Biglaw, Kids, Women's Issues

Biglaw Mommy: Flex-Time And Fire Drills

Real fire drills will always be there, and Mommy Dear always standing ready to put out those real fires. But she's getting burned out real quick chasing after smoke, and she have a baby to take care of, too.

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Anyone with experience litigating understands that your world revolves around the court, and the court is an unforgiving master. Deadlines are firm, and you better have a good reason to request an extension (and the foresight to do so far enough in advance). But the courts are also fair; unlike in the corporate world (a topic for another day), those deadlines are put on the calendar months and months in advance. Even better, between all our new technology that includes things like Outlook calendars, and alerts, and the wonderful managing clerks who work so hard in so many law firm offices, lawyers get hit over the heads with those deadlines. In my experience, it is very hard to lose track of a deadline. You can see them coming a mile away.

This is all to say that the practice of litigation should be conducive to a flex-time schedule. Unlike corporate, where you often get about five hours’ notice of a deadline, litigation is very plan-able. If you are a working mother who needs to leave the office at 5:30 every day, or who works from home twice a week, you should be able to plan your schedule around those filing deadlines and court conferences and — barring inevitable surprises, such as the other side producing 10,000 documents on the last day of discovery — get your work done in a timely manner that doesn’t require punishing all-nighters and last-minute scrambling.

Unfortunately, the court is not an associate’s only master. If the judge is the king, the partner is the sheriff. And even if the king is benevolent, the sheriff can make life very, very unpleasant. Case in point: how many associates know the pain of diligently researching and drafting a brief for weeks before it’s due, getting the draft to the partner a week before the deadline, conscientiously following up once or twice a day, starting to sweat as the time trickles away, and then being handed a mark-up of your draft the morning of the deadline, with so many edits that the pages may as well be bleeding? The partner knows the filing deadline is midnight, so it should be plenty of time for the associate to make the edits. And it always is — we manage to get it done even if it kills us.

No associate (except the true gunners) enjoys this experience. Everyone would acknowledge that it’s a completely unnecessary fire drill because, let’s be honest, it’s the rare partner who is really SO busy and SO important that they couldn’t have reviewed the draft at any time prior to D-day. However, for the working mother, what would otherwise be a brutal and exhausting night becomes, quite possibly, a complete impossibility. True, seasoned associates know in these situations to arrange backup childcare — they know the partner’s style, they know he (or she) procrastinates, they know there’s a filing deadline. But for many working mothers, those whose spouses work in equally demanding fields and don’t have family nearby, backup child care can come at high cost, be difficult to obtain, and cause a great deal of stress at home. And the fire drills aren’t always this predictable. Maybe the partner “reviewed” the draft the day before the deadline, you thought you were golden, and then came back the next day because he hadn’t actually read the draft the day before. And if you don’t have someone who can pick up your child at daycare at a moment’s notice, you may have to shell out beaucoup bucks or phone a friend, just to CYA, when you don’t even need it. You can burn through a lot of money and a lot of goodwill with your friends trying to cover all the exigencies.

And this happens all. The. Time. And it’s not always because of major filings. There are always those partners who are so incredibly disorganized that almost everything becomes a fire drill, because they believe in same day turnarounds to clients but often forget about those clients until 6 or 7 p.m., even though they received the email from the client at 11 a.m. And then moms like me get an email at 6:30, when you’re elbow-deep in peas and rice cereal and the baby is screaming because you stopped feeding her to pick up my iPhone, and suddenly you’re consumed with stress because the partner needs something RIGHT NOW and you can handle it, right? Except that the baby doesn’t go to sleep until 9 and maybe your husband doesn’t get home until 9 and the nanny goes home at 6:30 and, well, what are you supposed to do? And you could have easily done the work at any point during the day if those partners had bothered to read or forward emails, or you could do the work as soon as the baby goes to bed if they would acknowledge that the timing made a same day turnaround impossible and tell the client we’ll get them something tomorrow. But because those partners refuse to do any of the above, you’re suddenly trapped between a rock and a partner’s demands.

I know many people would tell me to stop whining (and probably will), I knew what this job was “all about” when I started, and I chose to have a baby. True, I heard all the rumors. I was aware that this is “how it is” and “how it’s always been.” And pre-baby, I worked late nights for this reason all the time. But I’m realizing that it just doesn’t have to be this way — we all just think it does. It’s possible to be just as good an associate and quite frankly, just as good a lawyer without the constant emergencies, with just a little bit of planning and consideration. Yes, real fire drills will always be there, and I’m always standing ready to put out those real fires. But I’m getting burned out real quick chasing after smoke, and I have a baby to take care of, too.

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Mommy Dear, Esq. is a senior Biglaw associate in NYC by day and a new mommy by evening, weekend, and 3:30 a.m. She’s currently trying to “have it all,” “lean in,” and sometimes even cook dinner. Mommy Dear, Esq. is very, very tired. You can email her at mommydearesq@gmail.com.

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