Help: FT lawyer having a horrible time (long...)

[lemur]

All advice on how to sort my working world out would be gratefully received... here is the thing:

I have a 9.5 month DD, in FT nursery care, a job in the City as a FT lawyer in private practice and two male partner bosses who just don't seem to realise the pressure that the above combination creates. It is Saturday night and I have just had huge row with monster of boss because I have to be in meetings tomorrow (Sunday, yes, I know it is the weekend) and I physically cannot be there as have to look after DD. DP cannot look after DD as he has football match to play(and does not want to be dictated to by my bosses) I have no handy relatives nearby who can look after DD and cannot leave DD with a friend as the meeting could go on indefinitely (i.e until Monday...).

And why am I even worrying about that level of detail, when the point is that the monster boss has, beyond saying "well you are the breadwinner so DP should sacrifice what he is doing" is also making me contact all my childless colleagues in a grovelling fashion to ask them to go to the meetings tomorrow, to punish me.

I am a lawyer and I know that somewhere in all of the S**T that is currently part of my working world, there is something breaching some of my employment rights, but I am not an employment lawyer. DP is away all next weekend and I am supposed to be working then too. I feel like just not bothering to go into work ever again.

DD had Chicken Pox just before Christmas, I had to be home with her for 7 working days and the matter ended up being referred to HR and me having to take unpaid leave because I came into work one day while DP looked after DD and so lost my right to any more emergency leave for the rest of the time DD was contagious (as was not an emergency as I knew she had CP!!!). This gives you a flavour of the way it works at the firm I work at.

I have only been back at work since the end of September 2006 and the gruelling routine of half an hour each way walk to nursery and then to work plus the working on work from 8pm until midnight plus the manipulative bosses (who had/have wives at home to look after kids) being totally unreasonable plus the fact my mum died a month before DD was born and I miss her all the time = I am somewhat losing the plot. That is a bit of an understatement.

So I guess the question is, do I just accept that you cannot do it all and find new, normal, job doing something that will never mean I have to work after 5.30 or weekends, or try and win against forces of chauvinism in the City of chauvinists?

Ideas welcome. Thank you.

Xenia

That's really refreshing - the press are always harping on about working mothers with long hours etc and effect on the children etc etc - its lovely to hear that yours do appreciate what you do and have grwon up to be well adjusted etc - you have an extremely positive view on working monthers which is hardly ever voiced in the national press.

Lemur - you raise an interesting point about how dual career couples cope with their joint obligations to their employers.

DH and I have juggled for the past 8 or so years on sharing childcare responsibilities whislt holding down tricky and unpredictable work patterns.

My view is that unless you see it as a joint responsbility to each other, then it will be almost impossible to make it work.

Your DH is not being asked to support your employers business, he is being asked to support YOU. You have a contract with your employers and an implied condition of that contract, which every lawyer in the City I have spoken to has understood, is that you will work whatever hours are necessary to get the job done. If you are to be able to keep your side of the bargain, then you require the ongoing support of your DH. In my view, if he is unwilling to commit to this level of support, then you are in the wrong job.

The decisions as to which careers we choose to follow, and the impact on each other, is part of the ongoing communications that should be taking place between couples. If both of you feel uncomfortable with the current situation, then you have to sit down and decide what the way forward is. That decision is yours and your DH's to take, it is your joint responsibility to make sure that the needs of your family are met, and to decide whether that is possible given your respective careers.

If you decide it isn;t then you need to look at alternatives.

It is not for the employer to make your child care position work - it is for you and your DH. With the proviso that I do think they should try to accomodate your requests if possible- but to do that in the area you work in, may not be possible.

My conspiracy theory head would say the Martha Stewart, Nigella Lawson, MTV, girls in pink, breast surgery to get your man, whilst pretending it's for yourself, etc etc noughties culture is a cunning plan to keep women at home serving their men sexually and domestically whilst the press selectively issues misread surveys saying children need a mother only (not a father or nanny) in the house when they're under 5. My more objective head says it's unlikely anyone is behind that and the press produces what people like to read. My most pessimistic head says women never wanted to work in offices anyway once they had children although I don't believe the latter is so. I also think a lot of people would really rather not work at all and I can foresee a lot of couples arguing given women often do earn as much as men now, men wanting to stay home as that becomes more acceptable and women saying no I want to.... fun stuff.

Every single article about women and work particularly for the professions is always about them wanting to cut their hours and be at home. I never see articles from professional women saying children have two parents and that they might want to work full time.. (the post below about the husband in the office at home... that's me often I'm afraid - I just so much more love dealing with difficult issues for work than clearing up the umpteenth spill on the kitchen floor (and I have cleared up more kitchen floor spills than anyone on there I'm sure over 22 years of it despite working full time).

