Small Law Firms

My Son’s Middle School Graduation: Marking Personal, Educational, And Career Accomplishments For Mother And Child

When your child is essential to your successes as a mother and as a solo practitioner.

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(Image via Getty)

Last week, my family celebrated the eighth grade graduation of my son. As far as graduations go, middle school commencement is about as notable as a kindergarten advancement. While sweet and entertaining, it just does not bear the cache of a high school or college graduation, when the graduate is excitingly launched into the world. Even more so it lacks the gravity of a law school commencement when the bar exam and billable hours loom in the future.

            To me, my son’s graduation meant much more than a recognition of his completion of  10 years at a primary school.  Personally, it marked a significant milestone in my life as both a mother and an attorney.

            My son, now 14, has only known me as his mother, the attorney. He does not recall the law school studying, internships, or anything prior to my dealings with estate planning, probate, and litigation. Since starting my own law firm two years ago, he loves to refer to me as a “solo practitioner” likely to indulge the specific views I espouse as an attorney working on my own — a topic that I not only write about, but apparently talk about, a lot, at home.

I began my legal career when my son was less than one year old. In fact, I was pregnant with him my third semester of law school, and he was born during what should have been my fourth, but for taking it off to give birth and spend time with him. Incidentally, my third semester, also my third trimester, was my best one academically. Notably, I took Wills, Trusts, and Estates at that time, beginning my passion for the subject area and ostensibly my career path.

I finished the second half of law school as a mother. My family and I shuffled my son in his stroller around, passed him like a toy between classes, events, and interviews. I was half proud half self-conscious of my baby hanging with me in the lobby of the law school and my declining of law school invitations as a result of my parental duties.

My son remained faithfully by my side throughout the law school journey. Luckily, he does not remember my frantic studying before finals or the bar exam, when I left the family in favor of seclusion, something I still do before trials. Terribly nervous before the bar exam, I held him, hoping to pass and also wanting to make him proud. We celebrated my law school graduation with the same adorable picture that so many have, a giggling baby playing with the mortarboard tassel. Faithfully, he followed me to my bar admission ceremonies and his was the first picture I hung in my first law office. So excited to sit in my big office chair, he was always the junior associate.

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            And so my son’s graduation marks a journey for me. In many ways, his growth has mimicked my law career and his recent commencement is also mine. We have both grown. We have both learned. We have both prepared for bigger and better. As he prepares for high school and then college, I too prepare for my own expansion and learning.

I feel my son’s successes and take some credit for many of them. It is my hope, that my son recognizes that he too is responsible for my successes and that he has directed and inspired my career path and choices. As high school prepares him for college and beyond, he will develop his own life plan and career. A part of me secretly wishes that he will actually join me in my practice of law. I do know, however, that he has  already been and will remain a part of me, and essential to my successes as a mother and as a solo practitioner.

Cori A. Robinson is a solo practitioner having founded Cori A. Robinson PLLC, a New York and New Jersey law firm, in 2017. For more than a decade Cori has focused her law practice on trusts and estates and elder law including estate and Medicaid planning, probate and administration, estate litigation, and guardianships. She can be reached at cori@robinsonestatelaw.com. 

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