Career dilemma - p/t f/t city lawyers and other issues

[tigger15]

I am a city lawyer in a reasonably niche area which has decentish hours (by city standards) but is unpredictable on occasion and I am finding it increasingly difficult to make everything work.

I have been working full time since return to work a few years ago following the birth of ds. In that time I've had quiet periods and manic periods. I've also had the opportunity thanks to a lengthy secondment to see the attraction of working in house.

Dh is in another profession with better hours and generally supports me (partly because I'm still the higher wage-earner, partly because he's a very supportive dh). However, recently owing to pressure at work for me, health issues, problems with another interest we have as well as the general irritations life sends it all feels like its falling down. My view is that dh has a better chance of making partner both in terms of years and % because he works in a firm with a very young partnership and they are very supportive of him and giving him opportunities to develop business. My firm has very few female partners and generally partnership is made at about 6-10 years further on from where I currently am. In addition, since I work long but not ridiculous hours I am already considered something of a lightweight. Dh pointed out that the amount of time he is having to spend on keeping everything going when my work gets manic means that he cannot devote sufficient time to furthering his career.

So the question is what do I do?

I had been intending on making a flexible working application to work 1 day a week at home as I thought I would have a better chance of getting this through my non-family friendly firm than a request to cut down days. However, although this would alleviate one particular problem and mean we would have someone around at home one day a week to sort out the general irritations it would not give enough flexibility to really assist dh.

I'm mixed about going in-house and not entirely sure that I could find a part time position or if I'd have to start working and then see if it could be reduced. The principal issues which concern me are less money, less status owing to be a support service as opposed to where the action is, and whether I'd be cutting off the possibility of re-entering private practice at a later date if I wanted to. I do prefer the work in private practice but the hours on my secondment were just so much better.

So what should I do? I wouldn't say law is the be-all and end all of my life. I enjoy what I do but do not feel I am benefitting the world greatly. I had a worrying medical diagnosis 2 months ago and am quite keen on doing something to leave a lasting impression which neither of the options above really do. OTOH they both to varying degrees pay our mortgage.
I'm also mixed about the idea of sacrificing my career for dh's but like even less the idea of him sacrificing his for mine particularly given the odds stacked against me.

Grateful for people's views.

I do sympathise with your problem, DH has broadly similar work issues (actually not helped by the fact that I am SAHM, as all the breadwinning pressure is on him)

I guess the thing you haven't mentioned in your post is whether you actually want to be a partner in your current firm? Can you see yourself doing that?
(And is your firm an 'up and out' type one?)

I'm not sure that I do want to be a partner other than for reasons of innate competitiveness and not wanting to be seen as inferior. My firm is not up and out judging by some of the people still there but generally if you get to 10 pqe and you haven't made partner and have realised your chances are limited you move to one of the other firms in our practice area (which is really niche). I've seen the sacrifices people have to make to get to partner and I don't think I'm prepared to do that to my family. Dh's firm has a young partnership who nearly all have young families and they are very family friendly as a consequence plus their definition of service is not as all encompassing as what my firm considers it (e.g. no blackberrys, no expectation of working whenever client says jump). My ideal job is something with status, money and flexibility but obviously one or more of those will have to be compromised so the question is which.

It all makes sense to prioritise dh but I'm just mixed about the whole idea and how I'll feel if either he doesn't make partner, we get divorced (not likely atm but nothing's impossible), or something happens to him which means he can't work.

I'm also really not sure how to go about switching to part time. My great plan on returning from my secondment was that if I decided I really didn't like/couldn't hack private practice I would leave it 3 months (which is now) and then inform the partner I work for that nothing personal but I'd prefer to be back in-house and ask for assistance in finding a position because the secondment(without saying more) was at one organisation out of many similar ones who are our clients and who are looking for people like me to fill positions. That way I could leave on good terms as they would be keen to have me instruct them and avoid recruitment agent fees which would please whatever organisation I joined. I'm not entirely sure they'd be prepared to recommend me to work on a part-time basis but who knows? I'm also just not keen on revealing my hand although I suppose saying I wanted to switch in-house on any basis would be doing this.

Thanks for responding it's helpful to get me to spew out all my random thoughts.

tigger15 I know exactly where you are coming from. It is such a wrench trying to work out whether it is more soul-destroying to carry on multi-tasking (and not quite being 'good-enough' in anything), or to give up and wave goodbye the opportunity to get to the summit.

Especially when the half-way house of either part time or in-house doesn't appeal...

1 don't think a day a week from home will achieve anything at all (except save the commute?) and I guess the partners might simply assume you were slacking off anyway. Cutting down your hours to 80% probably won't work either - if they are not supportive of family life in general then you will be shouldering more of the household burden and still getting the client calls coming in on the blackberry - Not much benefit when you realise you've just sacrificed 1/5 of your salary (not that I am against flexible working, but it does need to be supported properly).

