Big Law and Parenting

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:When you need a day nanny and a night nanny to raise your children, what is the point of even having kids?

But once you make partner, and have tons of money , your time is much more flexible (business development lunches, client interaction, etc). Kids are entering older elem and quite capable to travel, take on adventure, help guide them towards building their own life. Plus you will have money to give them almost endless options, they can pursue arts or charitable work and not have to make the trade offs BigLaw parents have to make.

This is either sarcasm, or you are an optimistic 3L. The partners at my firm are in the office earlier and later than most of the associates. After a few years of being partner, they look like they've aged 20 years.

Optimistic. But once partner is like 50, can't they coast on connections and book of business? The relationships and wisdom from experience are their assets, not hours in the office. They still need to respond to clients like rabbits on cocaine, but most clients are probably home for dinner too most nights. They then task their associates to the grindstone.

Hahaha. I used to be in biglaw. I was on a case requiring us to be in the office working full days every weekend for months, and the main partner on the case worked just as hard (probably harder) than the rest of us. One saturday found him throwing a ball with his 6 YO son in the hallway outside his office for a few minutes here and there between work things. It was so f*cking pathetic, I was just done after that.

That's why family friendly firms have unused conference rooms or offices near a park! LOL

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:When you need a day nanny and a night nanny to raise your children, what is the point of even having kids?

But once you make partner, and have tons of money , your time is much more flexible (business development lunches, client interaction, etc). Kids are entering older elem and quite capable to travel, take on adventure, help guide them towards building their own life. Plus you will have money to give them almost endless options, they can pursue arts or charitable work and not have to make the trade offs BigLaw parents have to make.

This is either sarcasm, or you are an optimistic 3L. The partners at my firm are in the office earlier and later than most of the associates. After a few years of being partner, they look like they've aged 20 years.

Optimistic. But once partner is like 50, can't they coast on connections and book of business? The relationships and wisdom from experience are their assets, not hours in the office. They still need to respond to clients like rabbits on cocaine, but most clients are probably home for dinner too most nights. They then task their associates to the grindstone.

LOL, I almost spit out my lunch. Hilarious!

Me too! No, they cannot coast. Making partner means more obligations to bring in business, not less. "Flexibility" just means you can work in more places, not that you work less. And big-law clients are not "home for dinner, too." You're not optimistic, you're delusional.

All the big law attorneys I know have a nanny, and usually a SAH spouse or one with an extremely flexible or part-time schedule. They leave early some nights, which means around 7:00. They also have to work weekends, too. They might take vacations with their family, but they are working during those vacations. They have nice houses and their kids go to private schools, which means that they can't work less or change jobs because their life now requires their income. They make trade offs, all right. For some people, I suppose it's worth it.

[Anonymous]

My DH was a BigLaw partner for 10 years after working 5 years as an associate. The travel and late nights were pretty awful, but he almost never worked on weekends (except when traveling). We have 3 kids and I was a SAHM during that time with help from a nanny. When our oldest got to high school, DH left for a smaller firm with a lower billing rate and more manageable workload. I went back to work PT at that point.

The switch to the smaller firm made a big difference in our lives, but I have to be honest, so did the Big Law income. We were able to save for kids' college and grad school, pay off our house, save for retirement, and live pretty comfortably. Our youngest is about to graduate from high school and DH is retiring. I'll probably work a couple more years to see a project through to completion.

That said, if we had it to do over again, I'd want DH to avoid Big Law altogether. Those 15 years were very tough, and we could have lived in a smaller house and sent the kids to public school. If we'd done that, I think we could still have saved for college -- though not grad school -- and funded our retirement -- though perhaps not so abundantly.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My DH was a BigLaw partner for 10 years after working 5 years as an associate. The travel and late nights were pretty awful, but he almost never worked on weekends (except when traveling). We have 3 kids and I was a SAHM during that time with help from a nanny. When our oldest got to high school, DH left for a smaller firm with a lower billing rate and more manageable workload. I went back to work PT at that point.

The switch to the smaller firm made a big difference in our lives, but I have to be honest, so did the Big Law income. We were able to save for kids' college and grad school, pay off our house, save for retirement, and live pretty comfortably. Our youngest is about to graduate from high school and DH is retiring. I'll probably work a couple more years to see a project through to completion.

That said, if we had it to do over again, I'd want DH to avoid Big Law altogether. Those 15 years were very tough, and we could have lived in a smaller house and sent the kids to public school. If we'd done that, I think we could still have saved for college -- though not grad school -- and funded our retirement -- though perhaps not so abundantly.

