I mentioned in the last post that my thoughts on work-life balance are all over the place. Here is what is going through my head right now, unedited. I am feeling drained after a few stressful weeks, and am putting off preparing for a 6-9 p.m. international conference call tonight.
Lately I feel like I exclusively do things that I have to do. This is a typical day:
6-8 a.m.: Hang out with the kids, feed them, change them, get them ready for the day.
8-8:45 a.m.: Drop-off. First K at kindergarten, then X at daycare.
8:45-9:30 a.m.: Get dressed, eat breakfast, shower if I have time, head to work.
7-8:30 p.m.: Get home, eat dinner, put K to bed.
8:30-9 p.m.: Pack kids' bags and get stuff ready for the next day.
9-11 p.m.: More work.
And that's a day when I DON'T have a major deadline or evening meeting. Those days look like this: 9:30 a.m.-1 a.m. Work. I feel like I have very little time to take care of myself, not to mention my marriage. The kids and the job get 95% of my waking time and energy.
I miss X's 7 p.m. bedtime at least 2-3 times a week. I miss K's 8:30 bedtime at least once a week. I never wanted to be this kind of mom. There are days, like today, when I only spend about half an hour with X (not counting time pushing him in the stroller) because he wakes up late in the morning and I miss his bedtime in the evening. K seems to need extra mommy time since starting kindergarten, even though he loves it, and he got upset yesterday (Sunday) when I spent half the day at work and X tackled me as soon as I got home, when K wanted to have one-on-one time with me.
I understand now why women with kids leave large law firms in droves. Even if I work part-time, the culture here is not going to change. I will still be invited to the evening meetings, and people will still stop by my office at 6:30 expecting me to be here. Officially maybe I won't have to be here, but I feel like it will be a constant struggle of setting boundaries and yet trying to keep getting work so I can maintain my billables. It would be so much easier to just work somewhere where everyone expects that they can get in touch with colleagues between about 9-5 (ideally more like 10-4, to leave room on either end of the day).
I talked to JW about going part-time anyway. I was thinking about still working five days a week, but leaving early twice a week so I can pick up the boys and we can have dinner as a family. He was not enthusiastic about me getting a 20% pay cut. Even if he were on board, I'm not sure if I'd be ready to pull the trigger immediately. But if something has to give, it seems like this should be the first thing to try. It feels a little scary.
Anne-Marie Slaughter's infamous Atlantic article resonated with me so much in part because I felt like she was giving me permission to do what I needed to do without feeling like I was failing or would never be able to get back to where I want to be in my career. But she also asked why we have to choose between having challenging work and a reasonable amount of time for our personal lives. The structural changes she proposed haven't happened yet, so I feel like I need to make that choice.
I've interviewed for a few in-house jobs, but they seem to offer large pay cuts for hours that aren't much better. Two colleagues who recently left said their in-house jobs will be 9-5, so maybe those jobs are out there. I like the responsibility I have in my job. I don't want a "smaller" job.
Sometimes I think I'm unbelievably lucky to have this job. Aside from the hours and stress, I actually love my job. I like the substantive work. I like the people. I like the firm as a whole. I love that clients call and ask me for my advice, and they pay me to tell them what I think. That is exactly what I wanted when I decided to go to law school. I don't know if I would be able to find the flexibility I have here in other jobs. If I can get all my hours in, nobody cares if I walk in at 10 a.m. or leave for an afternoon errand. And of course, the salary is great and helps justify the hours. But I don't want to make as much of a tradeoff as I'm making now.
I've quit jobs before. I know that once you walk out that door, everything that seemed so important just goes away. All those documents you drafted, the people you worked hard to impress, the hours you put in... it just becomes a line on your resume. It's hard to keep that in mind before you make the decision to leave, though.
