There is an obvious gender gap within the legal profession. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2010, women made up 31.9% of all lawyers.  The ironic thing is that since 1986, ABA-Approved law schools have consistently graduated between 40 and 50% women.  Not being a statistician myself, I still look at these numbers and wonder – where are the rest of the female lawyers going?

Unfortunately, few have headed to the upper echelons of the legal profession. Less than 16% of equity partners in law firms and only 20% of General Counsels at Fortune 500 companies are women.

The bottom line also reflects this disparity – female lawyers generally only made 77% of male lawyer salaries in 2010.

As a young attorney, gender issues should have been more apparent to me as I began to navigate my own legal career. As I practiced with a law firm, meeting attorneys from other firms and through the bar association, it was generally evident that there were more men than women in the profession, especially in coveted management roles. I particularly chose a firm that had female partners with strong reputations in the legal community. I really didn’t see the issues with the gender gap until I started thinking about motherhood. As I started down that road, I looked around and noticed that though there were few women in leadership positions, there were even fewer that had children or had much to do with child rearing. Statistically, this perception rang true, as approximately 25% of women lawyers leave the legal profession once they have children.

For several reasons, including motherhood, I chose to transition to an academic career, however the question still nagged at me. How does motherhood impact a woman’s career as a lawyer? What part does motherhood play in the attrition of female lawyers?  And, from a practical standpoint, how can a woman succeed in the law while also having children?

I have not attempted to answer these questions quantitatively. However, over the last two years, I have interviewed twenty five women across the country to get a snapshot of legal moms, working at firms, corporations, governmental entities, and non-profits, and profiling their careers and the impact of motherhood. I particularly wanted to know what challenges they have faced and how they have dealt with the competing demands of a career in the law and raising children. The culmination of these two years of work became the book Legally Mom: Real Women’s Stories of Balancing Motherhood and Law Practice.

I sought to interview women who were not only honest with me, but honest with themselves - women who were willing to share the good times and the bad. The days when their child screamed, “Mommy Don’t Go” at the daycare, the days when the appellate brief was submitted with macaroni and cheese stuck to the bottom, and those golden days when everything felt liked it clicked into place.  The twenty-five women who participated in interviews for the book were inspirational and thought-provoking. Their candor and willingness to share their experiences demonstrate the best of female camaraderie.

I was fortunate to find mothers in different stages of their legal careers with children of varied ages. As someone who has wrestled with the big questions related to career and motherhood, I sought advice from women who had been there and could provide some perspective on their experience. In addition, I hoped the book would help attorneys who are also raising children to know that they are not alone in this endeavor. As a society, we have a vested interest in how each generation is fostered and developed, but this is easy to forget as pressures mount over billable hours and client demands.

All of the women portrayed in the book discussed the difficulties of being pulled in two directions.  This challenge is illustrated in the chapter profiling Vy Nguyen, a single mom raising a son and trying to advance her legal career. Working as General Counsel, Vy was at the mercy of the corporation she served as her sole client. She had a very demanding boss with whom she clashed with about the limits of her dedication to the company. On a particular occasion, she was in Washington DC for work scheduled to fly back early in the morning to make it on time for her son’s musical show at school. Vy credits the fact that she never missed her son’s important events with one of the reasons why he is such a happy and well-adjusted kid. Her boss told her she had to stay in Washington longer to resolve a particular issue. Essentially, he gave her an ultimatum – if she didn’t stay in Washington, she might lose her job. Vy explained that she had already told her son that she would make it to his show and she was not going to go back on her promise to him. Vy chose to leave Washington DC to attend her son’s event knowing that she might not have a job when she returned to Texas. She also realized that most people would not agree with her decision – jeopardizing a coveted job for a family obligation. However, this situation and others demonstrated to her boss that Vy was serious about her role as a mother. She was confident in her decision, commenting:

“Because I am a lawyer, if I don’t work for you, don’t worry, I know I can work for someone else. That was probably one of the most stressful experiences I had during my career.” 

During her time as corporate counsel, Vy always felt there was a struggle in balancing work and family and whether she was going to concede to the corporate pressure. Having gone through a divorce, Vy felt like she had to be there for her son. She simply couldn’t be a workaholic and the mother she wanted to be. She ultimately decided to go back to private practice, setting up her own firm with a partner, in order to have the flexibility she needed as a mother.

Vy’s Nguyen’s story and those of twenty-four other legal moms can be found in Legally Mom: Real Women’s Stories of Balancing Motherhood and Law Practice published by the American Bar Association (2012).

Photo: Anne Murphy Brown with her two eldest children.