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Wednesday
Same home a.m. routine as Monday.
8:30 a.m. Get to work, and deal with more emails about the motion to compel, which will hopefully be resolved via meeting and conferring, and not an opposition. Get sidetracked with another brief.
11:00 a.m. Eat, continue working on brief.
1:30 p.m. Lunch, and then spend the afternoon working on the deposition outline.
6:oo p.m. Head home, and same evening routine. Maybe bathe baby.
Thursday
Same home a.m. routine as Tuesday.
8:30 a.m. Get to work and spend the day working on various briefs and the deposition outline.
5:00 p.m. Turns out we’re not resolving the motion to compel, and I’m told to draft the opposition by EOD Friday. Great. Decide I’m too fried to start it tonight, and focus on finishing my other tasks tonight.
6:30 p.m. Head home, and same evening routine.
Here’s what H had to say when we asked how long she sees herself staying in BigLaw:
Great question without an answer! Sometimes I really enjoy my job but other times I can’t see myself being a partner. The business development part of being a partner DOES NOT appeal to me. But I’m trying to do more of that stuff and maybe it won’t be so terrible…?
Friday
Same a.m. routine as Monday. Was going to ask husband to do daycare drop-off so I could head in earlier, but he has an unexpected early work call that is right in the middle of drop-off time. Oh well.
8:30 a.m. Arrive to work and start drafting opposition brief. Work straight through the day. I do eat, but while reviewing cases, reviewing evidence, etc.
8:00 p.m. Head home. By some coincidence, baby took a late nap and is still awake when I get home, and he’s happy to see me! Eat dinner, put baby to bed, and crash in anticipation of a firestorm of Saturday emails about the brief.
Saturday
Husband handles early a.m. routine with baby. I wake up and have breakfast and coffee (no IF on the weekends), and mess around online. By some miracle, I receive no emails about the brief all weekend… Anticipate a crazy week, and decide to savor the weekend. Husband gets ready for an annual hang-out with some of his friends.
10:00 a.m. Baby wakes up, and we go to the park with the dog.
12:00 p.m. Husband is gone when we get home close to noon. Try to get baby to nap but he refuses, so give up and decide he’ll sleep while running errands. Go to nursery for compost and impulse-purchase some more plants, then head to Target, and home. Baby naps in fits and starts while out.
4:00 p.m. Persuade baby to sleep for 30 minutes, then play with him until his bedtime.
7:00 p.m. Tired baby goes to bed early. Hustle outside to plant new plants and spread compost before it gets dark. Heat up leftovers and binge Mindhunter (then decide that was a terrible idea while home alone).
10:00 p.m. Husband gets home and we head to bed.
Thanks so much to H for sharing a bit of her life as a working mom! Readers, what’s your biggest takeaway from her week of work as a BigLaw lawyer as well as her general work/life balance?
Stock photo via Deposit Photo / LenblR.
Anonymous says
So not necessarily the point of this but I’m always interested in how much time people spend with their partners. Like going for a walk together, talking together, cooking together etc. Because my partner and I do this super little now that we have kids.
Anonymous says
My husband got together with a childless friend and they were chatting about life with kids. Friend asked my husband when we get time together. The answer was basically never. Some nights we barely sleep in the same bed. We have two little kids, though. I suspect it will improve.
GCA says
This reminds me of something that a senior colleague of mine said now that she and her husband are empty-nesters (they have two young adult children): ‘We spent so many years giving each other the space to do our own thing that we are now enjoying relearning how to be with each other’.
Anon says
We spend a lot of time as a family with our toddler, but almost no time just the two of us, and we’re both fine with it. We’re not ‘date night’ people and we feel like family time is still quality time for us (don’t get me wrong, our toddler definitely has her moments, but we can enjoy dinner or an activity together most of the time). I’m also a pretty big introvert and husband is a workaholic so even pre-kid we tended to retreat to separate areas in the evenings and didn’t real spend a lot of time together, except having meals together (every night is date night when you don’t have kids).
Fellow Angeleno says
Thank you for sharing! As a fellow Angeleno, I too curse LA traffic and dearly wish I could get those 90-120 minutes back each day. I’m currently pregnant and while my #1 parenting fear is lack of sleep, my #2 is being stuck in traffic trying to get to my kid. I’m considering changing jobs just to shorten my commute, as I’m not big on working from home.
Anonymous says
I changed jobs for commute after my 2nd child was born and it was literally life-changing. Going from 70+ min in traffic each way to 25 on a bad day (with frequently-exercised options for bicycle, bus, or even walking) has spoiled me. I’ll never go back to a long commute, even though it somewhat limits my options.
Anokha says
The “not a euphemism” made me snort out loud.
Meg says
OP seems to have a good thing going, and I feel like I’m doing BigLaw wrong in comparison! My typical day is work 9:00-6:00, come home and spend dinner and bedtime with my son and husband, and then work again from 8:30-11:00. And I get *maybe* one weekend off per month. My off time on the weekends is hitting up the farmers’ market and playground in the morning before I have to work on the latest brief. I am so tired! Luckily my husband has more flexibility with work, but are other BigLaw parents more in my camp or OP’s camp? (OP, you are an icon, and please enjoy your high-powered/organic-gardening life!)
Anon says
I’m more in your camp, but I’ve noticed that OP is 35 so probably more senior than I, and also the ramp up from leave takes time before it gets crazy busy (I was working pretty much 10am-7pm + an hour in the evening for the three months after I got back from leave).
Anonymous says
Just saw this…honestly, I’ve been lucky thus far in my return from leave. There were definitely times pre-leave where I worked late most nights in a week and/or worked weekends. I also tend to exceed my hours but not try to be the most aggressive biller in terms of hours and I’m not planning to be in big law forever!
MG says
I am wondering what the billable hour requirement is for the OP. Seems hard to bill 2000 or more hours on this plan, although it sounds lovely.