Calling lawyers: what is there between City and no job?

[AmIKiddingMyself]

Evening all,

I'm using an alter ego as have boss-might-read-mumsnet paranoia . Could really do with some advice from the lawyers out there.

So, I'm at a large City firm (non transactional dept). We are planning DCs soon (am 31). My hours vary from reasonable to very long. DH does even longer hours. Post-DC, I'd ideally carry on litigating, but in a job that lets me leave early every night. Or at least nearly every night. Happy to accept huge pay cut and much less "prestige" (whatever that is).

Does this exist? Or do smaller/cheaper firms demand the same amount of flesh, just for less pay?

I would love to hear your experiences and insights. If anyone can point me in the direction of this Nirvana I would be most grateful.

Many smaller London firms have litigation departments with seats that need filling. The kind of firms that are fine with you leaving at 5.30 as long as you do your job well. I'd stay where you are now and then move at the end of your maternity leave, personally.

Hey crumpette thanks - that's interesting to hear, would suit me! any pointers as to which firms?

Hi it depends if you want to become brain dead or do something you find interesting. I work in PI (which is not what I thought I would want to do) but it is very family friendly, most PI/clin neg/employment type set ups will have a proportionately large litigation team and you would be snapped up even with no experience in that sector. Salaries are not magic circle by all means but for litigation team with just a year or two's PQE you'd be on 40 upwards plus bonus. 70 plus bonus is currently salary for head of lit team, the bonus is performance related but v good. They don't expect you to work through the night, if something urgent crops up in a meeting, they have no qualms if you say 'er, sorry no way I have to be with DCs' so in that respect you'd have a secure job with no anti-child pressure. You may slowly die of boredom, but there are still big prospects in smaller firms, head of litigation/department, partnership etc and smaller firms are frequently needing to look for expansion into other areas so it won't be too stagnant. I'm slightly paranoid that my team leader could be a closet MNer so I won't disclose but places like this and this are friendly, and although not prestigious the quality of life if you have DCs makes it worthwhile.

I would say though that smaller firms sometimes have rubbish maternity benefits- some have no packages at all so you'd be on statutory pay only, so definitely start applying for other jobs once you are off on maternity leave from your current firm. Childcare is obscenely expensive but child and working tax credits can pay a surprisingly large amount of nursery bills, but be sure to put your name down very early for places (ie while you're still pregnant!!)

If you were interested I could let you know when vacancies arise on the litigation team of my firm..2 have just been filled but they do crop up. It's a pretty small outfit though, under 150 staff next to the Gherkin, but I would advise you to wait until you're on leave from your current firm. HTH and good luck

I would say gls/cps is a good option. I was a litigator and moved after I had my son (had been locuming during pregnancy after return from working abroad). The money isn't as good, but the advantage is the 6 months on full pay maternity leave (no qualification period, and only requirement is to work a month after end of leave to avoid paying back the maternity pay) and the pension. Also, you can often work out a part-time working agreement and work flexibly. I don't tend to work outside 9-6 and find it fairly easy to get flexi-leave for unavoidable kids concerts etc. Also find that the work is interesting. Not sure how much recruitiing is being done at the moment, however!

I work 30 hours a week in a smallish firm in a city 25 miles from London (commuter belt and DH works for a city firm). The partners and my clients totally accept my hours and work round them, often reminding me that I should go home and pick up the kids from school.

The money is NOTHING like a city firm, but more than I would earn if I changed careers, I like the small firm atmosphere without the excessive billing pressure and target hours crap, the work is interesting and far more varied than the narrow specialised city practice I started at, and it fits in with family life. Yes I do occasionally bring work home but when I do it is acknowledged that I am exceeding my hours and as they know I get the work done they are very flexible when required.

Most of the people I work with escaped from the City, we are not all thick as bricks with straw coming out of our ears

Thanks Crumpette, Bells and Batteryhuman (love that name by the way)

Crumpette - ooh, PI. dunno if that would suit me. but looks like both those firms you mentioned also do some other types of work... will have a better look.

Bells - wow, those maternity benefits sound a-mazing. Maybe an area for some of those "efficiency savings" the parties keep talking about. (Just kidding ). Actually, the public sector is sounding more and more appealing. But from the TSol and GLS websites it looks like they are not recruiting (unsurprisingly perhaps). maybe one to look at again in a year or two...

Batteryhuman - will have to try to work out where you are talking about! and investigate greater london/commuter belt firms generally. I think someone (Ribena?)
mentioned firms in SW London earlier.

