Take life by the gavel and call to order all your hopes and dreams. It’s time to live the life you’ve always imagined—as a mom and a lawyer.
Stop for a second. I want you to take a minute to envision the future of your law career. Are you working at a traditional legal job, still frantically juggling work and home responsibilities? Or, are you working at a firm with your name on the letterhead, enjoying the flexibility you’ve always desired? I’ll wager a guess that you dream of the latter—because the idea of calling the shots at your own firm is something almost every lawyer thinks about at one point or another.
So let’s explore that.
Let’s talk about you taking life by the gavel and calling to order all your hopes and dreams so you can live the lawyer life you’ve always imagined.
It’s definitely possible.
If I can do it, you absolutely can, too!
I can sit here and tell you how rewarding it would be to walk into your own firm on the terms you’ve established, but I’m sure you can imagine (and have imagined) what that would be like. So let’s pull back for a minute. Let’s really decide here and now why this adventure would be right for you.
A checklist of questions, if you will:
Do you need more flexibility to accommodate your personal schedule?
Do you feel burned out in your traditional legal job?
Do you want more control over the types of cases you work on?
Do you want to make more money?
Do you want to feel more respected in the office?
Do you want the freedom to spend quality time with your family?
You answered “yes” to all of the above, didn’t you? Trust me, I get it…I did, too, at one point. Life can be hard for lawyer moms. The industry itself isn’t very conducive to success for those of us with littles to care for. It typically requires great sacrifice on the homefront. After all, law is what Harvard economist Claudia Goldin calls a “greedy profession” because it’s a field that demands so much from us.
I didn’t start off with the goal of owning my own law firm. I became an entrepreneur out of necessity. In 2016, I became a mom, and very quickly realized that I needed to make BIG changes to balance my legal career with parenthood. I took the reins and ran like hell toward what is now Airington Law—today, my own law firm.
Truth is, not everyone is forced into the decision like I was, so I totally get the hesitation. You’re ready, but you’re nervous. And that’s normal. It’s hard to walk away from a list of established clients, a steady income, and a business system that’s already in place. But, you CAN do this. And it’ll be far more rewarding than getting mommy tracked at your current firm, or looking back with regret that you missed out on quality time with your kids because your job wouldn’t accommodate that part of your life.
Are you familiar with the term “mommy-tracked?”
In my experience, working moms face challenges that are often more insidious than outright discrimination. To be sure, blatant gender discrimination does still occur. However, I have found that even in environments that outwardly support women in the workplace, the system creates unbearable pressures on working mothers because of schedules that don’t accommodate and a total lack of acknowledgment for parental responsibilities.
To me, the solution is for us to change this “greedy profession” from within by demanding more from our field, and by building family-friendly careers for ourselves…then paying it forward to others.
So take another look at the questions above one more time. Embrace your “yes” answers and your ability to achieve great things, then commit to making your dreams come true. And your hesitations? Harness them as fuel for progress.
Law firm ownership doesn’t need to be scary or overly intimidating. Bet on yourself, embrace the challenge—I’m here to help! If you follow me on social media, you probably know I just published a book and launched a course, both of which will guide you through the process of launching your own firm as a busy mom.
I also share plenty of tips, and I included a list of resources in the appendix of my book. I’m not, after all, the first person to launch their own firm—but having done so while raising three kids does give me a unique perspective.
That fact, in and of itself, should inspire you! And please, trust me when I say “yes” right here. Because YES, you are ready to start your own firm!
You believe it now, right?