AIBU to ask how any barristers out there cope with their work + family?

[user1488204592]

Hi all-

Long time user but new account for this (couldn't name change because I can't remember password!) I would really love to become a barrister (definitely not crime) and am working towards doing so.

I love the self-employed aspect coupled with the ability to work from home. I only want to have a small practice, I am not overly ambitious and am not the type to try for silk or anything like that. Ideally, I want to be able to go into chambers once every couple of weeks and complete the majority of my work from home, is this at all possible?

Could any ) barristers give me the real inside scoop? Is it as flexible as I think? Will I be able to spend time with my young family and work as a barrister?

So AIBU to ask what it's really like to work as a barrister with a family?

Thanks

This is such a lovely thread. I expected it to be full of doom mongering like a lot of threads about careers in law - most start with 'don't do it'. This is really encouraging yet realistic.

I have worked in house in a regional firm with solicitors and they certainly have an excellent work/life balance. The majority worked part-time, 9-5:30 without any expectation of them to work outside of those hours. It was the same for each department with the exception being the family department, they worked longer hours due to courts being a long commute.

For starting a family early on in your career, I'd recommend qualifying as a solicitor in a regional firm.

I think the firm named upthread is sufficiently large and with offices all over so probably won't identify the solicitor/poster.

I agree that as a junior lawyer you will be more at the beck and call of the Partners/Senior Associates you report to so it may be worth qualifying and establishing yourself first (so that the firm can see your worth and want to keep you and therefore be more flexible).

Smaller high street type firms may be able to provide you with the hours you require but not necessarily the quality of work you'd want. If you went to a mid to large sized regional this gives more flexibility than working in the City with decent quality work with good pay scales but they will expect you to put the hours in (although not at City level).

It seems strange that someone who clearly has the intellect to consider how best to find a career in law and which route would work best for a future family still seems to think it is ok for her DH to say he won't be part of the childcare arrangements!!!

However the fact that you are already thinking about having children probably suggests that you are quite keen to start a family rather than get 10 years pqe behind you before having kids. Good luck with whatever you decide to do.

My DH is a barrister (commercial litigation) so well paid, but he works six days a week usually until 10 -11pm. Having children is really tough, he's hardly ever there, almost missed the birth of DC2, worked while I was in labour with DC1. It's a grind, I've found it quite lonely and wouldn't describe it as compatible with family life.

Our children don't have the best relationship with him and are overly reliant on me, it's also almost cost us our marriage.

Although Adams I have worked with men (not women) who will spin thigns out at work to avoid the rigours of bed time and even to avoid their wife. I once took a late plaintive call at work from a partner's wife - is my husband still there (I was the only person in the building). He was ... ahem.... with another woman although I didn't think it was my place to say. (Everyone knew at work of course except his wife) Actually probably better in your case that work might be the mistress rather than another woman or man.

I am glad people are finding the thread positive. Law is fun and interesting and often highly paid. Now my youngest are teenagers combining work with family is dead easy by the way (so anyone with youngsters just hang on in there and it will get much easier) and in the Autumn for the first time in 33 years I will not have a child home. It's been a very long haul...although rather nicely as the youngest leave I have a goregous grandchild and its mother es is a lawyer who works and yes that is working out fine too. Mind you my mother worked - supported my father for 10 years whilst he did a physics and then a medical degree and then qualified as a consultant in the NHS and her mother always had to work as she was widowed with 9 month old baby (my mother) in the 1930s when her husband fell from a ship's mast at shipyards. At least the risks of work these days are for many of us less than that... and indeed my grandmother's father dug coal. I know which coal face I'd rather be at - a legal one reading interesting case law any day.

Solicitor married to a solicitor (although different fields).

I think it very much depends - my experience of barristers (I'm in Commercial Litigation) is that it does not sit well with family life / child care responsibilities as it is so unpredictable. There is less Court work in my view now, and I expect pleadings / papers are more manageable but certainly on the "big ticket" litigation where barristers are used heavily, solicitors expect you to a certain extent to be available whenever you're required and certainly in the run up to and during a big trial, pretty much 24/7.

I think law is a really difficult profession to sit well with family life - depending on what you want. I think if you work anything less than 4 days (and pick up work / be available on your 5th day even though you're not obliged to be) you will not progress. If you're happy to sit back then that's fine, but certainly striving for senior associate / partnership, unless you were on the cusp of it before maternity leave, will be impossible on part time hours. I'm almost 20 years into my law career, lots of our friends from law school days / who we've worked with throughout our careers are testament to this.

And then I think you need completely reliable and flexible childcare (nanny / grandparents) and a partner who is willing to do their fair share of pick ups / collections / looking after the children in the evenings / weekends if you need to work.