If I had to do it over again, I would avoid BigLaw. Looking back on it now, I could have learned just as much, if not more, if I went to the government. But I was a poor kid in a T14 school with lots of student loans and the lure of BigLaw money proved irresistable. I hated it pretty much the whole time, but it took becoming a parent for me to finally break free of it. In fairness, it was BigLaw connections that allowed me to get an inhouse position with humane hours.

[Anonymous]

DH and I were both senior biglaw associates who left a few years ago after having a second child (he went in house, I went to government). I cannot overstate what a huge benefit it has been to rid our lives of biglaw. I am pretty sure that our marriage would not have survived if we stayed there.

[Anonymous]

I'll put in a plug for biglaw, having spent 8 years there earlier in my career. I was a litigator and while I worked hard, it wasn't all crazy all of the time. I generally billed 2000-2200 the years I was there, with ebbs and flows in workload month to month. After having my first child, we put her in daycare and I started leaving at 6:00 almost every night for pickup (DH, also biglaw, handled some pickups as well). Once I got used to it, it wasn't that hard. I commuted on a bus and was always above ground and responsive, we lived very close to the daycare, so I could get her home quick, and then I could monitor email through dinner, bath, bedtime. Once she was down, I almost always logged back on to keep working. I found that as long as you were responsive and gave an idea of when you could get the assignment done, most people were fine. I also found that my concentration and efficiency improved when I had a more finite period in which to bill hours before leaving the office. I had to travel some, so that got sticky, but we have family nearby and relied on them. I had my son 3 years after my daughter was born and started leaving closer to 5:30 or earlier. It was hard and tiring for sure, and I had no free time to myself, but it gave me 2 paid maternity leaves of considerable length, a lot of savings, great experience, and a good name on my resume.

That said, as my kids get older, I hope that both DH and I can be around more and more. I'm at mid-law and still work plenty. I really do enjoy it, but all the tradeoffs in the prior posts are quite real. At the end of the day, I don't think chasing the prestige ("prestige"?) or the money is how I want to spend my time. But, I also freely admit that I didn't have the option. I wasn't on partner track, even before having kids. It may be that I would have made different choices if I had been.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:When you need a day nanny and a night nanny to raise your children, what is the point of even having kids?

Honestly. I know that this is an unpopular DCUM opinion but I honestly don't understanding creating children that you don't see just to chase more money. I feel so badly for your kids.

[Anonymous]

Optimistic. But once partner is like 50, can't they coast on connections and book of business? The relationships and wisdom from experience are their assets, not hours in the office. They still need to respond to clients like rabbits on cocaine, but most clients are probably home for dinner too most nights. They then task their associates to the grindstone.

lmao.

I am one of those not-so-rare sahms to a biglaw lawyer. Due to layoffs, the firms he was working for restructuring, (the place he started is down to 30 lawyers now in their main office... down from over 200), etc, everything has been lateral for years. It is good money, but not "big" money, not by any means. It has been decent money, for some time. Decent enough to sock some away in a 401K and pay down loans while affording DC. Nothing more.

His new firm wants him to push to be partner track... honestly, I do not want this. It sounds like a giant pita. The money he makes now is fine, he's usually home before 8PM and he usually can work from home on the weekends.

I am pushing inhouse jobs at him.

And why don't I work, you ask? Why am I not "contributing?" Because my contribution would be a dead loss if I had to outsource everything I'd have to outsource to make it work. And by that, I mean the simple exercise of picking up my children before and after school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:When you need a day nanny and a night nanny to raise your children, what is the point of even having kids?

But once you make partner, and have tons of money , your time is much more flexible (business development lunches, client interaction, etc). Kids are entering older elem and quite capable to travel, take on adventure, help guide them towards building their own life. Plus you will have money to give them almost endless options, they can pursue arts or charitable work and not have to make the trade offs BigLaw parents have to make.

This is either sarcasm, or you are an optimistic 3L. The partners at my firm are in the office earlier and later than most of the associates. After a few years of being partner, they look like they've aged 20 years.

Optimistic. But once partner is like 50, can't they coast on connections and book of business? The relationships and wisdom from experience are their assets, not hours in the office. They still need to respond to clients like rabbits on cocaine, but most clients are probably home for dinner too most nights. They then task their associates to the grindstone.

Even if this was true (It's not), do the math on that. If you have children when you are in your early 30s, by the time you're in your 50s, your kids are off at college.