City solicitors who have gone back PT - does it work?

[Murtette]

Hi

I'm coming to the end of my mat leave from my job as a solicitor in a transactional dept in the city and am thinking of asking if I can go back part time. Have any of you done this and, if so, does it work or do you just end up checking your blackberry and doing con calls from home on your day(s) off? How late do you end up staying in the office on the evening before your day(s) off? Are you still expected to work weekends? And how do you arrange childcare to cover this?

To a large extent, I personally don't see how you can do transactional work successfully on a part time basis so I'd be really interested to hear any success stories.

TIA

Hi

I don't do transactional work and I am a litigator so it might not be directly relevant, but I went back 4 days. I find that I bring work home to do at nights and on weekends to keep up, but I did that before children as well. My caseload hasn't been reduced so I am effectively doing 5 days work in 4 days for 4 days' salary. Lots of things happen on a Friday when I am not in the office.

However, having said all that, I love my day off and wouldn't go back 5 days for the world. I take my DS1 swimming and completely switch off. It is great to spend time with him on my own which I wouldn't necessarily get at weekends when DH is around.

DC2 is expected in May and I am planning to have the full mat leave and return 4 days per week again.

I personally think part time work is what you make it. If you accept that you never go back to 80% of the job, that you will always feel like you are catching up, and you set your work and home boundaries and don't let them slip, then it can really work out. I guess a lot of it comes down to your employer and how supportive they are of you and family friendly working in general.

Hope that helps.

What sort of transactional work? How senior are you?

I think it works better if you are on the sort of transactions where there is a large team, less well if you are the one specialist on a transaction (e.g. the one pensions person, or one propery person).

I also think it is easier if you are relatively senior and there are people below you doing the 'grunt work' whilst you are not around. That way, you can often do a very short call or email to dish stuff out.

Also think really hard about days and other ways of flexible working. What are your busy days (Friday off would be a complete no no in my area)? Could you do other flexible working? I know that short hours aren't a runner when you don't work your contracted hours, but would home working be an option? It might be possible, for example, to do four days by starting at lunchtime two days a week and doing those two days from home (deals rarely getting around to anything vital until at least 6pm in my experience .

I am not transactional, but know people in my firm who are and who work pt. Mostly 4 days a week. You have to be realistic and expect to be disturbed, but, as Tomlin said, you also have to be ruthless about setting your personal boundaries. A trainee doesn't go amiss and a good secretary is vital!

Oh, and forgot to say, do you do a lot of your transactions with the same major clients. If, for example, you do a lot of private equity work with the same funds, they get into the groove of you not being around Monday mornings or whatever. It's harder if it's always a new team.

I've worked FT with children for the last 6+ years, but I've employed a number of people who've worked PT - commercial property in a firm with very little corporate support and few American clients.

4 days works with some determination; 3 days is too stressful for words. I'd avoid Fridays as the day off.

The determination is both from you and your employer. Really it's up to you how much you check your Blackberry on your day off. You have to accept, I think, that there are times when your day off is not really very much of a day off at all, just as some weekends are not really time off. Are you planning to work PT for a while while baby is small, or truly have you never been interested in the greasy pole of law firm promotion, and if this works will be perfectly happy as a senior assistant?

In terms of the employer, we try to make sure the PT lawyer has a good FT secretary, who can exercise sensible judgement about when to call your mobile and say "you really need to look at the e mail from X which has just come in". People also find it helpful to have a nominated trainee who will deal with their files on their days off - this is great experience for the trainee and makes the PT feel they are helping someone by dumping active files on them, as opposed to asking favours every week. Obviously it needs to be a halfway competent trainee...

We took on someone from a top 15 firm who had been working 4 days a week for 5 years before her major client even noticed. She did a bit of work on her day off but not much. We've also taken on someone who's been working 4 days a week (apparently) for 15 years, but in fact she works far too much on her day off and IMO would be more accurately described as FT with one day from home.

The solicitor who found it hardest to work PT for me was the most junior one - she went on mat leave at 6 months PQE. I think that's a reflection on her seniority (and to a certain extent personal circumstances) rather than on her, because she was a pretty good lawyer. She's left the law for teaching now.

Baby's father does need to do some childcare from time to time if PT working is to work for you. Is he up for this? And you need some form of back up plan for childcare at short notice in emergency. I have a nanny; one of my partners in employment law who works 4 days is able to call on her mum.

