago and haven't been able to bring myself to finish.  Way back in November, I promised to tell you the truth about the seven things that I wished I would have known about being a mom -- information that I thought would be helpful to professional women that are not yet moms but are contemplating starting a family.

I hope that my series was information and helpful, even if it was personal and only one girl's opinion and advice.  (I've put links to the other six posts below.)

The thing that I promised to write about last was: "You'll be the Same Person But Now You'll Just Have a Kid".  I've been putting this off because, well, the myth is self-explanatory.  However, with a lot of thought I think I have nailed the reason why this is a myth -- besides the obvious reaons like how could you possibly be the same person if you are only getting sleep in 1.5 hour increments or painting you two-year old daughter's toe nails with peel-off polish instead of getting a pedicure of your own in your free 30 minutes on a Saturday afternoon!  The truth to counter this myth is that the center of your life changes when you have a child...

Are Women Judges The Meanest?

The Las Vegas Review Journal's "Judging the Judges" survey asked lawyers who practiced before Clark County District Court judges to rate the judges' courtesy. Of the attorneys surveyed, two-thirds were male. The results ranked female judges as significantly less courteous than their male counterparts with even the highest-ranked female judge still scoring lower in courtesy than "all but two of the male judges." According to "experts who study judges and the courts, attorneys and litigants favor a judge similar to them, whether in age, ethnic makeup or gender," which could explain why the primarily male survey base would be biased to find male judges more courteous than female ones. Legal Blog Watch posits that the dispairty "may just be that when a male judge acts sternly or impatiently, he's merely regarded as firm or strict, whereas a woman who conducts herself the same way is labeled as strident or obnoxious."

When I read these results, I couldn't help but wonder if women judges just have to work harder to get the respect that should come with their position automatically (but doesn't, unfortunately), and if the lawyers who may have needed "encouragment" by said female judges to give the judges the respect they deserve might be bitter in filling out the survey. I've had the experience of older male attorneys not taking me seriously on the job, and I've sometimes felt forced into taking a hard stance to stop what seems to me as a conversation where I'm being belittled or even verbally abused. I've had (more than once) a male attorney then accuse me of being the rude one, and each time, I've been very taken aback since, in my view, I was only responding to the caller yelling at me first (and in each case, I never raised my voice--it's funny how women just speaking firmly in a normal tone can be viewed as MORE rude than a man actually using a raised voice).

I've also been in courtrooms where male attorneys push around relatively new female judges (i.e. talking over them, arguing back with contemptuous "with all due respect, Your Honor" lines thrown in to offset their rudeness, and basically just refusing to accept the female judges' rulings as final). I can't claim to have watched an entire genesis of a new female judge turning hard to demand the respect she's not given automatically, but it doesn't take much of a stretch to imagine it happening. I also think women walk a very fine line in being taken seriously without being "bitchy" and that only certain personality types (the lucky snarky and funny ones among us) can do it successfully without resulting to firm behavior that will inevitably be interpreted as rude. In some ways, this "courtesy" measure by which these judges were judged could easily turn into a proxy for "bitchiness," and there are lots of reasons a man might view a woman in a position of power (like a judge) as "discourteous" regardless of how objectively courteous that judge is. Honestly, if I were the LV Review Journal, I would be wondering how to eliminate the bias from my survey since I think it's completely ridiculous to think that results so skewed are in any way a real measure of whether men or women judges are more courteous.

Explore Your Options, Be Happy

I love my job. I feel extremely lucky to be able to do the kind of work that I do, and to be able to say (with complete honesty) that I wake up every day excited to get to work. Although I am still new at it, my colleague tells me that it continues to never get old, even after a decade or so. I am primarily an immigration attorney with the Center for the Advancement of Human Rights. I get to represent unaccompanied immigrant children, victims of human trafficking, asylum seekers, victims of violent crime, and abandoned, abused, neglected and battered immigrant women and children. The direct service portion of my job is the most rewarding, as well as the most challenging in every way possible.

My job is a hybrid one and involves several other aspects in addition to direct representation. When not fighting with the Department of Homeland Security, I do state and national legislative advocacy, academic writing, education (I teach a course at the law school on Asylum and refugee law and supervise law students who do their mandatory pro bono hours by working at the Center), outreach, and training (i.e. we are currently training our state's department of children and families on how to best identify and care for child victims of human trafficking).

The best advice I could give someone still in law school is to really explore your options. Take classes or participate in clinics or externships outside your comfort zone. However, if you REALLY know what you want to do, then go for it with everything you have. Do not take a job at a big law firm because it is being offered to you if you have already worked there over a summer and know you don't want to spend your days there. Life is short, but it feels like an eternity if you are unhappy with your job.

Wendi Adelson serves as program director for the Human Rights and Immigration Law Project at the Center for the Advancement of Human Rights at Florida State University. Prior to joining FSU's faculty in 2007, Ms. Adelson was a Clinical Fellow and lecturer in clinical education and immigration and a staff attorney in the University of Miami School of Law's Children and Youth Law and Community Health Rights Education Clinics. Her work has focused on the intersections between immigration law and child advocacy. She has written an exhaustive manual that instructs lawyers, judges and immigration and child advocates on the Special Immigration Juvenile Visa.