I think law lags behind many of the other "professions" for work flexibility and female recognition unfortunately but its gradually getting better. There are (limited) ways around the work / family / progression balance, but my experience is that it is very difficult for most.

namechanged - what are you /those you know who are senior in your career doing to change this? It's shocks me (looking in from an in-house role where my counterparts on the other side of transactions are senior partners/department heads in big regionals) how backwards law firms still are. It shocks me somewhat how little progress has been made. What are women in law firms doing to change the culture?

We've stopped outsourcing work because it is so easy to recruit talented lawyers because we offer flexible working. So law firms are losing work to in house because of their resistance to change ...

They try - give a day off in lieu if you've worked all night but it's hard to change the nature of transactions. I deliberately start meeting at 9am not 5pm which obviously has a huge impact on whether you end up working when you're tired out.

I don't agree it's backwarsd to give clients what they want and earn a lot of money for everyone. Those without children often are happy with the work which they love (my work is an enjoyable to me as anything I do including hobbies perhaps except sex) so it's no problem to do a lot of it. I could easily live on much less money but I don't choose to.

There are huge numbers of people who want to earn a lot of money in commercial law firms so if someone doesn't want to then that's not a problem and also recruiting more women than men works very well as y ou need many fewer senior people who become partners so if more women than men marry a richer spouse and drop out that immediately solves your problem of a glut of younger people coming up for partnership I suppose. Of course I would prefer we reverse the statisic of 20% senior women and instead have 80% or even 50% and let us hope that comes.

Thank you so much to everyone who had replied, this has been really eye opening and has helped me to think about what to do next in terms of a career.

Please don't think badly of DP, he has always been very supportive and I've done a poor job explaining our circumstances. We decided, together, that I will do the lion share of childcare and wondered if a career as a barrister could fit around this.

I've decided that I'm going to pursue all that I want to and when the time comes to have children I will vary my options as necessary, including staying at home until the children are of school age.

I'm so grateful to you all for your advice and insight, thank you for taking the time to help me with this.

I'm a Solicitor Advocate but now work in house in local government. Money is not great but the work is interesting and dynamic and it has been very family friendly. DH is a consultant so that has a degree of flexibility in it as well which helps.

If you can get established then it is easier to negotiate when and how you work.

I would be wary of having kids with someone who views your career as disposable though.

There is a barrister in Ireland who has 10 children! She's "just" a junior counsel though and her husband is a SAHD.

A good friend is a barrister in the UK and has three children. She had them very close together in her late thirties/early forties (she had a family history of successful late pregnancies but this is still a gamble for anyone). She works approx 2 days a week in London, 2 days in our regional city, and (usually) one day from home. She does the school drop-off about twice a week. Pickups are all either the childminder or her husband (who also works full time but has his own company so is very flexible).

You can't really do the "lion's share" of childcare and be a barrister I think. You could get amazing childcare, or you could do close to 50% if you were relatively senior at work and only had one or two children close in age. But no, I think if your partner does not wish to do any of the caregiving you would struggle massively.

It is backwards if you are losing out on work because organisations keep it in house though enormous . We used to send out a lot of work to large regionals and now we do it all internally as we have recruited enough high calibre candidates who want to work flexibly.

Holdmeclosertonydanza I don't know who told you there's a female BL in Ireland with 10 children. There isn't.

never I'm (trying to) demonstrate that I can meet (and exceed) client expectations even though I'm not full time / sat at my desk at 8pm and supporting the women who have made it to senior positions - the more there are, the more there are likely to be in the future. I'm trying but its definitely work in progress

Keep at it namechanged ! And make the point to your firm that they may lose work to in-house if firms don't start to wake up to the way the tide is turning.
I do big, fascinating, at times very innovative transactions and lead a team. Nearly all my team and I work flexible hours/ do some of our work from home. It's totally do-able.

It's rarely us that delay a transaction. In my experience there is nearly always a male partner on the other side who is hardly every available to talk because they are in partner meetings /meeting another client etc etc. It's a misogyny pure and simple that is holding back change. And senior women deciding because they couldn't work flexibly then the next generation shouldn't either.

What does lionshare mean though. With 2 working parents both need to be aware that they need to do something, its just not feasible otherwise.

Staying at home until the children are school age forgets the fact that school offers the issues of getting them there and back and holidays where he will need to step up Im afraid.

I work 3 days and my husband 5, I do the lionshare in the sense that I have done the maternity leave, gone part time and sacrificed to a certain extent career progression. But I still need him to be flexible the days I go in as I cant do drop off and pick up. He needs to take some slack on the holidays as well. Almost all the couples I know where both work there has to be some give and take between both parents otherwise it very difficult.

