Lawyer Moms

[Jean-Ralphio Saperstein]

I'm starting law school this fall and I'm in my early 20s. I'm interested in being a young mom and a lawyer at the same time. Is this feasible? Any experience ladies want to share? My DMs are open!

[PePeHalpert]

It's feasible.  Just how feasible depends on a number of factors including the area of law you practice and your support system at home.  If you're working in-house and aren't expected to pull many hours outside of 9-5, you will find striking a balance much easier.  If you work in big law, then its more difficult.  You should be prepared to work during the evenings after your kid(s) goes to bed.  Having a supportive partner (or other support network) with a flexible schedule will help a lot, because you need someone who is consistently available to do daycare and school drop-off and pick up, or to juggle their schedule on the many, many days your child will be home sick. 

I'm a litigator on Bay Street.  I'm happy enough with the balance that I have struck, but I think that's in part because (a) my husband is a very equal partner in terms of parenting/household responsibilities but his job is less demanding in terms of long hours being the norm and (b) I've set manageable expectations for myself.  I don't view work-life balance as a daily thing.   I view balance in the longer term, in spans of weeks to month.  I will have incredibly busy months where I have late meetings and I occasionally miss dinner and I work late into the night and on weekends.  And then things slow down and I will have a lull for a month or two where I have lots of free time to spend with my child.

Much will also depend on the culture of your work place.  Some work places are much more respectful than others in of parenting obligations and allowing parents the flexibility to adjust their schedules as needed.  

[Jaggers]

I have quite a few friends in big firms who had kids during their first few years of practice. It is definitely very doable. The hours are always going to be a balancing act, but at the same time you have tons of money to throw at the problem in terms of getting help.

A bunch are families where both parents are big firm lawyers. I think they basically all rely on a nanny to make sure everything drop-off and pick-up related, and anything in between are all happening.

I'm not a "law mom", I'm a law dad, and I recognize that the social context is very different, but working in house I manage to drop him off at daycare every morning and cook dinner every evening. Working from home has definitely made that easier, and I have never tried that balance while working regularly in the office.

He's off daycare today because he had a runny nose yesterday, so I watched him from 8-9, my wife from 9-10, me from 10-11, she's now feeding him lunch and I'll put him down to nap. If you aren't going to have a nanny, having a flexible partner and employer is critical.

Anyways, I know you asked for lady-specific advice, and mine is not, so hopefully some of the moms we have around here will be able to respond as well.

[KOMODO]

Hi! I'm a senior associate on Bay Street (commercial real estate practice) and I have an approximately 2 year old child. My partner is also a professional with similar hours to mine, i.e. we both feel a fair amount of work pressure outside of business hours. 

I want to say so much in response to your question, to do justice to the real struggle that lawyer-parents face in balancing our competing priorities, but I also want my advice to be hope-supporting and positive because I wouldn't change anything about my life as it stands right now. I could write ten pages on the different struggles and pressures you're likely to face at different stages of practice and ages of children, but it's such a personal/specific balancing act that I'm not even sure that would be helpful. So instead of writing a really long post (and blowing my daily billables so early in the month), I'll just say that yes, it is feasible, but not easy.  Short bits of advice as follows:

 

• Having young children is a brief period of your overall career. Try not to permanently limit your long term objectives because of a mat leave one year or daycare struggles the next year. Equally, you may need to take a step down for a few years when things are crazy on the family front, and then ramp up when the kids are in school - for example, some people take counsel roles or lower target roles for a few years and look at making partner later than average to accommodate having young kids, or switch back and forth between in house and private practice. All of that is okay. Also, there's only so much planning you can do before you're "in it".

 

• The biggest challenge I had in returning to work after mat leave was dealing with my child's sick days. Maybe it was more heightened because of covid, but there were months over the last year where we had our kid at home for more days than we sent her to daycare. This is REALLY hard because you've already squeezed your work into the 8-5 time slot that daycare provides, and then suddenly, without notice, you can't work at all. Most people seem to rely on the child's grandparents for sick child support - if you don't have that option, be prepared for you or your partner to miss a LOT of work if you use daycare.

 

• Having a nanny is extraordinarily expensive. My understanding is that nannies in Toronto run at least $65-70k per year once you factor in taxes, etc., and those are your after-tax dollars. Also, the nanny has to be somewhere with the child, so if you live in a smaller place and work from home (as so many of us have the last couple of years), a nanny may not be viable due to space constraints. I am in the minority among my friends, but I do not see the appeal of a nanny given the cost and location issues, plus the social interaction and structure that daycare provides was appealing to our family. 

