Even with the most generous spin and assuming he intended it as a joke, I was not laughing. Whether intended or not, the comment exacerbated a feeling I already had that being pregnant decreased my worth in the eyes of The Firm.
Back in those days (this was 20 years ago, to be fair), the typical pattern for female lawyers was to delay pregnancy until they made partner. As someone who entered law school as a mature student, that timeline probably wasn’t going to work for me. So, I took the more radical path and had my children early in my career as an associate.
I should have left Big Law back then. But I felt like there was no way that I could market myself while pregnant. When I was done my maternity leave, I felt I owed my former firm a debt of heavy billable hours to make up for the fact that I had reproduced a human on their dime.
I look at it all so differently now. I hope women today are not burdened by the thoughts I had when I was a new associate trying to plan a family/mom trying to plan a career. I now realize that my thoughts about being some kind of liability if I chose to take a maternity leave were wrong-headed.
As an employer, I have a different perspective. Mentoring young associates who are entering the beginning of their parenting years is a worthwhile business investment. A legal career is likely to span decades. There will be years that are work-heavy and years that are family-heavy. The right people are the right people, no matter where they are in the family-work cycle of life.
When Angelique and I met Cara for the first time for an informal coffee chat about our practice area, we immediately knew that she would be the perfect fit at Casey and Moss. We weren’t sure if she was actually looking to work with us, but we took a chance, sent her an offer, and hoped she would be interested. She came back and said that she wanted to let us know before accepting our offer that she was pregnant. We said, “We’re still in if you’re still in” and we were lucky enough that she said yes.
If you are a female lawyer who wants to have a family, and you are thinking about whether a firm is a right fit for you, my advice is to ignore all the marketing messages about whether a firm offers so-called “work life balance”. There is only one metric that matters: What percentage of the equity partnership is comprised of women with children?