Meet six moms who are making the high-pressure legal profession work for them, their families and their firms.

And see our new video on Work-Life balance with with lawyer/author/mom Claudia Trupp.

Risa Morris, mother of 2
Sophie, 7; Josh, 3
Litigation
Folger Levin & Kahn, San Francisco

Most firms talk a good game about being family-friendly. Risa Morris found out right away where San Francisco law firm Folger Levin & Kahn really stood.

“I showed up as a summer associate and said, ‘By the way, since you hired me, I’ve become pregnant,’ ” recalled the 34 year-old mother of two, who arrived to work in her second trimester. “No one batted an eye.”

Her daughter, Sophie, now 7, was born during Risa’s last year of law school. The following November, when Risa joined the firm’s litigation practice, she found in the small firm of roughly 65 attorneys a work-hard-yet-stay-flexible culture that’s great for working mothers.

The firm has “an understanding of different life moments requiring different things,” she says. Risa worked a 6o percent schedule for two months after the birth of son Josh, now 3, then ramped up to 80 percent for the next couple of years. In January, she switched to a 90 percent schedule, but cherishes taking every other Friday off.

Those days, she connects with her children’s classmates and teachers during drop-off and pickup, knocks off household tasks so they don’t gobble up weekend family time and, yes, takes a moment to breathe. A leisurely lunch with a book is bliss, she says. “Having that extra flexibility is incredibly meaningful for my quality of life,” she says. “Just knowing that I can have a few hours every other week to spend some time on myself makes a huge difference in my stress level.”

Her practice is thriving, and she sits on several of the firm’s committees. Over the past two years, her mentor, Nancy Yaffe, has begun prepping her for a potential transition to partner by helping her with business development and giving her opportunities to present to clients.

“Risa is a pleasure to work with. I love to go down to her office and ask to borrow her ‘Stanford brain’ to help me think through a challenging issue,” says Nancy, an employment law partner who says she benefited from mentoring and now is glad to be able to give the same gift to Risa. “People aren’t born to be good lawyers. They need role models to emulate.”
 
“A lot of firms talk about being collegial, but its true here,” says Risa. “There is a culture of respect where we all genuinely care about each others well-being.” 


Kristy McAlister Brown, mother of three
Avery, 6; Maisey, 3; Sawyer, 11 months
Litigation
Alston & Bird, Atlanta

“I can tell you, I make really good children,” attorney Kristy McAlister Brown jokes. “But the pregnancies are hard.”

For each of her three daughters, Kristy ended up on extended bed rest. Just after the first time she got the news that she’d be virtually out of commission for weeks, she was sitting at her desk in tears when her practice group leader walked in. “He said, ‘Think about what’s important. We’ll get through this,’ ” she recalls. “I repeated that scenario two more times, and the firm was nothing but supportive of me.”
 
Nor did they pigeonhole her. A full-time litigation partner, Kristy, 41, has worked on complex antitrust litigation and was seconded, or loaned out, to two of the firm’s large telecommunications clients, experiences she says were invaluable.

Alston & Bird’s support has been a consistent thing, going back to Kristy’s associate days. In 1999, when her husband, Mike, took a three-year posting in Miami as an assistant U.S. attorney, the firm worked out a full-time telecommuting arrangement and kept Kristy on the partnership track. “I was fully engaged the entire time I telecommuted,” she says. “I worked on some of the most sophisticated litigation. They were staffing me on a case just like they always would.” In 2001, she made partner while telecommuting.

When the Browns returned to Atlanta, Mike signed on as a litigation and trial partner at Alston without considering other offers, according to his wife. “He said, ‘I’ve been living firsthand with how great they treat you,’ ” she says with a laugh.

Still, the mother of three says the No. 1 reason she doesn’t even consider going anywhere else is the firm’s private childcare center, open only to employees’ children, which all her girls have attended. “I will be traveling on business and get an email from a coworker saying, ‘I saw Avery at drop-off and she was doing this or that,’ ” Kristy says. “There is this incredible connectedness. It’s a huge benefit and a huge retention factor for women.”


Lisa Weier, mother of two
Thomas, 5; Henry, 2
Financial services
Chapman and Cutler, Chicago

Attorney Lisa Weier has tested Chapman and Cutler’s flextime policies and found they really stretch.

“Life’s emergencies come out of the blue, and that’s where Chapman has been very good for me,” says Lisa, 36, a senior associate in the financial services firm’s corporate and securities department and mother of two young boys.

Lisa’s life has been a roller coaster the past two years. Her father died of a stroke in 2008. Then, less than a year later, her mother was diagnosed with Non-Hodgkin lymphoma. With the firm’s backing, Lisa spent nearly a month in Las Vegas while her mother recovered from surgery. Shortly thereafter, her mother moved to Lisa’s suburban Chicago home to undergo chemotherapy.

The attitude was “we will work around you,” says Lisa. At a planning session with senior management, Lisa was able to shuffle her 80 percent schedule to accommodate her mother’s treatments until she passed away in May. These days it’s a juggling act: Lisa works in the office three days, then divides her “off time” between volunteering for the American Cancer Society and spending time with her sons. They dive into crafts, have impromptu picnics or go for “grown-up” lunches at kid-friendly restaurants.

Although it can be a struggle to find personal time, Lisa doesn’t feel conflicted about continuing her career. Nor does she mind logging late nights at the end of each quarter to help clients close out financial results. “The firm engenders loyalty,” she says. “I have no problem giving back because when I’ve really needed it, the firm has always been generous, sometimes even at a moment’s notice.”
 