There is a visceral urge to be with a tiny baby. I remember it. It's a lovely special feeling. For some parents it doesn't die, even when chiildren go to school, even when they go off to university the mother can be bereft but I felt able and willing to go back to work quickly and I didn't feel the bonding was spoiled or the child affected. She woke a lot at night so I felt like I had her every hour at my breasts actually at first except the blissful peace of the working day, chance to get away from that feeling of being "over touched". I can't think of a better way to describe that feeling.

I can see the influence. I was talking to my brother about this - his wife is at home with their babies at the moment. He is a feminist too and was talking about the example his daughter will have who assumes men work and women don't. My daughter of course don't see that. In fact one was incredulous to see her friend's mother basically serving domestically her husband and 3 sons on holiday. Wow what an anachronistic site - men idle and women preparing food for them. Why do some women tolerate that?

Soapbox, I was just about to post along the lines of your post, but you have done it so much more eloquently than I would. I agree. Lemur's DH is not supporting her employer, but supporting her.

I also echo what you said in your post - which is what I think I said in one on my earlier ones - which is the only predictability about the hours of a City lawyer are the unpredictability. It is that very reason that deters a lot of people with small children from doing the job. It is factored into the pay, which is why some people choose the less pay/more predictability route. But it doesn't mean the job can't be done by women with children - and the more of them there are, the better everyone's conditions will gradually become.

There are also strategies and guerilla tactics that can be employed to give yourself the best possible opportunity to maximise time at home with children/minimise time in the office/ensure you are not in the firing line too often when the weekend work comes around. And there has been some fantastic advice on this over the last few years from Soapbox, Issymum and Mrs Wobble in particular.

I've been lurking sporadically on this thread and puzzling over the issues it raises. As a former 'Magic Circle' lawyer and now, as an in-house lawyer, a consumer of their services my view is this: If my internal client is breathing down my neck about a large and urgent deal or a particularly nasty piece of litigation, I may choose to instruct a Magic Circle/ top 20 law firm. We will get hit by a humungous bill but the quid pro quo is an expectation that the law firm will throw as many lawyers, night or day, weekend or weekday, as we need to get my deal done/litigation sorted in our timeframe. If the law firm can't or won't, we will simply instruct another law firm. It is unimaginable that the partner in charge of the matter would ring me up to tell me that a meeting has to be delayed because of failed childcare arrangements. Death or serious illness maybe, but not domestic difficulties. I don't think the "forces of chauvinism" are at work here as the same treatment is meted out to male lawyers trying to take a long-planned holiday, childless lawyers wanting to spend Christmas with their family or gay lawyers looking to attend an important event with their partner. These are the forces of brutal commercial reality.

On men stepping up to domestic duties, one of the best pieces of advice I've received recently is to think about your family like a company, sort of Issymum Inc. It's not just about paid work or childcare, a whole slew of stuff is needed to keep Issymum Inc. afloat - paid work, childcare, food shopping, cooking, administration, DIY etc. Provided Issymum Inc. and its individual members are thriving and DH and I are each putting the same amount of effort into the "corporation", it doesn't really matter who does what. This has been a particularly useful concept when I have wanted to do things in my career (like relocate to the US) which, while great for me personally and for the Issymum Inc. revenue stream, are detrimental to the corporation as a whole!

But Issymum in truth you don't care how the magic circle law firm meets your needs do you? It is up to the firm to reshape or reshuffle things so that your needs are met. If they can do that whilst still allowing flexible working and valuing their staff then all the better.

Are you really saying that you think they cannot provide the service that is needed and continue to be a family friendly organisation?

I agree with all of you, soapbox, Anchovy, jura and izzymum.
If a client is paying me a fortune to keep me in school fees, nannies, desert islands and skiing holidays etc then they can even wake me at night. It's a clear bargain. I'm happy with it. Of course I'm lucky I love the work (usually) too. Obviously to attract the best staff firms have to offer the right benefits whether it's emergency nanny/concierge type cover or sabbaticals for the gay, exhausted or whoever.

In our marriage I think we saw it as the "Inc" idea. It was our family asset, both of our work and over nearly 20 years we each accommodated to the other when that was necessary, if I were working abroad or he was away with work, not that either of us did often work away so that may not be the best example but certainly in terms of deciding what had priority when.

Each putting the same amount of effortin bit I liked and I felt uncomfortable reading the he gets to sail at weekends but I can't sing in the choir in the week. That's seems more like the typical husband getting his free time. Can that be evened out by the same hours spent sailing at weekend being given as free time to the her to do what she chooses? I don't know. You can't even everything out exactly anyway over the years.

