Reply to How to change Big Law culture?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Having worked in BigLaw and outside it one thing that happens is that when you are at a firm you tend to compare yourself exculsively to peers at the firm or at peer firms.

So what a BigLaw attorney considers a "very involved" parent can be pretty different than what a government attorney or someone who isn't a lawyer at all will consider very involved.

I do think the people who make it work best tend to have a pretty robust support network (usually involving both paid and family help) so I don't think their kids suffer for having a parent with a very demanding job. Like it's not really that big of a deal if you only eat dinner with your dad twice a week if you have a mom and a grandma and a nanny who are there daily and making you feel cared for and loved. Spending the afternoon with a great nanny before eating dinner with mom and grandma and then your dad is home for bedtime is totally great from the kid's perspective.

I know from experience though that if you do not have that network it sucks for all involved. A BigLaw parent plus another parent with a demanding job plus no family help and maybe you struggle to find great hired help is a recipe for disaster and it's situations like this that lead to people bailing on BigLaw. You need help and it usually has to come from multiple sources -- spouse and grandparents and hired help. The BigLaw salary makes it easier to have a SAHP but cannot help someone want to be a SAHP and while the salary can make it easier to pay more for help there is also some luck and other logistics involved (so much easier to find a great nanny if the non-BigLaw parent wants to and is good at hiring and managing that person). And invovled family is just the luck of the draw.

If you are a BigLawa attorney making it work and feel like your family is functioning great that's wonderful but you do need to understand that there is some luck and special circumstances in terms of your partner and extended family that makes that work.[/quote]

Good post. Biglaw men don’t care about the “support system.” They just assume their wives will take care of it, including managing any outsourcing. I know a Biglaw partner recently divorced who thinks he’s some kind of hero for taking his kids 1 day on the weekend; meanwhile thinks his ex (former stay at home to multiple kids) is sooo mean for taking 50% of the assets and securing generous child support. [/quote]

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