Why was I having enthusiasm issues when I should have been bright eyed and ready to conquer the world? That’s easy – the career wasn’t what I thought it would be. As a paralegal, I saw that the lawyers I worked for really helped people. I wanted to do that too. My first job certainly gave me the opportunity to do that – I had clients going through divorce and custody issues, clients who had been injured in accidents, and clients facing criminal charges.
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| A sign in my basement "Fun Room" |
Billable hours.
For those of you fortunate enough not to know, attorneys are usually expected to bill every second of every day to somebody, somewhere – to do this effectively, you pretty much have to eat lunch at your desk, shut out all human contact, and think about your cases on every trip to the bathroom. And that’s still not good enough.
I was already having problems meeting those obligations before Anna came along. Part of that was due to my burgeoning depression about the nature of my work and about my lack of time with friends and loved ones, and part was due to commuting one hour each way every day. Add a newborn to that, multiple feedings during the night, no chance to nap when the baby naps, and no maternity leave, and you get a recipe for disaster.
Miraculously, I managed to function this way for a whole year and a half. Sometimes I was a zombie, but I did it.
Now I have a different job that better accommodates my motherhood. I rarely have court appearances and thankfully escaped the drama of criminal and family cases. I am off on Fridays to be with Anna (and run lots of errands, but still, I’m not at the office). But I still feel like I’ve lost some of the joy and desire to achieve that fueled all my ridiculous early career goals, and even my legal career for a little while.
I miss that feeling. What I need to figure out now is whether I can get it back.
I’m sure one way to get it back would be returning to a practice that was focused on helping people in trouble, one in which I could feel at the end of the day like I did something that mattered. Unfortunately, litigation and motherhood are a difficult combo. Sure, it can be done, and it is, by many people. However, I think it’s difficult to truly do it well – one responsibility usually has to slide to some degree to accommodate the other.
My issue is that I wouldn’t pick work over family – I would rather go to a concert or attend a game to support my child than stay at the office two hours late to finish something I could do in the morning, just to appear dedicated by staying later than my senior partners. I would risk disappointing my bosses before my child any day. And that just doesn’t make for a very good trial attorney.
The lawyers I know who succeed in that venue eat, breathe, and sleep it – they love what they do, and they sacrifice personal time to do it well. It’s a job that really demands that personality. The clients deserve that kind of effort. My heart simply isn’t in it like that.
I’d rather be pushing Anna on a park swing or watching Sesame Street on the couch with a happy girl in my arms. I never expected this…..it just fits. I remember discussing with some fellow female law students our confusion about women who worked so hard to obtain a professional degree like a law degree, and then didn’t use it after they had kids. That’s why we shouldn’t jump to conclusions – you don’t know what it’s like until you’re that woman. Now I get it.
I don’t know what the answer is. What I do know is that I’m not alone. The litigation field is dominated by men, probably for the reasons I’ve just discussed above. Many women turn to contract work or other practice areas after becoming moms because they are somewhat more manageable. After all, if you have a trial and your kid has a fever and needs to be picked up from day care, what are you going to do? Especially if you’re both lawyers, like we are.
There are still ways to be a lawyer and a mom; however, those ways may not be as personally fulfilling, and some level of pressure is always going to be there. That has led many moms to leave the legal field entirely, or to take lackluster jobs just to pay the student loan bills, afford day care and buy diapers.
Flexibility.
THAT is what the legal profession needs. I can’t imagine how much better it would be if the focus was on results more than sheer output. We’re not machines, after all. I’m grateful to have about as much flexibility as I’m ever going to get in this field. But that doesn’t change the ache I feel when I wave goodbye to Anna and do the sign for “I love you” outside her classroom window. It doesn’t restore the passion I once had for the law, the desire I felt to be great at this.
Perhaps there’s no turning back, and this monumental shift in me as a person is going to force me to seek a new “normal.” Or perhaps I still need time to adjust. But I wish there was a way to stop the exodus of talented women from the world of litigation, a way to reconcile the mother and trial lawyer roles that are part of who I am. Why should we have to face the dilemma of sacrificing one to accomplish the other?
Our kids and our clients deserve an answer to that question.
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