Blog 31 Problems and Solutions of Work/Family Balance in the Legal Profession

The difficulty of achieving a family/work balance in the legal profession was much discussed in the text. For women lawyers, it is difficult to continue to work at the competitive level once they become mothers because the roles of successful lawyer and successful parent each require a tremendous amount of time and energy. To solve this problem, parent could chose more flexible work schedules, reduced hours or telecommuting but these resulted in all new problems. Lawyers who decided to become part-timers were not considered “real” lawyers and they often they would get assigned less responsibility because they were seen as less committed (2003: 195).

Strong commitment is necessary when lawyers are expected to bill over 1,000 and sometimes over 2,000 hours a year. Because of such a high work demand, both women and men are requesting reduced hours and more flexible schedules to have time to do something other than their work like spend time with their families. These requests are usually denied because of financial objections that reduce hours will lead to reduced productivity and thus the loss of revenue. This however is untrue because it is more cost effective to give a female lawyer a part-time schedule for a few months during her pregnancy and appoint her back to full time later, than to hire a new person all together during this time because of the cost of training and forking out a whole new salary (2003: 199).

In this workaholic profession it will be difficult to find a solution to the work/family balance from within a system that has long established. Instead some solutions to these problems could simply come from the lawyers themselves in changing their perceptions of coworkers who choose to go part-time. They can just learn to find empathy or common ground for each other regardless of sex because when it comes down to it these issues affects all of them. This will create a sense of respect towards those who decide to go part-time who feel they are not appreciated. Also this will reduced the feeling of guilt that part-timers feel for not being as committed as their peers (2003: 216).

English, H. (2003). Gender on Trial: Sexual Stereotypes and Work/Life Balance in
the Legal Workplace. New York: ALM Publishing.