It is fair to say that a lot depends on your client base and the partners you work for. Are you going to be the first PT in your group? When DS1 was born I was the first mum in a fee earning role in the London office so FT was enough ground breaking for me, but since then we've had a range of people work PT here, and the good ones have been promoted.

HTH

It can work, but it does require some flexibility. I work in a transactional department in the city and take one day off a fortnight - there are other mothers in my team who do a 4 day week, and it seems to work for them. The advantage (to me!) of my scheme is that if I have to work my Friday off (which, realistically, you can expect to happen when the transaction's particularly intense) I take off another day instead once the deal's completed / calmed down - I think it's harder to catch up on a 4 day week.

You know yourself that it wasn't a 9 to 5, Monday to Friday, job before you went on maternity leave, so unfortunately "part time" in our world isn't the same as "part time" to normal people!! You may well still have to work at weekends sometimes, and you will probably still have to keep an eye on your blackberry. So it's not ideal, but if you want to stay in a transactional role, it's better than not having any flexibility at all!

On the childcare, do you mean specifically weekends, or other times?

In terms of general childcare, I think you either need a nanny/nanny share, or a partner who can be primarily responsible for pickups. I don't think having to get out the door for a nursery every day is do-able.

My employment partner seems to manage to do pick ups from her CM, though I agree with Ribena Berry, I have no idea how.

And of course you don't have to do ALL the pick ups or all the drop offs. You could do a mix of both with your partner, either set in stone, or on a week-by-week basis.

I had a nanny share with DS1, with a couple who were lawyers. One unexpected bonus of this was that it gave me another option with childcare - we had mates who we saw almost every day (because we were sharing a nanny) who understood perfectly how tricky it could be to juggle law and babies, and were happy to help us with DS1 if needs be.

Ah yes, but partner = greater capacity to throw at a trainee and leave, do calls in a cab,etc. People put up with that from the partner!

She wasn't a partner when she first started doing that, she's been promoted since. I wonder if it's partly a function of being in the HR world, where clients are often PT themselves. This might leave you with only the true emergencies to handle after bathtime.

An employment lawyer will be along in a minute to tell me I'm wrong....

Ha ha ha. I'm employment!

It's ok. Not as bad as transactional, but you couldn't get out to a nursery where I am, you need that extra 1/2-1 hour grace you get for finish times with a nanny.

I think that the thing with employment is often pure volume rather than timescales. Also, if you're on a transaction, you're the employment person a lot of the time, so no backup.

Depends on the client as well, in smaller companies you might deal with the MD or FD or whoever, which throws away the 'HR world' entirely. They get to it as the last thing on their list - round about 5:15 is normally when the phone goes with something which has to has be done today!

My experience was the same as TomlinTowers, worked 4 days a week for about 6 months then went back FT as I resented the pay cut really. I am on mat leave with DC2 now and plan to go back full-time, not even to try part-time first.

You will be e-mailed and phoned on your day off in the same way as you probably are in the evenings anyway at the moment.

Why I like working FT:

• no change in perception of colleagues, still in the running for promotions
• less hassle from colleagues if I'm off or out of the office for medical appointments or looking after ill child or taking child for injections
• pay cut for part-time work is not proportionate to reduced hours (though having said that, higher rate taxpayers lose less than 20% pay per day off)
• my day off, although nice, was not that much fun as DS still naps a lot most afternoons, tying me to the house and ended up doing housework rather than having quality time with DS most of the day
• I ended up trying to do all the housework on my day off which upset the balance of sharing with DH, my doing not his really but feel more equal when we are both working in similar ways.
• I don't feel guilty about sending out laundry when necessary etc.
• we have really nice family time at the weekends

When working 4 days, childcare was not a problem though as DS was in a big nursery which we could generally book an extra day with if work needed me to change my day off, and this didn't happen very often. I could also do conference calls in the afternoon when DS napped, although I didn't generally need to.

BTW I could get out of the office to do nursery pick-up every day, I can do this because:

• office is v near station, nursery is near the station at other end, quite a short commute so can get taxi home for
• most of my clients are West Coast US so conf calls happen after DC in bed
• remote office connection works well so can work on docs etc. after DC in bed

DH drops off in the morning.

When I go back this time, with 2 DC, will be going for a nanny though as makes good sense with 2.

Thanks! This is really helpful as you've suggested lots of ways of being flexible which I hadn't considered. I think I'm going to need to be innovative as a couple of women have previously tried being PT in the firm and it hasn't worked out. These women had left before I joined so I don't know the details of why it didn't work.

