Return from mat leave gone wrong

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I need some advice. I'm to embarrassed to talk to anyone in real life other than DH.

Before going on mat leave, I was a very high performer, far exceeded all my targets and was looking at promotion. When I got pregnant, I worked extra hard as I was conscious i didn't want to lose out (for context). I came back from mat leave in June and it's all gone horribly wrong. June coincided with our annual reviews meetings. So in my meeting I asked about promotion next year (June 2026). Everything was going well until that point, I was getting lots of praise. The mood changed. The senior partner went on a rant as to why I'm not prepared to promote. Ok....Then 2 things happened:

1. I struggled a bit in the first few months to put in all the hours needed. It was an adjustment, I wasn't actually doing anything wrong or causing problems but I couldn't do overtime or go the extra mile. My baby wasn't sleeping, so I wasn't sleeping, and then he got extremely sick and ended up in A&E in week 3. I caught up and was back to my former self after the first 2-3 months. Some managers were very understanding and said of course there will be an adjustment period. But some people decided I wasn't reliable enough anymore and took work off me, so now I don't have enough work to meet targets.

1. This senior partner has made it his mission to point out every single mistake I make. 90% of the time, they are not mistakes at all or they are not mine. I was just sat down this morning for a half an hour lecture about a mistake a paralegal made and how it was ultimately my fault as my instructions were not good enough. The paralegal has not made a mistake, and neither did I. No mistakes were made whatsoever. He completely misread an email and is making it up. I cannot emphasise how completely made up it is.

I stood my ground but he ended the meeting saying him and the rest of senior management are keeping a close eye on me as my work is not up to standard. I spent the rest of the day in my office teary and wobbly (nobody saw anything, I have my own office).

I'm devastated. I don't know what to do. Do I stick it out, redeem myself and hope to get promoted in a few years? I should move on, but I feel I would be throwing away years of hard work and built up goodwill.

My DH is concerned they're looking at firing me altogether. The market is slow and the firm has overhired in the last 18 months.

To be clear, I won't be making any claims or going to HR. It's career suicide. The senior partner in question holds a huge % of equity in the firm as well so there is no point.

OP I’m neither solicitor nor accountant, but trained in one and dh is in legal. It’s a tough market especially in London right now. Firms are cutting back AND most significantly, realizing that they can’t follow through on what’s been promised. It sounds like this particular partner has decided your most useful to the firm as a worker bee (not promoted, but doing as much as possible at a desk).

what’s the precedent for getting your book back after maternity leave? Is there anyone else in firm you can ask that’s had to do this? Guessing no one’s going to give up a happy (you did all the hard years of building the relationship) free earning client willingly? It will be that you may have to chose selectively and ask those working directly to start including you. Alternatively are there other partners you could approach and explain that you’d like to rebuild, and ask if they could share work with you?

I know this is a common pattern for women high in corporate, technically it’s return to the same role but the ability to be promoted from that role has been stripped by shared workload while out on maternity leave. Hence people take short mat leaves often; to reduce the gap/impact. It’s absolutely not a fair structure and I really feel for you.

what does strike me about your messages, is that your not angry at the firm, but at yourself. You’ve done nothing wrong: asking re promotion when you’ve spent likely nearly a decade working to be acknowledged, shouldn’t have been a risk. As you’ve said - in your line of work it’s expected to ask. Having the expectation of being promoted was also not wrong based on what you’ve shared about timelines and role.

we’ve all been parents balancing work and limited sleep and it sucks. Having to prove yourself, with a demotivating Snr partner at the time must have been (and must continue to be) really difficult.

i very much doubt this is a reflection on your or your work - but on your company and their needs. If you separate that - what to you want? Stay or go? Have another met leave and go then? Make your next steps work for you.

OP I’m sure you have but keep a time and date log of all communication that seems a bit off. Legally they can’t ask you when you are getting married / plan on having a baby etc. so please log all these comments too.

It will make you feel more in control with the little part you can control.

The idea above of speaking with a recruiter is a good one. Take care of yourself. It absolutely sounds like it’s the environment that’s toxic - and that’s not your fault.

I agree with this 👆

Funniest thing I saw was an excellent female solicitor work friend of mine who had been treated like shit by the partners who got a senior in house counsel job at the teams biggest corporate client. Oh how we laughed at the male partners volte face from sneering at her to wining /dining and smarm offensive during her notice period… 🙄

Are you planning on having a 2nd at some point? Because if you are, I’d start TTC now. For 2 reasons really:

1. Fuck them, they can fork out for 2 enhanced mat leaves in quick succession if they are going to hold you back anyway, and
2. being pregnant then protects you from your DH’s fears.

Whilst on mat leave number 2, I would be building networks with strong legal recruiters and talking to all my personal network about potential openings in their firms.

I know the legal profession is pretty shit generally for mothers but there are some pretty large firms that are now quite progressive.

It’s time to move on. Keep your head held high!

I'm sorry OP. I think you know the answer is to start contacting recruiters. It will be difficult to prove anything, but it is still so common in law. I had similar "light switch" behaviour from the senior partner when I got married, as his assumption was that I'd be immediately looking to get pregnant and was therefore not "loyal" to the firm. Male colleagues always seemed to be getting promoted around the time of significant life events - old fashioned views that they would be suddenly super-loyal and hardworking as they were the providers for their growing family.

Please work now on your mental health. I let my treatment really affect my confidence, even though it really was nothing to do with my ability and 100% sexism. You will find somewhere that values you, but it won't be this firm.

