PT-LawMom

Roughly three weeks ago, I asked for HR intervention in a work situation that was heaping more stress on my life than I had the capacity to handle. It made it much worse. But, even though I was incredibly depressed by the way things were going, I decided that my life has been spinning out of control for way too many months now and it was time to reclaim control. So I did.

1. Found excellent new job — more responsibilities (paralegal), exciting area of law, more flexibility, little sal. bump, no billable hours!, new position (i.e., not filling anyone’s shoes)
2. Lost 15lbs since January with help of nutritionist/stress/Topamax’s hunger-killing side effects
3. Switched all of my vitamins to super-absorbable (expensive!) formulas so that I can see if I start to treat the underlying problem.
4. Got on some additional meds to deal with the side effects of the meds/intense stress I’ve been under with family/work/health issues… Yes, I know that makes no sense and, believe me, I resisted, but when you are crying 24/7 and anxious/irritable all the time, something has got to give. I decided it was time when I couldn’t stop crying as I was getting Pumpkinhead dressed for school. That’s also the day I really ramped up my job search!
5. Read skirt! Rules for the Workplace: An Irreverent Guide to Advancing Your Career. I would definitely recommend this book (in fact, I think someone else may have recommended it as one of our book club selections and I think it’s a good idea. LOTS of great tips!)
6. Read Working With You is Killing Me: Freeing Yourself from Emotional Traps at Work. Again, a very helpful read to help me gain some perspective.
7. Gave notice at work, with two days built in as time off for myself (and to work on schoolwork!) before starting the new job, and planned a girls weekend away with my Mom before I start the new job.
8. Bought FIVE pairs of new shoes. I don’t do that. I have a weird shoe size and am not a shoe person. But the shoe guy brought out a bunch of Munro shoes, which are so comfy and always fit perfectly. I boughtJuliet in chocolate brown and navy, Lauren in Black Kid, Isabel in Black Kid and these.

So I guess you can say I’m feeling much more on top of my game today and ready to move forward.

As a follow-up to the Ms. JD post on whether BigLaw salaries negate incoming associates’ choices/voices on work/life balance, there is another post about to whom partners should be listening when determining the priorities for changes to work/life balance programs and polices. Again, it appears that the focus is more on the bottom line and Per Partner Profits and that young associates are written off as flighty, inexperienced and irrelevant in the debate.

If you can believe it, the partners that I talked to recently claimed that young associates and law students lack the credibility to talk to partners about our generation’s balance concerns and priorities.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this Ms. JD piece and how you think the legal field will change (or not) in the years to come as we push for rebalancing and time with both our children and parents (and, God forbid, other outside activities).

Lisa Belkin’s latest Washington Post/New York Times crossover article proposes that law firms are getting downright cuddly in response to the work/life movement. They’re doing it at a snail’s pace, but they’re doing it. Maybe by the time I get out of law school in 2011, there will be daily group hug sessions before we all walk out the door at 6 p.m.? Although if Zuska’s January hour’s are any indication, we may all be out of luck.

The Weekly MILS (Moms In Law School) Roundup** is the brainchild of Saramel (retired). It is hosted on a rotating basis at the PT-LawMom and A Little Fish in Law School blogs and is usually posted no later than Monday morning. Next week’s MILS Roundup will be hosted by Butterflyfish.

Does the BigLaw salary eliminate your say in the balance debate? — Magic Cookie
Swamped, and the semester’s just started — Frequent Citations
Slacking, and the semester’s just started — Starting to Melt
Torturing the professors — A Little Fish in Law School
Household budgeting during law school — Diary of a Law School Mom
Everyone’s Got a Cold! — 2L Wannabe and Mommy on the Floor
Oh, the weirder joys of pregnancy — A New Duck
And the obnoxious post-partum treats — Knocked Up (and in Law School) and Peanut Butter Burrito
Never too cold for outdoor fun — Adventures of Law School Mama
Celebrating some much-needed good news — LagLiv
The newest (to us), cutest six-month-old MILS child — Law School Sucks (and So Do Lawyers)
The newest, cutest sleeping burrito baby — Peanut Butter Burrito
The newest, cutest, MILS hairstyle — Merits of the Case

If you’d like to have your blog added to the MILS blogroll for weekly review or would like us to consider a specific post, drop the hostess(es) an email or leave a comment at their respective sites.