Thanks again everyone for all the input. It is so helpful to hear truthful experiences.

Another thought for the move-now-or-later decision:

Up to you obviously whether you take your maternity package, come back for six months and then beetle off. You have every right to do that. But if you do that, someone, at least one person in your firm, will be arguing your case to work part time, or fixed hours, whatever for your six months. When you then beetle off (and it will be when not if in your case) it makes it that much harder for the people who try to support working parents at your current firm to win support for the next parent.

fridayschild

I do see what you mean. The thing is, I doubt part-time/fixed hours are likely to be an option here (lip service is paid but the reality is likely to be different ). If I thought I could get that here I would probably stay!

There is, of course, the wider point that any woman who has kids, takes maternity leave, then leaves their job is making it harder for other women - because they are adding to the statistics that say future female recruits will be expensive and likely to leave. I am very aware of that and do to some extent feel I'd be "letting the side down" if I left... but ultimately I will have to do what's best for me and my family.

Nope - as an employer you want people to come back FT or not at all. Especially in a city firm I do not buy the line that young women are not recruited because they are fertile. There is a certain amount of cannon fodder at a junior level, assumed turnover of staff, and maternity is just one way of achieving that. If you lose too many mothers, and fall behind your peer group, then that's a concern, but maternity leavers per se is not.

It's the initial hassle of settling someone back in, rearranging the workload to accommodate part time hours and then she ultimately deciding it's more hassle than it's worth and jacking it in, which makes it harder for other women, and indeed men, who want to work flexibly. Someone who goes off, has a baby and is never seen again is very easy to deal with, if you are the employer. I have two of my best assistants on maternity leave at the moment. One has a commute from hell and is not coming back - this is bad news but at least I can deal with it, allocate other lawyers to her clients and generally make the best of a bad situation. The other one has said she is coming back, and I believe her. I'm not sure she'll be back when she says she will, and I'm not sure she'll be back full time. This creates uncertainty and it's difficult to plan. She's great, so we'll do what we can to keep her. But there's no denying it's a management headache I could do without.

I am entirely confident you will do what you think is best for you and your family

thanks fridayschild. Very interesting to hear from the boss's a partner's perspective.

I suppose that is largely why I can't see my current firm truly making the effort to agree a part time/fixed hours arrangement with me. I can see exactly how much of a headache that must cause in such a 24/7 culture.

How do you find it works having part time or fixed hours lawyers working for you? do you think it works well for them? do you/other colleagues suffer as a consequence?

I'm in-house and am NEVER going back to private practice. I work sensible hours, my work is varied and interesting and (to my constant joy) I don't have to spend any time at all on time-recording, marketing or billing. Nor do I have to justify to anyone my desire to see my husband in daylight hours or to book a weekend away without wondering if it will be cancelled at a partner's whim moments before I leave. Bitter, moi?

From my perspective, I got everything I could from life as a City lawyer. Some lifelong friends, thorough training, some fantastic exposure to good-quality work, support from a team of PSLs, and a very nice salary. But bits of it made me miserable, and by the end, the combination of misery and ludicrous working hours made me ill.

my dh also moved out of London and works in a smallish firm just outside. His hours are much better, there is less pressure and it is still reasonable money. He is a partner, but has lots of women working flexible hours. I think it is very unusual in his firm to be in the office past 6pm. He does miss London sometimes, but this is outweighed by the fact he gets to see the dcs much more. He is a litigator.

(I posted further down the thread about the joys of in-house working! Still the best option imo, but dh's salary allows me to work/pay for childcare and have a comfortable life).

OK I know nothing but the in-house legal guys I work with seem to have family friendly hours? I work for one of the main mobile operators... but most of the work they do is contract stuff so I guess that won't be as interesting.

Fixed hours do not work for us - my team does transactional work.

We can do PT working but it is not very PT, IYSWIM. 4 days a week is ok, just about, and I have someone who does 60% hours but is in the office 4 days (2 short days). 9 days out of 10 means no-one knows you are PT at all, frankly. The PT lawyers need to do long hours sometimes just as the FT lawyers do. Someone who is resistant to working hard will gravitate towards the work where the hours are more predictable, which may not be the big sexy deals. I would say that this is the case regardless of whether they are FT or PT TBH: if you are a born slacker it makes no difference! But that approach obviously impacts on your promotion prospects. I do work quite hard to make sure that my PT staff get the support they need - one woman has a trainee nominated to support her, for example. So the trainee gets more client exposure and a chance to handle harder drafting than normal, and the woman in question is not always dumping on some hapless trainee, she is helping the trainee gain valuable experience. Trainees have told me with a straight face that they have really appreciated this opportunity and as far as I can tell they are sincere about it. Someone else would rather monitor her blackberry obsessively at all times. They also need a decent secretary who can exercise judgement to ring on a day off and say "There's an email in and you need to look at it right now".

