Working at Home

These are the days I like best. Early spring, cool in the morning with a mist that clings to daffodils. Before settling down to work, with my papers and computer, sprawled across the bed, I always walk through the garden, admiring each new plant and the promise of harvests to come. I visit my chickens, and take a few minutes to savor them as they peck and fuss and hunt for food.

In an hour, I will be on a conference call with opposing counsel in a multi-hundred million dollar case. He's a New York lawyer in every sense--the good and the bad--and he cannot imagine the setting in which his call finds me. It makes me smile, the contrast between the obstructionist arrogance that is my life, and this bucolic setting that is also my life.

Working at home is one of the reasons I can do what I do. When I am not traveling, I work at home several days a week. Working at home saves me two hours in a car each day; it lets me pick my daughter up from baseball; it means I can help my son with his multiplication tables. Forget "part time," alternate work schedules and technology that allow remote work are critical to the long-term success of big firm lawyers who are also mothers. But how many firms allow it?

In our case, when I was diversity coordinator, we implemented an "alternative work policy," that allows many types of non-traditional work structures, including working from home. So far, though, most of the lawyers who really work from home--consistently, successfully and no questions asked--are like me, so senior, that we don't need policies, we just do it. I suppose that's the way it will always be: first, you have to prove yourself. And I suppose, too, that even the option and the capability are progress. After all, most of the lawyers in my firm who work from home are male, and having a "policy" that the men use too, well, that's the quickest route I know to long-term acceptance.