Please join a Union or contact ACAS/pregnant then screwed as their treatment of you is wrong and illegal. Whilst you may ultimately decide you have to leave, at least do it with a potential settlement under your belt.
Make a note of all the behaviour towards you to support your case.
If you know they have over hired, you are being targeted to be got rid of 'on the cheap' - please fight back and don't let them continue to erode your confidence.
Good luck

OP I think it's very likely you are still a good employee if you were doing well before mat leave, in which case whilst changing firms is daunting you may feel a huge weight has been lifted and go on strength to strength - I moved with babies and it was very scary but the best thing I could ever have done. You are in a new chapter of your life now and going somewhere with that from the outset, get through the baby years without comparisons to how you worked pre-babies could be liberating.

are you a perfectionist type and feel ashamed for being less than perfect? If so I hope you liberate yourself and find your anger. They are not acting fairly

Are you blindsided by this idea of promotion and it’s clouding the reality? It sounds like they are pushing you out the door but they must have reasons to being unhappy with your work.

Please get yourself some coaching or a mentor. My professional colleagues bullied me after mat leave and it killed my self confidence. You deserve better!

if you think you could get the work in, become a Consultant Solicitor. I’ve more than tripled my income by doing this!

Bloody hell, as someone who has worked in the public and third sector this all sounds brutal and inhuman.

I agree on looking around- because from what you have written it does sound like they are looking to exit you. And even if they aren't or don't, maybe you'd feel like your card is marked. It won't be a fair fight.

You need a plan. I get why you aren't going to go to HR etc but you need a story line because you need to survive this with your confidence intact. A storyline that you rattle out internally - eg I wouldn't be telling anyone you had no sleep or about baby milestones. I wouldn't be sharing how you feel with people internally or that you are worried etc etc but you know this. You are switched on.

Oh I hope she made him squirm! "Oh really, Bob? How kind of you to say; I always got the impression you didn't think much of my drafting/negotiation/strategic skills! tinkly laugh"!

I had a similar situation when I returned from maternity leave. I’m a GP, and in my case it was a new partner who’d started while I was off, when the senior partner had retired. She was young and dynamic, and clearly saw me as deadwood that didn’t fit in with her visions for the future.

I was a single parent with limited family support, so whilst I had childcare covered for my working days, I couldn’t be flexible with late evenings and weekends. She kept organising important meetings at random times, putting me in the position of saying I wouldn’t be able to attend. She drew up a spreadsheet of everyone’s workload, to try and show I was doing less.

I was furious. I chose to just keep my head down and get on with my job. There was no way she was driving me out. That was 20 years ago now, and since then my life has obviously got a lot easier, while she’s had 2 very high-needs kids, and has found juggling work and parenthood very difficult.

This absolutely does happen in the public sector.

This. I was doing well in my job, but when my new boss found out I was pregnant, he suggested I get a job elsewhere (a few weeks before he'd told me I was on track for promotion). After I came back after my first baby to find someone who worked under me had been promoted above me in my absence. When I was on maternity leave with baby two, my boss rang me and told me that when I returned to work, I'd be starting again from the bottom. He was clearly trying to make me resign.

Do I stick it out, redeem myself and hope to get promoted in a few years?

No, sadly this senior has got it in for you - for whatever reason and their ow no good will or loyalty - its to there

Start planning your move out of their, its toxic and will harm you

When this happened to me, I was devastated. I was so shocked by my boss's response to my pregnancy that I had to take a couple of weeks of sick leave to deal with how much it affected me. I think, more than anything, it was the shock of realising just what a raw deal women have in the workplace. Up to that point I'd been utterly naïve about what women are up against.

So sorry that you are going through this, I also work in law and can be such a ruthless environment.

From what you say - and particularly the bit where you say that they overhired - i unfortunately think that they are trying to get rid off you without firing you. Basically create such a bad environment that you decide to leave from your initiative and save themselves from a tricky situation where they try to fire you and you then cain raise discrimination claims.

I would start quietly documenting everything that is going on…

I used to be a BigLaw partner. This story sounds very familiar.

At the moment firms are under pressure because they massively overhiked junior salaries post-covid and now the economy has taken a downturn they need to cut costs to fund their earlier greed and stupidity. The usual pattern is that they will find targets to push out or sideways into non- fee earning roles (knowledge or compliance usually). The targets are almost always women with young families ime.

The reality is that once your card is marked it is difficult to turn things around. This is because the complaints they have about your work are not genuine so there is no way to remedy what they are complaining about. The best thing to do is to look to move, unfortunately.

Get out. Go. They’ve marked your card, unfairly, but trying to bring them around will be both impossible and soul destroying.

Personally I would seriously consider the downsizing option for a while at least. I’ve got lots of friends in law and for those that have tried to stay fee earning in private practice it has gone to shit in 99% of cases. People in-house have fared much better, and people in the civil service seem to mostly love their jobs and still have a decent (albeit not filthy rich) standard of living. You only have your kids for a short time and there’s nothing wrong with plateauing for a few years and then switching things up when they’re older.

If you won’t make any claims to HR then can you ask for some mentorship or similar. You’ve clearly got the partners back up and you can either decide to keep a low profile either whilst you look elsewhere or hope he moves into bullying someone else and forgets about you. You can use the mentor to try to ‘learn’ from the specific experience with the paralegal ie clear your name by showing the partner just grossly missunderstood the situation rather than you were at fault. But as you seem to be aware this might not necessarily raise you in his books but I reckon it’s about getting an alliance with someone of influence if you’re really concerned they’re trying to fire you.

but also explore your options externally.