The women who have found PT working really hard are the ones who have decided that it is always mummy who does the pick up in the evenings, and always mummy who takes time off at short notice when baby is ill. This gets really stressful for them and all around them. I think your career will only progress post children if your DH is ready to do some child care too.

As a team we do not do a lot of burning the midnight oil or weekend working and I'm sure that helps. I can quite see there are some places where things would be different for anyone who wanted to see their children on weekdays. And (showing my age here) recent developments in technology, like the Blackberry and being able to log on remotely, mean it is a lot easier than it was when my DCs were born.

Fixed hours have been requested, but never agreed, in my team (or firm, as far as I am aware). It just doesn't work when the full time people don't only work their contracted hours.

If a full time person is contracted for a 35 hour week but, conservative estimate, works 42, then a part time person who is supposed to work 20 and does exactly 20 gets an unfair deal.

Also, what the hell happens if your hours are up and something urgent needs doing? You have to give it to someone else - probably someone who is already busy.

Part time is better because, if we have to, we pick up things on our day off, etc. Fridayschild is right, part time doesn't mean 2-3 days a week either! Sadly.

I'm just about to (tomorrow - help!) go back PT (3 days) to litigation team in London office of regional firm, in top 75. They have agreed to 8.45-5.15 hours (ds's nursery is 8-6) obviously I will have to do some stuff in the evenings at home, take calls on days off etc but as long as my hours in the office are manageable then I'm fine with that. Pay is not great at all compared to bigger firms (at 3yrs pqe I'm on 52k which will be prorated) but they do make a lot of their "work/life balance" - have to see how it works in practice! The female partner in our team has 3 dc and is usually out of the office by 6pm latest while still managing to be one of the highest billers in the firm. So I would say that there are firms out there below the "top tier" who can offer shorter hours etc so you should investigate further.

Also, depending on your area of litigation, have you considered in house at one of the regulatory bodies? I did a secondment with the legal team of one of the medical regulators and the hours were very much "public sector", very flexible & family friendly but some interesting work, plenty of advocacy opportunities. Of course the pay wasn't great but the people I worked with were lovely and it is certainly something I would consider if going back to my current job PT doesn't work out.

Thanks again guys. This thread could turn into a mini lawyer career guide!

Conclusions so far from what you have all said:

• Even if I could agree a part time deal with my current firm (), I doubt it would suit me or them especially well - would require a lot of running from one thing to another, blackberrying when away, etc and I'm not sure it will be worth it to me (financially or self fulment wise) once kids appear. I hate saying that - it feels like such a cop out!

• Moving to a lower tier firm is hit and miss - all depends on the exact firm ...

• In house sounds ideal, if I can find an in house litigation position in London. Easier said than done unfortunately.

• Public sector sounds like a good option as well, but suspect they are unlikely to be recruiting much over the next couple of years.

The mulling continues...!

I'm in house and we have litigators. These jobs do exist but competition for them is high. One or two of mine do less than full time (4 days I think, nothing less seems acceptable/doable) but I don't know how well that works for them. But could I just point out though that being in house is not necessarily less pressured or less hours. You may be able to exercise a higher degree of control on your workload depending on your role but clients can still be demanding and pushy and expect constant availability particularly if they want you to carry out a lot of work to keep down external legal fees, but without the resources and back up that come from being a high end law firm. Basically you need to pick your role and your organisation with a lot of care but there are some great roles out there.

One other point I'd make that in my shop at least there are no senior legal management who aren't FT and I think it would be bordering on the impossible to get promoted to team head or above (here at least) if you wanted not to be FT. All of that said, my hours and work-life balance are much better than when I was in private practice (they couldn't have been much worse) and I wouldn't go back.

One other thought, the FSA are often recruiting for litigators to go into enforcement and I've seen ads out very recently. Money is better than most other government style jobs but will still be a sizeable drop.

Axis, I agree - I know plenty of in house lawyers who work very hard! I'm not necessarily looking for part time though, just more sensible hours... this does seem more achievable in-house, no?

The FSA is something I'd considered previously (know a couple of people there) - I might have another look. Thanks.