I think what I might suggest is doing 3 whole days and 2 half days with those half days being from home (our remote access is excellent so that shouldn't be a problem) and, on the days I'm working from home, also be offline between say, 5 and 7, so I can do bed & bath before logging on again. I'll then get a full time nanny so that if I do need to work those mornings, I can. DP has more control over his work so can hopefully try and organise his work so that he works late on the days I'm working from home.

Its a good point about being ruthless and making sure that I have a good secretary and trainee. There are obviously going to be times - like immediately before a completion - when I'll be in the office pretty much 24/7 but I'm optimistic that for the rest of the time it should work for both me, the rest of the team and clients.

I understand what many of you have said about resenting taking a 20% pay cut when you're not actually doing much less work but if it means I can spend some extra time with my LO without feeling as though I'm skiving, it may well be worth it. I don't like the idea of just seeing her for a few minutes in the morning and before bed, especially in the weeks when I have to work weekends too.

Back to childcare - I think I would have to have a nanny as pick up from nursery would be too stressful. Any suggestions for weekend childcare? Its not that unusual to only find out on a Friday that I'm working all weekend and if that happens to coincide with a weekend when DP needs to work, then I don't know what we'd do - LO is a bit young for proofreading yet! Both sets of grandparents are several hours away and whilst I wouldn't mind dumping LO with friends for an hour or so, I don't think I could do that for several hours...

TIA.

You can get temp nannies from various agencies so weekend childcare is possible that way, I've used www.emergencychildcare.co.uk/index/index.php before and they supplied a nice Australian for the day, she was actually from the agency Tinies but via that website. Expensive though! DS was happy about that as he is used to being at nursery anyway so has experience of different carers.

For you, what about 3 days nanny share and 2 half days at a nearby nursery when the pick up will be easier - then if you need to do more work on your half days you should be able to book in extra time with a nursery LO is already used to. This would be a lot cheaper than booking a full-time nanny from day 1!

Nursery has also been a lovely way for DS to make local friends and DH and I therefore have too, we almost always see families we know whenever we go to the park these days - don't be too quick to discount it, we have found tons of positives for our very active and sociable little boy.

Interesting: I'm not City but an employment partner with a regional firm. I'm FT but I work a lot from home, make major use of Blackberry, etc etc. It works just about and I always manage to fit in parents' evenings, school plays etc but I'd struggle to work regular PT hours as you just don't know what will happen when, and I think it would be worse in a truly transactional dept where the old 4 am completion meeting is a fact of life (fact of male corporate lawyers having a pissing competition life, generally, IME).

The advantage of employment work isn't so much the HR side, it's just that you're dealing with quite personal issues so often can say to a client - yes, we can talk tomorrow but not until 11 as I have a school assembly etc to go to, you know how it is. I'm also quite old and bossy, which helps.

I think I'd be looking for more home working just to cut out commutes, which is generally very manageable and you're accountable via time recording so can dispel arguments about how you're actually spending your time. Also - good point about when your work is most active: if you tend to be busier later in the day, can you arrange a later start time etc?

Good secretary and trainee is vital.

I haven't had the nerve to say to clients that I have to take DS for immunisation or whatever, I just tell them I'm not available that day and leave them to assume I am meeting another client. It's not been a problem though.

Yes, good point: make sure your secretary always says the right thing - ie "she's in a meeting", "she's engaged right now" and says exactly when you can get back to them. You can give the impression of being in stonkingly important business meetings when in fact you're at some tedious PTA coffee morning if you work at it. Nothing worse than the secretary who makes a fuss about you working from home and making it sound like a major intrusion for the client to speak to you.

I do fess up to some clients, doingthelamb, but it depends who they are, and what I've postponed!

Reading these posts makes me much more optimistic about making this work. Phew! I couldn't think of anything else I could do if I didn't go back to work and I don't think I'm cut out to be a SAHM.

My secretary has always been excellent at fending off clients when necessary and got a lot of practice when I was suffering from morning sickness, something clients definitely didn't need to know about!

DoingThe - I guess the problem I would have with having nursery as standby cover is that if the call was only going to last 30 mins or so it would be a pity to have DD in nursery for the whole morning. I think I need to do some sums and work out what the difference would be. Of course, the money saved by using a nursery could then be spent shopping during the rest of the time that DD was in nursery

With nursery, you can pay for a morning but only use 30 mins, it's not school, they don't have attendance criteria! Although you don't want to unsettle LO so in practice for a 30 min call you might leave them for an activity + lunch or whatever, you would know the nursery's routine.

