Biglaw, Kids

Biglaw Mommy: Share And Share Alike

Would job-sharing be better in Biglaw for working mothers over flex-time arrangements?

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I’ve made no secret of the fact that I’m a huge proponent of flexible work arrangements — and not just for working mothers, although we do tend to make up the majority of workers taking advantage of such policies. I truly think that flexible work arrangements are the wave of the future, thanks largely to technology that allows us to completely reshape our traditional notions of what the workplace has to look like. In addition to the fact that flexible workplaces are demonstrably more conducive to attracting and retaining good talent, it’s also become clear that there’s very little downside to employers. If anything, employee productivity increases in direct correlation to flexibility. I’m not aware of any major studies showing a significant negative impact to employers’ bottom lines with the introduction of flexible work arrangements.

I’ll also freely admit that, although I’m often critical of Biglaw, this is an area in which Biglaw has surpassed other industries. Although I haven’t done extensive research, I believe it is now the norm for large law firms to offer flex-time, meaning a reduced schedule, to their attorneys, along with extremely generous maternity leave, in large part to target the persistent gender gap among law firm partnerships and senior management.

I myself have been a happy beneficiary of a Biglaw flex-time arrangement, thanks in large part to a) an extremely progressive firm on the forefront of working mother- and family-friendly policies, and b) partners who have been generally willing to accommodate my efforts to balance work and family. I’m deeply appreciative and grateful for the flexibility I’ve been given, and I can also say with certainty that I would not still be in Biglaw without it. So, assuming that the partners value my work (and I assume they do, otherwise why would they accommodate me so extensively), the policies are having their intended effect.

And yet, I do have to admit that “flex-time” as it’s most commonly structured may not actually be the best fit for many professions, including the law. In the most common flex-time arrangement, a Biglaw associate will go on an 80% (or 60%) schedule, meaning that the associate works 80% of the week (and 80% of target billable hours) and receives a commensurate cut in salary. In practice, this results in the associate working four days per week and having a set day off. I’ve heard of associates going on a reduced schedule and just working a shorter day, five days per week, but I don’t actually know anyone doing this.

For anyone who practices law, the problem with these types of arrangements is pretty obvious. Being a lawyer can be kind of like being a doctor, in that it’s really a 24/7 job. Some lawyers are better than others at setting boundaries, turning their phones off at bedtime, and checking out on the weekends, but even the boundary masters recognize that it’s their job to be “on call” around the clock. Law is a service industry, and we’re at the beck and call of our clients, as well as the courts. It’s a given that, when you start working at a law firm and you’re handed that Blackberry, although you might only be required to be in the office five days per week, those days will rarely (if ever) resemble “normal” working days, and your weekends are definitely not sacred.

Sadly, what this means is that Biglaw flex-time arrangements may look a lot better on paper than in reality. Of course, it depends a lot on whom you work with and how respectful they are of your schedule (since, let’s be honest, many of the fire drills that force Biglaw associates to be on call around the clock are manufactured). But even the most reasonable partners in the world can’t change the nature of the legal profession, or the capriciousness of judges, or the fact that when you’re staffed on busy cases or multiple active deals, the work doesn’t just go away or stop because you’ve worked your four days and you’re off on Fridays. Nor does the law care that on all those Fridays you end up working, you’re not actually getting paid for it. In theory, I suppose that you could always try to make up for it by staying home Monday the next week, but at least for working moms, a consistent schedule is critical for child care. I don’t think most working moms have the option of shuffling days around every week with their child care providers. Plus, I’ve found that coworkers also value consistency and knowing when you’re going to be in and out of the office. Suddenly staying home on a Monday can throw off everyone’s schedules, not just your own.

Given all that, I’m surprised that it’s taken me this long to recognize a better solution, particularly because it’s nothing new. It was only recently when I was having a conversation (okay, venting session) with a fellow Biglaw mommy about, you guessed it, the difficulties of making it all work, and she commented that this would all be so much easier if we just job-shared. I guess it tells you something about how uncommon these arrangements are that I actually had to ask her what, exactly, job-sharing means. Then I Googled it for a while, and now I can share with you what I learned about job-sharing.

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Literally, job-sharing means that two people perform the same job, for a commensurately lower salary to reflect the percentage of work that each person does. If each person works 2.5 days per week, they each make 50% of the whole salary that would have been paid for that position if one person held it. I think job-sharing is much more common in administrative/clerical roles that may require less specialized knowledge and in which the work doesn’t vary much from day to day. In these types of situations, it’s usually very straightforward for one person to seamlessly step in and pick up where the other left off. It’s actually the best of both worlds, in the sense that it allows people to work part-time, but ensures that a position is actually performed on a full-time basis.

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, and I am now firmly convinced that job-sharing would make so much more sense for attorneys than flex-time. As I just said, the biggest issue with an attorney working part-time is that legal work is just not conducive to a reduced schedule — if you’re the only associate handling a matter and suddenly a closing date gets pushed up, or you have to file an emergency TRO, you better believe you’ll be working that Friday, even if it’s “for free.” But imagine this: you have two associates of relatively comparable levels, one works Monday-Wednesday, the other works Wednesday-Friday, and each picks a weekend day to be “on call.” They’re staffed on the same cases, they’re both copied on all correspondence so they both know what’s going on at all times, and depending on the day, whichever associate is in the office will handle whatever needs to be done on those cases. This type of arrangement would basically guarantee complete coverage of all matters and still allow those attorneys to work reduced schedules, as well as ensuring predictability in their schedules. On the days when they’re off, they’re really off, which could also seriously cut down on child care costs because they wouldn’t have to arrange for contingency/back-up child care on those days. And because those associates would be interchangeable on their matters, no one would have to worry about keeping track of who’s in the office on a given day.

It sounds great, in my opinion. So why don’t law firms do it? After all, the medical profession has the same “on-call” concept, and it seems to work just fine. In my internet searches on this topic, the majority of articles I found about job-sharing in the legal profession were at least five years old, which suggests that this really isn’t something that people even contemplate. I can make a few guesses as to why this is, although I don’t think most of these “reasons” have any validity:

  1. General resistance to change, i.e., the concept just blows the minds of old-school partners who have a hard enough time accepting the concept of remote work and smart phones. Obviously, this is just pure silliness.
  2. Concern about too many attorneys on client bills. I get this in theory, but the reality is that the hours would be the same, and as long as the associates’ rates are the same as well, it wouldn’t have any impact on the clients.
  3. It requires a lot of organization and communication to make it work in a complex profession like the law. Of course, but as lawyers, aren’t we supposed to be organized and excellent at communicating? Isn’t that our job? Of course, in a truly successful job-sharing arrangement, it would be critical to work with someone with whom you could effectively communicate.
  4. The competitive nature of law firms. It’s a fact that associates are generally competitive, and the partners encourage this. Job-sharing means having to put aside competitiveness and being willing to share credit for things. It only works if the partnership is truly collaborative.

Honestly, I think the biggest impediment to job-sharing, and the reason that it’s still not at all common in law firms, is finding the right person to share with. Job-sharing requires finding another attorney at roughly your same level who also wants a job sharing arrangement, and it only lasts as long as both people want to continue. With the current high level of attrition in law firms, particularly among women, it’s probably difficult to maintain. That being said, this problem could be circular — if job-sharing were an option, maybe attrition among working mothers in law firms would drop, and there would be more people to share with. We won’t know until we try, so… why don’t we try? I’ll happily be the guinea pig.

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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 and you can follow her on Twitter here.

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