 

• I did not expect to be so tired when I returned to work. Maybe it's because I'm older now, or because I'm burnt out and tired of covid isolation, or because I still haven't caught up on the sleep I missed when my toddler was a baby...but I just can't work as much as I used to. In my 20s, I had no problem grinding it out at the office 9am to midnight and working every weekend, but I struggle now just to drag myself to the table to work 7pm-10pm each night, and I almost never work weekends any more. I really underestimated the changes in my own body and energy levels - I'm a different person post-life creation.

That's my best try at a "short" answer - happy to follow up with specific answers to any more targeted questions you have though! I usually prefer to answer on the public boards rather than by DM so that everyone can benefit, if possible 🙂

[PePeHalpert]

7 minutes ago, KOMODO said:

• Having young children is a brief period of your overall career. Try not to permanently limit your long term objectives because of a mat leave one year or daycare struggles the next year. Equally, you may need to take a step down for a few years when things are crazy on the family front, and then ramp up when the kids are in school - for example, some people take counsel roles or lower target roles for a few years and look at making partner later than average to accommodate having young kids, or switch back and forth between in house and private practice. All of that is okay. Also, there's only so much planning you can do before you're "in it".

 

I agree with this completely and will add to it that there is no perfect time to have children.  But a piece of advice I was given by a more senior female colleague when I was first starting out is that its easier to take a mat leave earlier in your career before you have the pressure of impending or new partnership on your shoulders and before you have many of your own client relationships to manage.  Its easier to take a step aside when you aren't the one solely in charge of the client.  That advice has rung true for me.  I am about to take my second mat leave and am finding it more difficult to step away from my files and my clients now than I did during my first mat leave when I was a very junior associate.  

[Jaggers]

24 minutes ago, KOMODO said:

I did not expect to be so tired when I returned to work. Maybe it's because I'm older now, or because I'm burnt out and tired of covid isolation, or because I still haven't caught up on the sleep I missed when my toddler was a baby...but I just can't work as much as I used to. In my 20s, I had no problem grinding it out at the office 9am to midnight and working every weekend, but I struggle now just to drag myself to the table to work 7pm-10pm each night, and I almost never work weekends any more. I really underestimated the changes in my own body and energy levels - I'm a different person post-life creation.

Oh man, the fatigue.

My post above probably does reflect the fact that I am now a 14 year call, and my Bay St friends are mostly around there too, so their kids are older and their houses bigger. But yeah, working from home affects everyone differently and it's way different with a infant to toddler than an 8 year old.

[KOMODO]

3 hours ago, PePeHalpert said:

I agree with this completely and will add to it that there is no perfect time to have children.  But a piece of advice I was given by a more senior female colleague when I was first starting out is that its easier to take a mat leave earlier in your career before you have the pressure of impending or new partnership on your shoulders and before you have many of your own client relationships to manage.  Its easier to take a step aside when you aren't the one solely in charge of the client.  That advice has rung true for me.  I am about to take my second mat leave and am finding it more difficult to step away from my files and my clients now than I did during my first mat leave when I was a very junior associate.  

This was true for me too. I've only had one mat leave and it was as a mid-level associate, but the hardest part was seeing "my" clients and files handled by someone else, and feeling like I needed to convince people when I returned that I was serious. Now, I feel like they're all waiting to see if I have another baby (I'm not sure whether I want one or not), and I'm even more nervous that if I take another leave they may not see me as "their" lawyer / may feel like I'm less dependable / may find someone else to do their work and keep it with that person even after I return.

[Note: if I were mentoring a lawyer and she expressed these concerns to me, I would probably be like, "don't worry about that! You are great and your clients know that and love you! Have a baby when it works for your life and the career stuff will be okay!" but the truth is that on a personal level I get kind of stressed about this when I think about having a second kid.]

On the flip side, I built up lots of credibility in the early years as a "hard worker", and my technical skills are strong because I put in the time as a junior, which I wouldn't have been able to do as a mom. So 100% agree with the "no perfect time" idea.

[Jaggers]

As a big firm client for over 8 years now, I do have loyalty to people who go on mat leave. It's part of life and I don't see anything negative about it. It does often give another younger lawyer an opportunity to showcase themselves, but I have enough of a caseload to hand out that I can load up the person coming back from mat leave, even if they aren't taking back the files they originally held (which I understand can seem personal).

[KOMODO]

Just now, Jaggers said:

As a big firm client for over 8 years now, I do have loyalty to people who go on mat leave. It's part of life and I don't see anything negative about it. It does often give another younger lawyer an opportunity to showcase themselves, but I have enough of a caseload to hand out that I can load up the person coming back from mat leave, even if they aren't taking back the files they originally held (which I understand can seem personal).

You're one of the good ones!

I also recognize that this may mostly be a problem of my own imagination....my clients could be totally loyal too, and I had a decent experience getting the majority of my "normal" work back after the first leave. It's just kind of scary and unknown and feels like a risk.