Anyway it's easier if you're married. When the other half disappears it's harder even at my stage and it's the one thing the courts won't force - they'll order contact, they'll order payment of money but they won't order a father to spend time with his children.

drosophila: You're right, I don't care how the firm meets my needs as long as they are met. But in some circumstances it would be extremely difficult to meet them in a family friendly way. For example, if a crunch negotiation session starts at 9am on Friday and goes on until 5am on Sunday, I would need the lawyers who had been working on the deal, to stay through that session. Those lawyers are familiar with the deal and its details and can't be substituted. And the ugly truth is that once the negotiations had finished and the clients had gone back to their families, those lawyers would need to stay on to complete the changes to the documentation.

I think that employers need to recognise that it isn't always necessary for employees to be on the premises to do their work and organise things accordingly. A&O allow their finance department lawyers to work from home one day a week (phone on divert and internet connection) provided that they don't need to physically attend any meetings. I don't see why this can't be applied to lawyers (parents and those without children) who need to work outside of standard hours but want or need to be out of the office. As long as the deadlines are met, who cares?

Issymum would a jobshare work in the scenario you paint?

Also the attached link goes someway to showing the benefits of work/life balance to an organisation/buiness. here

Issymum - you're right about crunch negotiations, but that can be done in a family friendly way. Other than a couple of people (to maintain continuity), it's rare that all advisers would need to attend a crunch meeting all the way through. Drafting can take place from wherever people are and people can dial in as necessary. It just takes a bit of thought.

OK it was a little far-fetched although not inconceivable! I agree that the people who attend the meeting are not necessarily the ones doing the drafting, but often the drafting lawyers are part of the 'deal team' and so if the agreement needs to be redrafted on Sunday, they are the ones who are asked to do the work. Of course, from a client perspective, I don't care where the work is done, so home-working is fine.

Interestingly we did a deal a couple of months ago where two lawyers were job-sharing. It wasn't my deal and I suspect that we put no effort in at our end to make the arrangement work, but sadly the arrangement went off the rails and after a very difficult phone call between the internal client and the responsible partner about the deal progress, the two lawyers were replaced by a single lawyer.

But it's the real lawyers who do these deals and hire them on the thread who really know how it is, isn't it? You stay until the work is done. You accept that. I don't think women and men in these jobs think it should be otherwise. The meetings can last 16 hours, often longer. It's often most efficient to get it all done quickly. Obviously you try sensible things like try to start earlier in the day rather than at 5pm and no one wants advisers who are so tired they make mistakes but the bottom line is that people come to me because I am delighted to have their work and say yes I can do it. Most work is not like this of course and can more easily accommodate flexible hours and as someone said below people choose their jobs sometimes because they know there is more chance of flexibility later.

I accept you don't need everyone there but you often need the key person who is most familiar with it. The thing I worked on before Christmas I think all of us were parents and the lawyer in Israel was 8 months pregnant. Every meeting however long (and they were long) was by phone usually with people in 4 countries. It was very efficiently done but we were working Sundays before Christmas, conference calls at 11pm. No one talked about child care issues. They are apparently paying me today and everyone was nice to work with which isn't always the case.

Droile,I do that all the time,nothing is sacred.My husband works long hours (yes in the law!)and the only way I could keep an arragement like that if he had to work would be to get a babysitter.He does doeslot and if not busy will take his fair share but we are all aware that it is his income that keeps our family afloat.I work to also; quite demanding but not as bad as his and I am the one whose career comes second to the family,as far as possible we work together as a team but if push comes to shove his career comes first and there would be no question of him not fulfilling a work commitment because I had to go to the gym,his clients would probably sack him!

If I needed to go to work on Sunday and DH said he couldn't look after the kids because there was a footie match (or other leisure time activity), I would be very unhappy with him. Likewise, he wouldn't be very happy with me if I said he couldn't go to work because I was having my hair done.

I don't see any sexual discrimination issues here. I do see a husband who isn't pulling his weight.

I can see that a jobshare might be difficult to do - continuity is very important (and most efficient). Of course if you are having one of those long meetings someone needs to keep a handle on it all - IMO this is why corporate partners are paid so well!
The difficulty comes when hours are unpredictable - since no nanny would agree to work the sort of irregular and long hours we are talking about on this thread. If one of you can't be at home in the evenings (e.g. is overseas on business) then ultimately the other will need to go home to take over from the nanny. Of course, my thinking is that the work can still get done - put kids to bed, and get on the phone...

I agree with Soapbox about the team effort thing. I have to be at home in the evenings in the week because DH travels with work but when he's around at the weekend, if I wanted to work he would have to look after the baby. Frankly I would be pretty cross if he wouldn't.

Message withdrawn