Ms. Adelson is a Harry S. Truman Scholar, chosen for her dedication to work in public service. She is a former Junior Fellow, focusing on migration policy, at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Adelson holds an MPhil in International Relations from the University of Cambridge, where she was a Gates Cambridge Scholar. Ms. Adelson is a lawyer and member in good standing of The Florida Bar. She received her undergraduate degree from Brandeis University , where she received a Gilbert scholarship, graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa and received her law degree, cum laude, from University of Miami School of Law where she was a Reid Scholar.

Clippings: Chief Judge Kaye Sues New York for a raise

For over 10 years New York State's judges have gone without a raise. Since their salaries are not adjusted for inflation, they've actually experienced a devaluation in their compensation. Today, Court of Appeals Chief Judge Judith Kaye formally announced her plan to sue the state to change that. Judge Kaye and her counsel, Bernard Nussbaum, spoke to Ms. JD and NWLSO's members at the recent Student Leadership Summit. In the context of a business culture in which women in particular fail to fight for compensation commensurate with their experience (check out Women Don't Ask and Ask for It for advice on how to ensure you are not undercompensated for failing to negotiate a raise) I say bravo to Judge Kaye and Mr. Nussbaum!!

Demanding Balance by Rejecting the Blackberry?

For 3 years the New York State Bar Association's Special Committee on Balanced Lives in the Law has been holding forums and collecting data on their members' work lives, expectations, and quality of life - essentially their ability to be anywhere but the office on the weekends. As noted on the front page of the New York Law Journal, the resulting report makes some interesting observations:

• Attorneys feel they have less time for volunteer and pro bono work than earlier generations
• Increased demands of child rearing compound the strain put on families with no primary care giver
• Female attorneys have expressed their expectations of maintaining personal commitments outside the office to a greater extent than men have - those who don't work towards greater flexibility in traditionally demanding work environments opt for practice areas with greater leeway
• Flex-time is offered as a reward to the most desirable associates to increase retention
• New communications technologies have increased pressure on attorneys' personal time
• Collegiality within the profession and between lawyers and their clients is on the wane

The report also outlines best practices for implementing more flexible time requirements and recommends that law schools engage students in discussions about work-life so that their expectations for their workplace commitments are realistic and so that they can career plan accordingly.

Of all these observations the one I've been thinking about all day is that new telecommunications technologies (i.e. Blackberries) have exacerbated the imbalance between legal career and personal life. Constant vigilance of a Blackberry inherently disrupts every conversation and activity because you are interrupted not just with urgent emails but with every email - the automatically generated ones, the ones that can wait until Monday, the ones on which you were just cc'ed and to which no response will ever be required.

I was with a couple friends this weekend who kept their blackberries out throughout our time together - if a partner or client needed them they wanted to be sure not to miss the email. Makes sense to me. Only for all the checking of the Blackberries none of these folks ever had to leave or cut short our time together to work. Still they were constantly distracted by the continual flow of info to their PDAs.

Another friend has refused her Blackberry - she figures if it's that important then someone will call her.

Attorney Work/Life Balance Reform with a Virtual Law Office

A small part of the work/life balance reform in the legal profession is taking place quietly through the use of secure, web-based technology. Virtual law offices provide an alternative method of practicing law that permit flexible work hours and can be used to create a better work/life balance for legal professionals. I chose this alternative and for the past two and a half years I have practiced law from home with a completely virtual law office powered by Virtual Law Office Technology, LLC (VLOTech).

In the interest of full disclosure, VLOTech is a company that my husband and I founded based on the positive response we received from other legal professionals nationwide to the concept of a completely virtual law office and the flexibility it offers. The technology is a secure, web-based, software as a service (SaaS) hosted program that generates online client development and permits an attorney to practice law anywhere he or she may access the Internet. The technology assists legal professionals so that they may build a better work/life balance for themselves by modifying their practice to fit personal and family needs.

Finding a better work/life balance was my motivation to start a completely virtual law practice. I chose to practice law from home so that I could spend my days caring for my young child but still continue to build my career as an attorney. To provide a brief description of my virtual office, my client files, data, billing, invoices, accounts receivable, other accounting and administrative tools, calendars and data management tools are located in the backend of the virtual office online. I have a central point in the virtual law office where all of my cases are organized and it shows me the status and priority for better time management. On my client’s side, they have access to their own homepages through my virtual law office where they may view all of our online communications, pay me online, download and upload documents, and update client data, among other features. I have 24 hour policy of responding to my clients online. My clients are located across the state, most of them I’ve never met or spoken with in person. My flexible work hours include the time during my child’s nap, in the early morning and evenings or whenever else it is convenient for me and my clients to get work completed. My clients appreciate that I am available to them during non-business hours because that is often more convenient for them as well.

