The Working Mother Lawyer

More and more women are choosing to enter the professional career work force. And many of these women are finding that they no longer have to choose between having a family and having a successful career. Instead, they are choosing to have their cake and eat it to. The lifestyle of some large firms allow working mothers to succeed at a professional law career while making it to those soccer games and PTA meetings.

Many of the large law firms recognize what an asset women can be to their organization and are making changes in the way they operate in order to lure the best and the brightest of both sexes. This includes dramatic lifestyle work ethic changes that bring family-friendly values into the picture and eliminate a common perception that a lawyer must live for their job in order to be successful at their job. Instead, family-friendly benefits and maternal or paternal benefits shift the focus to the individual as a mother or father instead of just as an employee. This helps to boost morale and makes the lawyer more successful and effective overall.

In order to bill itself as a family-friendly firm, many lawyer offices must devise a strategic network of planning to recruit and retain working mothers. This involves flexibility in hours and work responsibility as well as compensation for leadership and advancement opportunities based on performance instead of simply time logged. Women can be competitive and fierce professionals in the legal atmosphere and their input into a large firm is often under appreciated. These important facets of legal matter are often touted in lists printed in magazines that compare the top 50 or 100 mother-friendly companies across the country.

Being mother-friendly in the workplace is important for other reasons as well. Children that grow up in homes where both parents work and enjoy the jobs they go to every day are more likely to develop a positive work ethic. This helps them to realize that they have to invest effort in their desires and reinforces the ideal that men and women can have professional and personal lives without too much sacrifice on one part or the other. Children that grow up in healthy professional homes also develop independent ideals when it comes to responsibility and long-term sustaining of their personal interests. Watching their parents go to work every day because they want to is helpful and may, in turn, cause them to want to be a lawyer when they grow up too.