**Hat tip to the “original” Roundup — Evan Schaeffer’s Legal Underground and Divine Angst

That’s what we’re going to have to call January at this point in blog terms. I will do the Roundup today, but then you may not hear from me again until the crap stops hitting the fan and I can get back on track (i.e., hopefully by the time it’s my turn to do the the next Roundup). Forget school, I can barely get life together right now!

I dragged myself out of bed yesterday, got Pumpkinhead dressed and off to school and then headed off in the icy cold rain to the post office and grocery store to run errands for my still-incapacitated family member. Then I called in sick to work for the first time this week and crashed in bed. At 3 p.m., I went over to the doctor’s office to find out that Monday’s “nasty cold” had developed into “bronchitis, a left inner ear infection and a sinus infection” with a $100 list of prescriptions on top of the $25 co-pay for the visit. Lovely. The doctor told me to sleep and drink a lot more liquids. I already felt like I was drinking a ton but she said I’m really dehydrated. Okay. Fortunately she gave me some lovely cough medication with codeine and said it was all right to mix with the Topamax so I took some last night after Chapin got home and slept from 7 p.m. until 8 a.m.! I feel quite a bit better just from that.

Unfortunately the blood-suckers at Quest Diagnostics called to tell me they “forgot” to take one of the blood levels (only the most important one) last Saturday so they have to re-draw it. Yes, this is the same thing that happened a few months back with LabCorp when they took my Thiamin level and accidentally exposed it to light. Obviously I have bad luck with blood draws. The bad news is that they have to stick me again. The good news is that they said they will come to my house today to do it so I don’t have to go anywhere. That makes it a bit better. Still no news on the biopsy or the other blood levels.

School-wise, I talked to the appropriate office on Thursday and I do have an accommodations form waiting for me to pick up whenever I can get down there and take to my teachers. I’m not sure what the provisions are, but they should include what we had discussed and may go as far as extended testing time. I’m hoping it will get me out of oral questioning in class. You probably can’t tell from my written blog posts, but I really am quite confused and out of it in person and having a hard time processing things orally from all the medication. It just takes me a bit longer to crank it out. I was also able to switch sections for one of my classes so that I can consolidate the number of evenings I’m on campus to three instead of four. That should hopefully be very helpful in terms of stress load.

Apparently a leading Harvard economics grad student has published a research paper about the effect of women in the workforce on their husbands’ health. The results are not good. My response? The kind of man whose blood pressure rises because he can’t deal with the fact that I’m working, whose cholesterol rises because he can’t learn how to prepare himself a healthy meal without “little wifey” to help, and whose “household-level stress” increases because he has a hard time raising his own kids is NOT the kind of man to whom I’d want to be married. Get the hell over it, men. Not only are women working, but many of us are both successful and outpacing you in the labor market. There may be a pay discrepancy between us and our counterparts at work, but often there is even more of a discrepancy (with us in the majority) between our pay and yours. Step up, help with the kids and the household work, and get over yourselves!

One of the most balanced attorneys for whom I’ve worked was a telecom attorney whose passion was yoga and healthy living. He would do telecom litigation by day and teach yoga classes at night. He made time for the things that mattered to him and set boundaries with the firm. It helped that he was in high demand by the clients, but I think his keeping his goals in sight was also a great way to maintain balance.

Today I came upon the blog of Ken Harris, Jr., a BigLaw attorney turned solo who appears to be striking a balance by competing in triathalons. More power to him! I always enjoy reading blogs by parents who have found away to maintain a healthy balance between career, family and personal goals. His blog looks pretty interesting. Check it out here.

Pumpkinhead seems to be doing a bit better. Still kind of pale and not as hungry as usual, but no fever. I’m watching and we’ll see what happens.