[BlockedQuebecois]

4 minutes ago, KOMODO said:

You're one of the good ones!

I also recognize that this may mostly be a problem of my own imagination....my clients could be totally loyal too, and I had a decent experience getting the majority of my "normal" work back after the first leave. It's just kind of scary and unknown and feels like a risk.

I'm too junior to really matter for helping people with this type of thing, but I would be interested to hear about what your firm/other lawyers did to make you feel as though you had a decent experience coming back from leave and what could have been done to improve it? (If/when you have time, of course).  

I think both maternity and paternity leave are difficult and important issues facing firms right now, so I always like to hear people's ideas on the topic in the hope I can advocate for better policies at my firm. 

[Jaggers]

There is definitely some inertia, and you are a bit dependent on your firm, when you get back, to call me and say "Komodo is back! I reassigned X file and will look for new opportunities as well". I don't exactly have a tickler in my calendar that someone is coming back and I should see what files I could give them.

Also, I ask for specific juniors on files sometimes, but most of them I just send to the relationship partner I deal with and ask her to assign them. So there's some effort required on the firm's part to reopen the pipeline of work to someone coming back from leave, and I can't say if someone is being prejudiced on that side.

[KOMODO]

Just now, BlockedQuebecois said:

I'm too junior to really matter for helping people with this type of thing, but I would be interested to hear about what your firm/other lawyers did to make you feel as though you had a decent experience coming back from leave and what could have been done to improve it? (If/when you have time, of course).  

I think both maternity and paternity leave are difficult and important issues facing firms right now, so I always like to hear people's ideas on the topic in the hope I can advocate for better policies at my firm. 

This is a great question!

Things that help:

• Enthusiasm when you return - partners act excited that you're back, the main partners you work with schedule catchup meetings to welcome you back, etc.

 

• Debriefing, so that the associate coming back from leave knows what's been going on with their files/clients. I think this gets overlooked sometimes because the returning associate isn't actively working on those matters, but I really appreciated the partners and associates who spent the time to say "While you were on leave, ABC Corp. was involved in 4 transactions - they bought an office building on Main Street, a parking garage on South Street, they entered into an agreement to sell their factory property in Vaughan but it was ultimately terminated because the purchaser couldn't get financing, and they're in the process of buying a parcel of vacant land in Pickering which is scheduled to close next week. Here are the matter numbers in case you want to take a look at anything in the document management system". That way when I had the opportunity to work on ABC Corp.'s next file, I had an idea of what they'd been doing while I was gone. 

 

• The firm arranging for the associate to receive external career counselling - I know of quite a few firms doing this now, and it's really helpful. The deal is that the firm pays for a certain number of sessions so that the associate can meet with someone impartial and decide what they want to focus on in the year following their leave. It's nice because you can talk through some of the issues/insecurities and get advice on how to advocate for the type of work you want, hours you need to keep, etc.

 

• Actually assigning new files to the returning associate, that they would have been assigned if they never went on leave. In a perfect world the returning associate would also reclaim long-term files, but that happens less often. But the single biggest thing that made me feel like my return was successful was becoming the "go to" person again for all of the new files from clients A, B and C who I always worked for prior to taking leave.

 

• Financial support during leave (top-up payments, continuation of benefits) and reassurances about length of leave (leave policy that says partnership won't be delayed by taking leave, partners don't make comments about how longer leaves are career limiting, etc.), so that the associate doesn't return before they're ready.

 

• Having role models at the firm. If your department doesn't have any partners who are also moms, that can be a little discouraging. I appreciated the support and encouragement from senior lawyers in my group who had done what I was doing, successfully (there weren't tons, and they admitted it wasn't easy, but it was reassuring to know it was possible).

Things that hurt:

• Seeing a new file go to the person who was covering your leave, which would have been yours if you never took leave.

 

• Having a partner or client give you a hard time about logging off at certain hours (for example, being generally unavailable 5pm-7pm except for emergencies).

 

• Receiving too much nonbillable work - especially when you first return and you're ramping up but not yet busy, I think it can be tempting for the firm to assign you some of the pain-in-the-back NB stuff that nobody wants to do, but then you end up stuck with it and it makes it harder to get to billable work as time goes on.