Through the use of VLOTech, blogs and other web-based technologies, the legal professional today may create alternative working arrangements that can be adjusted and refined as circumstances in his or her personal life require. I have used these to fashion a work/life balance that meets my current needs as a parent, a wife, a daughter and an attorney.

'It's more of a juggle than a balance': an attorney and mother shares tips for success

Jodi Rosenberg has been a practicing attorney for fifteen years and a mother for ten. Her account of the "juggling act" won Honorable Mention in the Ms. JD & PAR work/life balance essay contest. She shares war stories--like the time the school nurse demanded to speak with her in front of a judge--and winning stories, like this one:

"A week before I left for maternity leave, [a partner] approached me about my request to work part-time. He represented a large bank and I was one of a group of associates who worked on the bank’s matters. The bank’s general counsel, a single mother of four, had expressed to him that she liked my work and he told her about my interest in a reduced schedule. Together, they came up with a plan. If I spent all of my time working on the bank’s matters three days a week, the bank would be better serviced because it would be guaranteed the same associate on most of its matters instead of the usual assignment of the least busy associate. The bank even agreed to increase its share of work to our firm based on this plan, as the proposed arrangement demonstrated that the bank was progressive and supportive of part-time opportunities. It was a win-win solution on all levels."

Great idea, right? Follow the jump to read more. --Ed.

An Open Letter: 'Dear Baby Boom Law Firm Partner...'

Dear Baby Boomer Law Firm Partner,

You have paved the way for young women like me to make it in the legal profession. You sacrificed a lot to get to where you are today, and I completely respect your work ethic and drive. So it’s probably frustrating for you that this new generation of up-and-coming lawyers wants to work less and live more. We want to work and have kids; take maternity leave and vacations; go home in time for dinner; make plans on the weekends – and still be on partner track?! Why should we get all these benefits today when you had to make hard choices and sacrifices?

If this doesn’t seem fair to you, well, I agree.

[More after the jump]

Building a Better Legal Profession

Davida Brook and Andrew Bruck placed second with this entry in the Ms. JD & PAR essay contest about work/life balance. They write, "we are interpreted as a bunch of spoiled, resume-building, brats who want to get paid gazillions and flee the office for afternoon tee times. We are confused by this reaction, as we see our efforts as simply continuing the efforts begun by our parents decades ago. For example, just as the Boomers could not think of a single good reason why a Mother should not also be promoted to partner, we cannot think of a single good reason why a partner should not also be allowed to be a Father." --Ed.

Last summer, the organization we run, Building a Better Legal Profession, began collecting data about large law firms. We understood that there was plenty of publicly available data about these firms—data about billable hours, pro bono, and diversity—however, no one had organized and presented it in a way useful to law students. So we decided to do it ourselves.

As we crunched the numbers, we discovered surprising trends in the legal community—for example, not a single large law firm in Manhattan had more than thirty percent female partners. We figured the rest of the world would be eager to learn about our results. Like any enterprising twenty-somethings, we organized a press conference. The media response was remarkable, with stories appearing everywhere from the Financial Times Deutschland to Radio New Zealand. The blogosphere similarly erupted with stories.

But what fascinated us most were the comments readers left on the popular blog Above the Law. Many were positive, some were not...

[Continues after the jump]

Bridging the Gap on Work-Life Balance

Ms. JD & PAR essay contest winner Lori Johnson (1L, U. Mississippi) recounts the work/life revolution in her previous field, accounting. "Over time, the firm’s partners did recognize the importance of promoting work-life balance in the workplace. For years they had listened to clients complain about high turnover, which often resulted in client service teams comprised of entirely new faces each year. It is not hard to argue that clients are better served by continuity." --Ed.

“The problem with your generation is that you don’t have any work ethic.”

A single line from my favorite movie, Reality Bites, effectively sums up what baby-boomer managers perceive to be the problem with Millennial employees. While I agree that my generation’s work ethic is different, I do not believe that it is non-existent. I believe that the baby-boomer’s negative perception of my generation has more to do with differences in the way that we view our careers.

My baby-boomer parents, who know that I am a dedicated, driven person, could not help but scoff when I told them about the generous vacation package at my first job out of college. Three weeks of vacation for a recent college graduate seemed ludicrous to them. However, my parents were also unsympathetic when I called home to tell them that I had just completed an 80-hour workweek. My parents, like many baby-boomers, believed that a job was a job. You worked hard each week, collected a paycheck, and supported a family. Your job was not supposed to be fulfilling, and your employer certainly was not expected to accommodate your schedule or worry about your level of job satisfaction.

Millennials do not share their parents’ view of work. We do not believe that a job is just a job. We expect a career that leaves us fulfilled and gives us a sense of pride in the work we do. Therefore, I do not believe that our work ethic is inferior to that of our parents. We simply have different views and expectations of work, and as the baby-boomers begin to retire, employers are left with a younger generation of employees with a new set of job expectations. This means that employers must begin to consider the needs and desires of a new breed of employee, or run the risk of losing top talent.

Prior to returning to school to pursue a career in law, I spent four years working for a large multi-national public accounting firm.

[Continues after the jump]