It's been particularly bad for the past few weeks, and sometimes when I'm at a low ebb in work-life balance satisfaction, I think that if I just stick it out past this stressful time, it'll get better. But when I look back through my blog archives, I've been saying the same thing pretty much for the past three years. Things somehow feel different now that K is in kindergarten. I really want to be there to talk to him and hear about his day. I want to see my baby for more than an hour. Heck, I want to have time to shower on a regular basis.
I don't know. The end of a stressful project, leaving early one afternoon, a day off, a vacation. They make me feel better about my job and feel like life is manageable. But I'm starting to think all these are decoys.
Ditto. To everything. Except that I don't LOVE the substance of what I do, so there is even less reason for me to stay. I have nothing helpful to say except that you're definitely not alone. Thank you for posting honestly. I hope you find the right solution for your family!
ReplyDeleteMy biggest concern about going part-time would be getting part-time pay for full-time work.
ReplyDeleteYou have indeed been unhappy for a while it seems. Are you a person who has "status quo bias"? how have you made other big decisions in life? is the pay cut such a big deal given you will have another class year bump coming up?
ReplyDeleteSo sorry things are so rough right now. It seems though that you give WAY too much (even on a normal day). It's good you like what you do but when it starts to make you miserable, I say start to look at all your options.
ReplyDeleteI was where you are last summer. Just like that, I packed up my bags and took a "smaller" position. I didn't like it. Every minute dragged on and I was bored. Eventually, being home more with the kids couldn't even make the job better. And I went back to a similar (although better) job.
So, I guess what I'm saying is that you're right to be picky and not want to downsize your job. But, you may be at a tipping point where you just have to find some other option.
Good luck! I hope a great opportunity comes along.
A few additional data points. First, the senior associate who was on a part-time schedule in my office quit about a month ago because, in practice, "part-time" meant a pay cut without a change in volume of work. Maybe that could be avoided by negotiating a better deal up front or having better boundaries. Don't know. Not optimistic.
ReplyDeleteSecond, I spent the summer working in-house (middle market, healthcare industry, private co.) and watched a 9th year from one of the really great firms (Vault 25) get offered the equivalent of a 2nd year's salary. She took the offer and worked at least 9-7pm every day this summer. There was less stress, mainly because there was only one client to worry about, but I'll never think of in-house as a reliable solution to the work-life balance problem again.
I am cheering for you and hope you find happier circumstances soon.
i was also in-house for several months and the job was 9-5 but terribly boring, as CP says. i think the excitement of the job is the tradeoff for the stress. but i also think that work expands to fill the time available. if you take fridays off, you will work less. you'll get staffed on that many fewer things. also, will your firm let you do 90 percent? will the true you up if you work more hours? my firm does both of those things. but it's true, at the end of the day, biglaw is biglaw.
ReplyDeleteAs a part-time 4th year corporate lawyer working in biglaw, I can attest that indeed you will likely be working full-time but only getting part-time pay. I have seen 2 other associates ahead of me try this and quit--they both came back from maternity leave on a part-time schedule and both transitioned inhouse in about 2-3 months after coming back. It's a raw deal. So why have I stuck it out this way for over a year?
ReplyDeleteBecause I'm in the rare position of working 90% of the time for only 1 partner. She knows my part-time hours and tries her best to respect them, even to the point of excusing me from conference calls and turning drafts for me because she knows I take one day off a week and she wants me to be able to do that as much as possible. She knows I choose to be 70% time because I don't want to travel so she allows me to conference-in for every face-to-face negotiation so I never have to hop on a plane. And she'll farm out work to other associates even though it would probably be more efficient if I handled every deal doc, but it would overwhelm my hours. In other words, she bends over backwards to help me stay within 70% hours. However, when things get busy, I'm still thrown into the fire of working 15-20 billable hours a day for a week or 2 at a time. But things are bad only about 4 months out of the year.
Part-time at Biglaw only works as well as the partners care for it to work.
But don't you get tried up to full time at the end of the year?
ReplyDeleteTrued up? Nope.
DeleteReally? I thought that was standard. For me, if I hit 1950 as an 80% ee, I get the 20% as a lump in January.
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