Ed. note: This is the latest installment in a series of posts on motherhood in the legal profession, in partnership with our friends at MothersEsquire. Welcome Laura Shepard to our pages.
Last year, I ended a relationship. I did not get a divorce. But it felt like one. I left the law firm where I had worked for the past 12 years. The place I started, spent my entire legal career, and where I was taught my specialty. The place where I made friends and found a mentor. They became more than an employer — there was a time I considered them family. But like most families, there was an essence of dysfunction. I thought we were just quirky and that I held it together. I later learned this mentality is what kept me in an exhausting and emotionally draining environment for far too long. It is hard enough to recognize the symptoms of burnout but much more difficult to identify the cause and find the strength to overcome it. But I did find the courage to accomplish the proudest moment in my career: I left this job to start my own practice.
While my early years at the firm were enjoyable, I felt growing pains in my career at the same time we started growing our family. My first child was born after I had practiced for eight years, and I became pregnant with my second the following year. During this time, a new benefit program became available in my field that dramatically increased my work volume. I was facing so many challenges professionally and with my young children that it was nearly impossible to focus on what I wanted for myself or my career. I had two children under four years of age and a massive caseload. I needed more legal support, challenge, and personal growth in my job because I was losing any joy it once brought me. I felt stuck in this troubled relationship and demoralized by my superiors. Looking back, I believe there was an implicit bias that my changing work needs were solely because of my young children and not the job itself. Honestly, I blamed myself for the same reasons and thought that I could fix it if I worked harder and changed my attitude.
I eventually sought guidance from a career counselor who encouraged me to identify my values and follow them. The only positives I could identify from my current job were a steady paycheck, friendliness with coworkers, and the comfort of being in the same place and position I had been in for years. But I was miserable. Those are not benefits that sustain a career. I had too much stress with both my job and my family but only one of them I could change. My schedule juggling young children was temporary, but my children left no time to tend to my own needs, and the job was no longer fulfilling enough to warrant my energy when I had little to spare. I needed to make my own choices, control my schedule, and reach my potential. I needed to leave.
After I left, I befriended other attorneys in my field locally and through Facebook groups. I am amazed by the number of women lawyers who leave firms to start small or solo law practices on their own terms. In the past, I kept my head down and the work up. I never knew of any alternative. But women today are charting new paths supported by their colleagues who are more than willing to provide support, advice, and encouragement along the way. Together, we can knock down walls and build anew, not just break through glass ceilings. If I had these tribes earlier in my career, I could have spared myself much grief.
We can only control so much. I wish I had not pushed myself to the limit trying to make sure of my decision and trying to fix the unfixable. I wish I had not felt my attitude alone determined my satisfaction in the office instead of accepting that the job had outgrown me and that my needs had diverged from the owners. I wish I had realized earlier that it was okay — that becoming a mother made me want more purpose in my career than I once had. None of this was my fault, and it was time to choose a new path.
As women, we can possess a persistent self-doubt, a need to prove ourselves, endless questioning yet believing we can still do it all. But we need to empower ourselves, not cower. We need to accept that our loyalty, our compassion, our strive, our ability to see possibilities and make decisions, don’t just make us good employees. They make us great lawyers.
Earlier: Mothers At Law: Achieving Meaningful Success In The Legal Profession
Laura Shepard is the proud owner of Shepard Immigration Law just outside of Indianapolis, Indiana, where she provides personalized family and employment immigration legal services. She is the mother of two young children and is involved with MothersEsquire and AMIGA Lawyers. You can email her at LES_attorney@LSimmlaw.com or connect with her on LinkedIn.