The thing is, we are a new generation of working women in these types of jobs so have to find out for ourselves what works, things like Blackberries, remote office connection and call forwarding mean that flexibility is easier now, it's just our male colleagues with SAHM wives don't seem to try it out!

Totally agree with that - you have to make things work without making a fuss about it, so that the male colleagues who think being at the desk from 8-8 or whatever don't actually notice that you're not there physically.

I find that if I'm working from home, lots of emails all day help to give the impression of presence, and also emailing later in the evening, if you can bear it, helps with the internal politics (if you're mailing at 9pm, then you must have been working til then, even if you've been doing baby bedtime for a couple of hours really).

Don't assume however that it's male colleagues who are the most difficult - I've found that it's often senior women lawyers who are worse - especially those without children (and some who have). Pick your battles.

Nurseries where you can pick up at 6:35? All the ones by me shut at 6. Hence it being a complete no no to have a nursery place.

Murtette- if you're thinking of doing half days and using a nursery plus nanny share, I would suggest trying to make it consecutive days. You will find it easier to get, say, a nanny wed-fri than for odd days scattered across the week, IME.

If you're thinking of a full time nanny, that does give you extra options for part time working. For example, is there a lull between transactions? Could your half days off become full days during that time? Is there a lull in August you could exploit? In some ways it's a bit of a rough deal as your employer doesn't pay you on days you wouldn't have been busy anyway, but it can work...

How frequent is it that you both have to work weekends? In employment I'm lucky that it's normally "review these amendments" or "do this call", so I'm not normally going into the office and DH never works weekends (other than the odd "I have to review this report or prep this meeting"). The frequency probably determines what you need in place. There's emergency nanny agencies, some nannies will themselves work the odd weekend for overtime rates (particularly in the run up to Christmas shopping or summer holidays!), some nursery staff will do the odd moonlighting weekend. Finally, if you have a nanny share with similar professionals (or know any from NCT or other local groups) you might be able to cobble together the odd bit of cover in return for doing it for them.

DS' nursery is 7.30 am - 7 p.m. although DH usually drops DS off at 9 as he starts work later than me. It's the only one in the area that doesn't shut at 6 or 6.30 p.m. I don't understand who can get to nurseries or childminders by 6 p.m., surely a 5.30 p.m. office finish is normal!

I digress ... Murtette, if you go for a full-time nanny won't this be a bit weird for you on your half days? I would personally not fancy sharing care with a nanny when spending quality time with DC, unless I had triplets or something and had to.

Murtette - I'm a senior corporate lawyer with 2 DC - returned in september after second maternity leave. The deal I'm on is fixed hours in the office - Mon to Friday 8.30 to 5.30 - I then (though dont get paid for it) log on in the evenings when the kids are down. I am not meant to work evenings or weekends but I occasionally have to do con calls/meetings beyond my fixed hours. My DH works long hours in the city too. We have a brilliant nanny - been with us for over 3 years now - who is flexible and will work late at short notice if need be. She will also work weekends if need be (paid extra for extra hours worked of course). May be worth investigating this when looking into nannies. It doesnt work brilliantly but it does work most of the time - however the pay off is that I dont get the quality deals I would have been doing otherwise and I will not make partner on the deal I'm on. However while my kids are small it's the best I can do. I quite like the idea of one day off every fortnight but when I floated the idea I was told no as it wouldnt work for the transactional side of deals (as tend to be put on several at once and being senior will end up leading them).

Thank you so much for all of this advice. All of the people who I've met since I had DD have normal (i.e. 9 - 5) jobs so don't really understand where I'm coming from and I find it hard to discuss with my other lawyer friends as its impossible to do it without seeming to comment on their childcare & work/life balance arrangements, both of which are very sensitive areas!

Tiger - that's a good point you've made about battles. I've spent the time since I read your post trying to anticipate how everyone in the office would react. I can see some being supportive but there will certainly be on-going battles with others.

DoingThe - I agree that the nanny arrangement would be a bit weird. I'll do some research into the local nurseries but think that, given the flexibility I need and the fact that it will be difficult to have to do extra time from home if DD is ill and unable to go to nursery, a nanny might be the only option. I was thinking that on the mornings I was at home, I'd probably be out & about with DD (swimming etc) so might not actually be in the house much with the nanny when she's not in sole charge. I did suggest to DP that he could give up work but he thinks we'd still need a nanny as he doesn't think he could look after DD on the golf course!!