 

• This one isn't anyone's fault exactly, it's just a hard thing that is an issue for many working parents - level of understanding when you need to suddenly and repeatedly stay home with a sick child. As mentioned above, this has been my biggest challenge. The only "solutions" that really work are paying for a nanny (though they can call in sick too!), having a spouse who doesn't work, or having a family member who doesn't work - and if you can't afford/have any of those, you're in a tough spot. The best summary I can give is this: in September, my kid had a stomach flu and was home for 3 weekdays, so I still worked but wasn't as productive as usual and couldn't schedule certain calls, etc. I worked late each night to catch up and continued working on the weekend, so my hours were okay, but I had to explain to a few people in the moment that I wouldn't be able to look at something until the next day because I was on mom duty. Then in October, my kid got a cold and was home for 4 weekdays, which my husband mostly handled but I was "in charge" on one of those days. When I told a partner that I couldn't take a call that day because my toddler was sick, he said "Hey! You already used that excuse last month!" and was kind of a jerk about it. Um...yes. You didn't catch me in a fib, this is something that I am dealing with repeatedly. So I think in terms of planning your return from leave as a working parent, it's key to arrange not only childcare (daycare/nanny), but also BACKUP childcare, for when your child or nanny are sick. My husband and I have gotten better at this over time but it's been difficult. And on the firm side, the partners who offered to have calls with me at 7pm instead of 3pm on those days were amazing, and I really appreciated that their understanding/flexibility.

 

• Having your billable rate increase in the normal course. This is also a tough one because on the one hand, you want your salary to increase as it would have without taking leave, but you would prefer for your rate to stay the same as before, especially in the first few months when you're returning and re-learning some of the stuff you forgot or missed while away. Similar issue, having people treat you as a year more senior when you return (for example, I had some people say hey, you're an Xth year now, you can't consult partners / let them bill to these types of files anymore because you should just know, whereas pre-leave that was still fine) - but (a) you don't have that year of experience, and (b) you're actually behind where you were when you left, because you're a bit rusty / need refreshing. I would have appreciated keeping my pre-leave billable rate for the first six months or so, so that there wasn't as much pressure on being super efficient and skilled as I was getting warmed up again.

[Jean-Ralphio Saperstein]

5 hours ago, KOMODO said:

Hi! I'm a senior associate on Bay Street (commercial real estate practice) and I have an approximately 2 year old child. My partner is also a professional with similar hours to mine, i.e. we both feel a fair amount of work pressure outside of business hours. 

I want to say so much in response to your question, to do justice to the real struggle that lawyer-parents face in balancing our competing priorities, but I also want my advice to be hope-supporting and positive because I wouldn't change anything about my life as it stands right now. I could write ten pages on the different struggles and pressures you're likely to face at different stages of practice and ages of children, but it's such a personal/specific balancing act that I'm not even sure that would be helpful. So instead of writing a really long post (and blowing my daily billables so early in the month), I'll just say that yes, it is feasible, but not easy.  Short bits of advice as follows:

 

• Having young children is a brief period of your overall career. Try not to permanently limit your long term objectives because of a mat leave one year or daycare struggles the next year. Equally, you may need to take a step down for a few years when things are crazy on the family front, and then ramp up when the kids are in school - for example, some people take counsel roles or lower target roles for a few years and look at making partner later than average to accommodate having young kids, or switch back and forth between in house and private practice. All of that is okay. Also, there's only so much planning you can do before you're "in it".

 

• The biggest challenge I had in returning to work after mat leave was dealing with my child's sick days. Maybe it was more heightened because of covid, but there were months over the last year where we had our kid at home for more days than we sent her to daycare. This is REALLY hard because you've already squeezed your work into the 8-5 time slot that daycare provides, and then suddenly, without notice, you can't work at all. Most people seem to rely on the child's grandparents for sick child support - if you don't have that option, be prepared for you or your partner to miss a LOT of work if you use daycare.

 

• Having a nanny is extraordinarily expensive. My understanding is that nannies in Toronto run at least $65-70k per year once you factor in taxes, etc., and those are your after-tax dollars. Also, the nanny has to be somewhere with the child, so if you live in a smaller place and work from home (as so many of us have the last couple of years), a nanny may not be viable due to space constraints. I am in the minority among my friends, but I do not see the appeal of a nanny given the cost and location issues, plus the social interaction and structure that daycare provides was appealing to our family. 

 

• I did not expect to be so tired when I returned to work. Maybe it's because I'm older now, or because I'm burnt out and tired of covid isolation, or because I still haven't caught up on the sleep I missed when my toddler was a baby...but I just can't work as much as I used to. In my 20s, I had no problem grinding it out at the office 9am to midnight and working every weekend, but I struggle now just to drag myself to the table to work 7pm-10pm each night, and I almost never work weekends any more. I really underestimated the changes in my own body and energy levels - I'm a different person post-life creation.

That's my best try at a "short" answer - happy to follow up with specific answers to any more targeted questions you have though! I usually prefer to answer on the public boards rather than by DM so that everyone can benefit, if possible 🙂

You're amazing and this is so so helpful. Thank you!!!