Also puzzled by the assumption things would be easier when DC at school - wraparound care is very difficult to co-ordinate and school holidays are a nightmare (as most holiday clubs just run school hours, with no wraparound available).

You'd be better of working the long hours when you have access to a full-time nursery designed for working parents, and then scaling back/career break once the DC start school.

"I am not overly ambitious"

You lost me at that point in your OP. If you aren't overly ambitious that will show. Future parenting plans are not the problem here.

I agree with Enormous - from my experience of some of my male colleagues at the Bar, plenty of them give the appearance to their wives that they are oh so busy working in chambers til 10pm every night, but they're really just avoiding going home to take on their responsibilities. I'll often be dashing out of the door at chambers at 5pm, and pass a couple of chaps sauntering in with coffees, who will then hang around the hot desk area chatting for an hour before doing any more work...

Interestingly the most successful male barristers in my place seem to work much more efficiently - the biggest rising star I can think of went to four days for a time when his wife went back to work to ease the load. I can't deny it's a profession which requires a lot of hard work, often at unsocial hours, but there are also definitely choices that can be made as to how that is done and the impact it has on family life whether you're male or female.

That's a good point not . My dad was a barrister (now judge) and almost always came home for our bedtime and then worked again once we were in bed. He had pretty much his own law library at home to enable that (this was in the pre-Internet era!). I still feel like I am back home when I am surrounded by legal text books and journals

Me too Never

I worked last year with a young male barrister on a big case - he was the only one of us with small children. I and the female barrister made sure if it were half term or he had time off booked or was with the children we shared tasks and worked around that. I can be at my desk at 6am perfectly easily (in fact my best time to work) now my twins drive themselves to school. that is not the case for many men and women with young children.

By the way I wanted to say well done to Beached. I am a sibling's children's guardian (although hopefully the sad circumstances that might lead to that being called on will never happen) but it must be quite a thing to take on the children.

I thikn at the bar and as a solicitor when you are few years of experience (and indeed in just about any job) you have much less power and control and as you get more hours done and more seniority it gets much easier to determine things. I can usually decide what is booked when. As soon as school calendars are out a year in advance I write down the concerts and carol service and book nothing on those days.

As ours got older well the first two we still had our nanny at home (daily nanny who stayed 10 years) so she did school picks up too and then had one baby and then a second and brought those to work so when child 3 wqas in nursery school and then full time school she did after schools and all school holidays with our 3 and her 2. We did various combinations of care over the years.

Hi, solicitor here. Lots of great things said on the thread so far.

One thing I want to pick up on though is certainly my experience of looking at contemporaries is that law is not at all forgiving of career breaks. Maternity leave is just about ok but the idea of stopping until children start school is almost impossible. I'm at a position where financially I'm comfortably enough I could stop work for a couple of years but I know if I do, as a woman, that would be career over. And I say that as a part time working in house solicitor. I agree entirely as well that childcare is much easier when they are tiny.

nusername Ann Stapleton. Surprised you've never heard of her, she's often on the radio.

Whaaaaaat?

Your partner has told you that you have to be primary carer because he loves his job (which presumably as a vocation doesn't pay that well?).

Wow. Just wow.

On what basis does he believe that this is how having children works?

I'm the main breadwinner in my family, DP does a 'vocation' which he loves and which involves long hours for not a great deal of money. As the partner who earns the least we have agreed that he will stay at home until DC are in pre-school and will then work around pick ups/drop ups and be the one who takes days off with them when sick.

What about you having a career and loving your job, or has that not occurred to him?

I'm actually quite shocked

Solicitor here, ten years qualified in banking, two DC aged 7 and 4.

I work four days a week and do 7-4 the other four days (with one of those at home, although this has only been rolled out firm wide in the last month). I work at a big firm in a city, but not London.

My DH is self-employed and he does all drop offs (due to my early start) and we share collecting kids if one was ill, although he does more as he can be more flexible.

When we had the first child I was sure that I wanted to come back full time and for DH to pick up all the childcare stuff - I didn't relaise how much I would love them (seriously).

It absolutely would not be doable without having a supportive partner who realises that my career is as important as his. You can say now that you will pick up all the slack but until you have kids you just don't realize the level of slack there is - you will appear unreliable if it is always you having to collect an ill child - especially when they are very small.

I have no desire at present to become a partner so this works for me, I do get asked if/when I plan to go back up to five days but at present I don't - I love the balance I have.

You need to revisit the childcare split with your DH and ask what would happen if you changed your mind and didn't want to pick up all the slack (which it is unlikely you could), would he support that?

I am interested how the 'deciding between you' came about, he appears to have an old-fashioned view, he clearly already had in his mind that his career, as a vocation, is more important than yours.