TBH I think your best option is not to move in-house (sounds like too much of a compromise to you) but to look to move to a more family-friendly firm, and request to do 80% in such an organisation?

FWIW I know someone from a mgaic circle firm who got disillusioned with work-life balance and they moved to one of the big 4 as a legal consultant. worked well for them...

Stillsquiffy - thanks for your response. The trouble is I don't think there is any private practice firm that is genuinely family friendly. I have a friend in one of the smaller ones (who try and sell themselves on how much more flexible and nicer they are than the big ones) and she has just moved in-house because amongst other reasons they aren't actually flexible in reality. In my view the small firms have a harder time offering flexible working because they have less people and facilities to pick up the slack. None of this is helped by the niche area that I'm in. There are about 3 big firms in the area in London (one of which I'm at and the other I trained at) then 3 which used to be big and are part of big firms but the teams in my area aren't so big any more and then 10 smaller practices. The people in my firm who do part time tend to be women further on than me (I had ds quite early by their standards) and all I can see of their life is they do as much as I do on 5 days but get paid commesurately less and are not considered serious at all.

I'm not sure it's the move in-house that I find too much of a compromise but more the whole idea of sacrificing my career for dh's. Maybe if I can get over that I can look at it more clearly.

You seem anti in house and seem to see it as a poor substitute for pp. It is hard to say without knowing your niche but there are some great in house jobs with good career prospects as well as mediocre and poor ones. Part time though is hard to get straight off. Very few roles advertise as pt.

How about being a professional support lawyer in your niche area, whether in the same firm or in the other firms you mentioned.

You will get a discount off fee-earning pay but the trade off is you are far less likely to be contacted on your blackberry. You could do that full time or part time.

All things to think about. I guess I've got to take the jump and do something about it.Which is possibly the hardest part as things haven't got quite bad enough that I feel it's imperative to move, they're just fraying round the edges.

What a lot to think about, it must be making your head spin!

I am not in law, but have seen a few articles on various law firms (prob not as niche as yours)trying to make it more appealing "up top" for women - Eversheds were in latest Personnel Today talking about it.

Is it worth trying to think beyond the immediate. Where do you see yourself in 5 years? Any more DCs?

I wonder if it is worth finding out how flexible they are prepared to be. Obv I have no idea about your co, they sound like they won't be...but unless you ask you won't know? I was really surprised when my org basically welcomed me back on "my terms".

Do you have access to a coach or mentor? Might be good to thrash out a couple of sessions with somebody to really work out what you want to do.

Good luck!

Tigger, I would just speak to a few recruitment agents and start testing the job market.

Your options at this market are informed as much if not more by what is available in terms of jobs than what you want to do.

All true and thanks for the comments. I've been trying to get pg for over a year. It was mainly because I was desperate to have more kids but I also saw this as a graceful way out and I could then reconsider my position post dc no. 2 when I was sure things would be different. Man plans and God laughs. I had a mc last summer and have now been referred for secondary infertility. So my views on where I'll be in 5 years are somewhat overcast by that.

I think I'm coming round to the view that I need to sacrifice in the short term in order to ultimately win. At the moment dh has a far better chance of succeeding in his area than I do in mine (plus he really wants to) and if he can't take up the opportunities they will be gone. I on the other hand (if I did decide to go for partner) would find it much easier when ds/dcs are older and I'd have more time to devote to it and am clearer about whether I really want it.

So I've left a message with a recruitment agent and contacted someone who has all the gossip on what's going (and offered to help me a few months ago) and will see what there is. If that doesn't work then I will have to try renegotiating with my firm for part time but I am not optimistic about this. I know the women who work part time, how hard they had to fight for this, how much further on they are than me and how they are valued accordingly i.e. not at all. Given my firm weren't prepared to be flexible to my initial informal proposal on working one day a week at home when we allegedly have a full remote system and phones which can be transferred to another numbers, I'm not optimistic. They are male dominated and in the view of one colleague who just got married, once you're married they assume you will have babies and leave and your husband will support you irrelevant that most women in the firm are making more money than their husbands.

I've seen the attempts of certain larger firms to make their partnerships more female friendly, but it hasn't hit my area yet and I'm not sure any of the ones claiming diversity are really achieving it.

So thank you for all your thoughts and I'll let you know what happens.

It's hard, isn't it?

The only thing about your solution that worries me is that you sound competitive (good) and you see yourself as investing in your DH's career.

You know the odds of partnership - even in a smaller firm - so I'd just say don't feel frustrated (either personally or with your DH) if your DH doesn't make partner

You're being realistic about what p/t means - never known anyone for whom part-time has meant more than a career cul-de-sac

Good luck

Thanks. Being competitive if he doesn't make it I'll just see this as leverage for me getting a turn.