Career v Family

This article looks at the careers of women lawyers who graduated in the 1970s and who have successfully combined pursuing a legal career with having children in their late 20s and early 30s. I accept the premise that this article is sexist. However, my excuse and reason for writing this piece is that I would like to offer my personal experience and that of my peers as evidence that it is possible to have both a worthwhile career in the law and a family.

The question of combining a career and a family is currently very topical. The Equalities Review reported in March that at current rates it would take until 2085 to close the pay gap between men and women. The Daily Telegraph, covering that report on 1 March, reported John Cridland, deputy director of the CBI, as saying: “It’s a fact of life that women have difficult choices when balancing family and work.” Research from the Centre for Longitudinal Studies, based at the Institute of Education in London, published in late April found that graduates who do become mothers are having fewer children and later. Currently 40% of graduate women are childless at the age of 35, and 30% forecast that they will still be childless when they reach the likely end of their child-bearing years at 45. This appears to indicate that this generation of women who want both a worthwhile career and children are facing very difficult and apparently competing pressures.

Then and now

Women were in the minority in law classes 30 years ago, with such sentiments as expressed by the Dean of Law and Accountancy at Glasgow University at his welcome address, that “the women are only here to find husbands”, not uncommon. Whilst some of us did just that, it was not our main driver for studying law. We wanted to work as equals with our male colleagues and have a worthwhile career. Today women are in the majority in law classes, yet progression for them through the normal career paths to partnership and senior positions is still relatively rare.

Many of the trainees and young professionals I speak with are concerned that they will have to choose between having a career and children, as current work pressures mean that any combination would at best be professionally damaging, if not nigh impossible. Many female associates and partners, having worked hard to achieve that status, are worried about how they will be able to tackle the increasingly difficult task of managing their work demands with a meaningful home life. Many managing partners I listen to are anxious about how their firm will be able to balance the work/life needs of their valuable and highly trained people, with client demands 24 hours a day seven days a week.

In an attempt to provide some practical suggestions, I carried out some interviews with my peer group of female lawyers to see if they could provide useful information about the challenges they had overcome and how they had managed to cope.

Examples and profiles

I was well aware of my own experiences of working as an equity commercial property partner with two children under nine. I had continued to work part time after my first pregnancy, and although financially not rewarding given the reduced earnings and the cost of child care, I had kept my skills and knowledge current and as a result, when I returned to work full time, I did so as a partner. I wondered whether other women lawyers my age had devised other ways of balancing both career progression and child rearing.

I sought out women lawyers, all of whom had reached a senior position in their area of practice, like me over 50 and who had had their children in their late 20s and early 30s. They were willing to talk to me openly and frankly about the work-related problems and domestic worries they had faced. Some of us had experienced personal loss, marriage breakdowns, significant health problems and professional challenges. All of us had worried about the effect our working had had on our children.

The interviewees had worked in private practice and the public sector, in litigation, private client, commercial and property areas of work. As always with busy people, many had taken on additional commitments, such as charity and pro bono work. We have all reached the top role in our professional specialism, at the same time as managing pregnancy, birth, pre-school, school, adolescence and beyond.

Some of us took a career break of up to 10 years, some took only a few weeks off and returned to work full time, and some returned part time. In all cases, as soon as the youngest child had entered primary education, we were back at work. A range of childcare was used including housekeepers, au pairs and nurseries. Family help was important but not essential, as we all had put in place the appropriate paid help and support that we had felt would work for our family situation.

The interviews disclosed that there was no real difference between the public and private sector approach, as all lawyers were expected to work full time with limited time off for maternity. Interestingly, there was no distinction between practice areas, with a high percentage of the interviewees undertaking court work, which in theory would have seemed more difficult to juggle with family commitments.

Lessons learned

It was apparent that despite the fact that we had all worked out for ourselves what suited us, there was a lot of similarity between what we had experienced and the solutions we had devised.

First and foremost, all of us agreed that our clients were quite comfortable with our working commitments and availability and did not seem to resent that we were not available 24 hours a day.

However, most of us had experienced problems with our peers, who seemed to think that we lacked commitment to our job, without any direct evidence to support that view. Indeed, we felt that we had made a positive decision to continue with our professional career and as such made a significant investment in time and money to achieve that. However, most of us had been guilty of feeling we had to prove our worth and in a number of instances had put pressure on ourselves to demonstrate our commitment by agreeing to do more work than we were required to do. This in turn had created stress and tensions around our family commitments.

We all felt that working to time constraints had improved our effectiveness, as we had had to be both well organised and self-disciplined. We also felt that we were able to blend the learning from both roles and transfer the skills gained in one to the other, especially in our dealings with clients and partners.

Looking back with the benefit of hindsight, we had not taken enough time to reward ourselves for doing two difficult and demanding roles simultaneously. I suggested that the interviewees ask their offspring what they had thought of the experience of having a working mother. Reassuringly, all our children were proud of what we had achieved and felt that our experience had rubbed off on them.

For men too

Hopefully this article has helped to provide some examples of what is possible. Whilst I said at the outset that this article is sexist, I do not intend to diminish the problems facing men in our profession who want to combine having a career and a healthy family life. I hope therefore that it provides illustrations to all of us of the importance of having a rewarding and fulfilling life.

    Fiona Westwood, a solicitor with 20 years’ experience of private practice, has run her own management and training consultancy, specialising in working with the professional sector, since 1994. Her first book, Achieving Best Practice – Shaping Professionals for Success, was published by McGraw-Hill in 2000; her second, Accelerated Best Practice – Implementing Success in Professional Firms, was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2004. www.westwood-associates.com

PRACTICAL TIPS: SETTING YOUR OWN BOUNDARIES

Summarising the discussions that I had, I would offer the following suggestions:

• Be confident of your own value in both roles. Make sure that you ask for what you are worth, and agree the parameters of any time constraints.
• Demonstrate your commitment to your job by making a deliberate point of showing what you can do and have achieved, especially for clients.
• Find your own balance between work and family commitments. Work out your own requirements and boundaries, and stick to them.
• Don’t just look at the financial side of the equation. There will be other rewards that derive from combining the two roles, such as maintaining and developing your professional skills and networks.
• Be proud of what you are combining.