Best of all, Lisa can see—from colleagues above her—that she won’t be penalized later for needing extra flexibility now. “I can look up and see that a managing partner has an alternative work arrangement, but it’s working for her,” she says. “It was good to see that they will advance people working reduced hours.”


Linda Headley, mother of four
Heather, 33; Chad, 32; stepdaughters Janna, 33, and Jen, 31
Employment law
Littler Mendelson, Houston office

The legal profession’s tough reputation? It’s never scared Linda Headley. This, after all, is a woman who decided at age 29—with a recent divorce, two preschoolers and an art degree in hand—that she wanted to go to law school. She’s never looked back.

“I had a lot of terrific people I’ve worked with along the way who didn’t have qualms about my ability to be committed to my family and committed to my job,” says Linda, now remarried and mother to four.

Linda, 59, has always worked full-time, helped by a full-time housekeeper until her daughter Heather could drive. (Inspired by her mother, she’s now an attorney, too.) That said, Linda believes the advent of flextime, part-time and alternative work arrangements has been a major—and positive—shift since she joined the profession. Still, like many others, Linda wishes women were equitably represented in top firm positions nationwide. Women currently represent about half of each law school’s graduating class, but only 16 percent of law firm equity partners. “When I look at the national women’s attrition numbers, I feel chagrined,” she says. “Still today we lose valuable talent.”

In 2008, Linda collaborated with management and other women lawyers at her firm to form Littler’s Women’s Leadership Initiative. What began as a forum to cultivate leaders has evolved into a broad-based effort looking at marketing, mentoring, business development and work/life policies. “It’s very welcome among the women in the firm, even one like ours that has historically had excellent  numbers,” she says.

Over time, Linda has become convinced that communication between individuals is pivotal to retaining women, particularly through life transitions. She cites the story of her colleague Stefanie Moll, who took a year off after giving birth to twins, returned to work part-time for three days a week, ramped up to 80 percent over the following year and later made partner on a reduced-hour schedule. “It was a two-way street,” says Linda. “We were absolutely in touch and could explore new opportunities as she reached new crossroads.”

Kim Cacheris
Madison, 9; Gaby, 7
Employment law
McGuireWoods, Charlotte, NC
   
When very few in her firm (or profession) were doing it, ultra-early riser Kim Cacheris negotiated an atypical schedule that included telecommuting on Fridays and leaving by  four o’clock to get home to her daughters. “I’ve been fortunate to have an unusual level of flexibility and support,” says the employment law partner of her career path.

Now Kim, 41, wants the same for the rest of McGuireWoods’s attorneys. In 2007, she took over the firm’s Women’s Leadership Forum and set about rewriting the firm’s work/life policies to fill potholes in the road for lawyer moms. “I’ve personally experienced losing senior-level associates and junior-level partners,” she reflects. “I wanted to make sure everyone knew what their options are.”

First, she designed an program that automatically gives primary caregivers returning after a birth, adoption or foster placement an 80 percent schedule for six months with no reduction in pay. “The feedback we’ve gotten is that people love it,” says Kim. “It encourages women to return and takes the pressure off the transition back.”

In fact, when it comes to new motherhood, she’s discovered the first six months back to be “the window in retention—that’s when people are figuring out whether they are going to be able to manage everything.”

To help working parents over the long haul, Kim also added back-up childcare. Parents receive 80 hours per year of childcare at a bargain price—$4 per hour for an in-home sitter and $2 per hour for drop-off at a center—through an arrangement with a national childcare chain. Moms can use the benefit while traveling, too, so, for example, a breastfeeding infant can be cared for during the day in the closest center.

Although the additional benefits come at a cost to the firm, Kim contends they are offset by decreased recruiting expenses and increased workplace efficiency. And as so often happens when one does the right thing, there’s a personal payoff: During spring break, when her daughters were out of school and her husband in court, Kim got called to a client meeting. She dialed for her firm’s emergency backup.

Two hours later, a cheerful and fully credentialed sitter was on her doorstep, and Kim made her meeting.

Marya Robben, mother of two
Patty, 6; Tommy, 3
Estate planning and wills
Lindquist & Vennum, Minneapolis

“Lindquist recognizes that I’m a better lawyer if I have time to do what I need to do away from the office,” observes estate-planning attorney and mother of two Marya Robben, 36.

That means her Thursdays off are now catch-all days for tackling the to-do list—laundry, groceries, doctor’s appointments—as well as the little things like lingering at kindergarten pickup to admire her daughter’s artwork hanging on the classroom walls.

Because she has time to manage her home life (she works an 80 percent schedule), Marya says, she doesn’t carry those stresses to her days in the office—nor does she have to sneak out to meet a repairman. And if one of her kids gets sick or has a special event, it’s not a problem for her to swap her Thursday for another day outside the office.

It works, she notes, because nontraditional schedules like hers are common at Lindquist & Vennum, which fosters a culture of flexibility firmwide. “It’s every level—my partners, my support staff, the paralegals,” says Marya, who notes that her assistant has great instincts for what can wait—or not. “She’s amazing,” says Marya. “If something needs immediate attention, she’ll call me and we’ll problem-solve it.” (To wit: When a client called in a panic about a court filing he needed to make that day, the two women used email to draft an extension request and fax to get it to the court on time.)

Throughout the firm, flexibility is defined differently. Some of Marya’s colleagues work five shortened days, while others move their start time earlier or later to accommodate children’s schedules. The common thread is a firm that recognizes “we’re all professionals wanting our practices to thrive,” she says. “They don’t need to babysit us, but they do ask, ‘How can we make this work so you can be successful?’ ”
 

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