Young Lawyers Hope for a Better Balance
Featured Guest Blogger June 25th, 2008
Thank you to Phoebe Taubman, Project Attorney/ Incoming Equal Justice Works Fellow at A Better Balance: The Work & Family Legal Center, for today’s guest blog entry. Please note that the views of our guest bloggers do not necessarily reflect the views of the Sloan Work and Family Research Network.
In 1829, Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story famously declared that “the law is a jealous mistress.” Nearly 180 years later lawyers are still struggling to find a healthy balance between work and family, and successful role models in the profession, particularly for young men, are especially rare. In fact, Justice Scalia recently disclosed that he never participated regularly in his nine children’s activities while they were growing up. He explained: “You know, my parents never did it for me. And I didn’t take it personally. ‘Oh Daddy, come to my softball game.’ No, I mean, it’s my softball game. He has his work. I got my softball game. Of course, she [Scalia’s wife, Maureen] was very loyal. She went to all the games.”
Despite this discouraging history, a new generation of lawyers has begun to voice their objections and argue for a better balance. We recently surveyed 351 students at the NYU School of Law and found that worries about balancing work and family weigh far more heavily on the minds of top law students than other career concerns including compensation and job prestige. Seventy-two percent of male and 76 percent of female students said they were very or extremely worried about being able to balance work and family. That’s more than twice the number of law students who were worried about earning top pay, doing high profile cases or working for a prestigious firm. Seven out of 10 survey respondents expect to make career sacrifices in order to have a satisfying personal life and 8 out of 10 indicated a willingness to trade money for time, that is, accept reduced earnings in return for flexibility and reduced hours.
Furthermore, the lawyers of tomorrow do not see work/life balance as exclusively a women’s issue. In our focus group discussions, one male law student told us, “I wouldn’t like sending my kids to child care all day, and I’d rather be around for them.” Another said, “With what firms pay nowadays . . . the paid leave isn’t as important as the respected leave . . . it’s not the money.” A third male focus group participant didn’t mince words: “It’s the hours, stupid.”
Our survey provides further evidence of a strong generational gap around balancing work and family—one that will impact the legal profession for years to come. In fact, over the past year, several law-student-run organizations (including Ms. JD and Building a Better Legal Profession) have sprouted up and dedicated themselves to changing the culture of the legal profession. The question now is how will law firms respond? Will they be able to deliver on the promise of family-friendly policies they have put on paper, but have not realized in practice?
Money still talks. Since research shows that it costs businesses, including law firms, a minimum of one and a half times annual salary to replace an employee who leaves mid-career to raise a family or care for a parent, it is in the economic interest of employer businesses to accommodate young lawyers who seek success both professionally as attorneys and personally as parents. Even strictly by the numbers, there is a point at which it is still economically advantageous for a law firm to grant some requests for extended, even dare I say, paid, maternity or paternity leave, flex time, part-time, job sharing or telecommuter time for lawyers in the early child rearing years.
Do the numbers; find the intersection between where the cost of replacing that employee meets the cost of retaining that employee, and negotiate. Add to the equation the growing public relations value of sitting on the leading edge of the industry as a family friendly law firm, and law firms can identify a course through the hullaballoo that does not damage their bottom line.
I graduated from law school in 1983, before the current, if fledgling, age of enlightenment in law firms. After the birth of my first child in 1992, the partners at my law firm, thinking themselves very family-forward, granted my request for part-time employment at reduced pay. I was “permitted” to work from 8 a.m. until 5 p.m., usually without a lunch break, 45 hours per week, for 80% of my salary plus full health care benefits. I spent another 5 hours a week proofing and revising documents and correspondence on the train ride home. A fifty hour week was considered a part-time job. At the time, all concerned recognized that this was a ‘generous,’ even ‘progressive’ arrangement by law firm standards at the time. At 5 p.m. daily I would sprint, wearing sneakers over pantyhose, the five city blocks from my office to the commuter train, praying I could make the 5:18 train and arrive at home by 6:00 p.m. to relieve my sitter who had begun her day caring for my daughter at 7:15 a.m., eleven hours earlier. During this time, I was taken off the ‘partnership’ track, of course, as I was not a full-time attorney. The only real benefit to my part-time status was that I could theoretically leave the firm guilt-free at 5:00 when my colleagues faced two or three more hours of desk time. When they looked up questioningly at my sneakered feet at 5, I would remind them “80% and no immediate access to partnership.” Is it any wonder that I jumped at a change of venue when my husband proposed a job change that would take us to California?
I have reinvented myself many times since my sneaker wearing, train-sprinting days in Boston. I have worked as a full time at-home mom for no monetary compensation (let’s thank the 1870 Census for that devaluation of the home management role), part-time from home as a free lance writer, all the time as one of the legions of mother-volunteers who without remuneration supply a staggering amount of labor to the operation of schools, hospitals and non-profits as volunteers, and recently double time as an entrepreneur launching a new business, The New Having It All ™, offering workshops and seminars for those seeking work/family balance and needing a concrete action plan to achieve it.
I am heartened at the bubbling of sentiment from the ranks of young law school graduates, who have seen the failed models of those who pioneered this field before them and who will demand a better balance. Better balance makes happier employees and happier children; better balance makes a better society.
[...] Still, there is good news–there are a number of groups that have a continued and impassioned interest in helping women achieve parity and work/life balance in the legal field. For instance, the Project for Attorney Retention (PAR) works to “reduce unwanted attrition among lawyers, a benefit for both legal employers and lawyers, by promoting work/life balance and the advancement of women in the legal profession.” Similarly, FlexTime Lawers consults nationally to “law firms, corporations and lawyers on work/life balance and the retention and promotion of women attorneys.” Even law students, male and female, are getting in on the action, and seeking change in the legal work structure. [...]
A tough dilema for many professional women. Do you have a family, or a career. But they could ask themselves, why have children while working at a law firm, which usually means 50 to 70 hour work weeks?