Member Articles

However, I think the real issue does not necessarily lie within just the legal industry, but with any company that requires its employees to record their time. At my former employer, a large PR firm, we were required to document every quarter hour of our time. On top of that, we were monitored over time to determine our utilization rates (i.e. how much client vs. non-client work we managed). While our quotas were more generous, and less steadfast than a typical law firm's, just knowing that you have to document your time can weigh on a working mother.

No mother I know likes to be held accountable for how she spends her day. One of my friends even hides her daily activities from her husband, lest he find out she went shopping for fun rather than for diapers. When I was forced to record my time and whereabouts at work, I often felt trapped. Taking a 30-minute “real” lunch away from my desk brought about worse guilt than if I had left my son with the local vagabond for the day.

As a mom, we continuously feel that every moment is already accounted for, and thus, when we’re actually forced to account for it, it may make us turn away from what our employers need and want from us the most: for us to be successful at our job.