I just realized how little time is left in the semester. I better start kicking it into high gear reviewing in preparation for finals because they will be here before I know it! I got CDs for both classes but my CD player in my car is broken and, even though I put them on my iPod, I’ve just been less interested in having a professor droning on and on during my commute than I was during the summer. In the summer, I listened almost daily, alternating between Sum & Substance cds and exam prep tapes. Granted, there was only 10 weeks in that semester so I guess if I think that way and start now, I’m almost on track.

This has been a completely insane week at work and it’s shaping up to be an insane month. Working through lunch, working late, taking work home, etc. We are definitely in the midst of a fall gear-up which probably won’t slow until mid-December when our foreign clients go on an extended work stoppage going into the holidays. Of course I got a fifth assignment added to my desk this week. She’s nice, but could I be more overloaded? At least they’re doing it to all of us so it’s really not just me. Can’t complain about that.

Our immigration attorney filed Chapin’s appeal on Tuesday. I helped her pull a bunch of cases and then read the doc before it went out and I feel really good about her position and the support to back it up. Ultimately it’s all up to the subjective view of the officer who reviews the appeal, but hopefully we’ll get a kind-hearted one. They basically made assumptions with no factual backup and failed to even inquire in the interview as to the discrepancy. Had they asked one question, they would have gotten all the info they needed to explain it away. Instead they made assumptions and you know what they say about people who assume…

Over at Pundit Mom, guest blogger Lawyer Mama has a fantastic post on discrimination against lawyer mothers with a jaw-dropping example of her own. Obviously I can’t give any examples of this from where I currently work because, of course, there are none to give (love you, paycheck writers potentially reading my blog ). However, I can surely give a example of the effects of working in a “boy’s club” from one of my former jobs.

I don’t know her motivation, nor do I really think this was encouraged by her colleagues, but I worked at a firm where a female partner got pregnant (yes, partner, which is why this is so weird). She absolutely REFUSED to admit to anyone in the firm or outside the firm that she was pregnant, despite her growing belly. She told her secretary not to mention it to anyone, especially during her maternity leave. That “leave” was four days. She was on her blackberry with both clients and partners throughout labor, just mentioning it as an aside to the managing partner, and was back to work right away. The firm was actually really family-friendly so the partners comments weren’t “go girl!” but “what the hell is wrong with her?!?” I still don’t know. I didn’t work directly for her, but it was so odd and I often wonder if she’d worked so hard to make it to where she was that she only knew one set of rules to play by.

One of the things that my years in the legal field have taught me is that the people who have a successful work/life balance set boundaries firmly and often, although they know to ramp up when client needs demand it. Life at the Bar had a great post last week reviewing specific steps to achieving successful work/life balance. I really enjoy reading her blog and others because I think it’s crucial to plan ahead as much as possible. If you want balance, you have to pick a practice area that will allow for it. You have to try to figure out how much you’re willing to sacrifice to get where you want to be and know those boundaries going in. It’s just like any career - if you do a great job, they reward you with more work. This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t work hard and make sacrifices. But you should work hard at the right things and make the right sacrifices. That’s why I think it’s crucial to network with attorneys in your potential practice area who will tell you what they would do or not do and how they might have done things differently.

At my last firm, one of my associates practiced in a niche area of law and one of the firm’s largest clients only wanted him on their matters. Thing is, the associate wanted to practice yoga. A lot! So he came in at 8 and left by 6 to teach yoga several nights/week. This was unheard of, although in reality most of the other attorneys rolled in at 9:30/10 and left between 8 p.m. - 1 a.m. so it’s not much different except for the face time thing. Anyway, several years before my associate had tried to leave the firm and go to a government job. It didn’t work out and he came back, but negotiated with the managing partner to work these kinds of hours in exchange for being available when the big client needed him. Yes, he still had to push back some but he had established his worth and that really helped. Now he’s Of Counsel at the firm and still very involved in yoga, humanitarian work, and raising a young son with his wife. He’s a great role model.