Invoking my employer's work-life balance policy

May 3, 2012 7:18 PM

Biglawfilter, workplacepoliticsfilter. Can I take seriously my firm's assurances that invoking a "work-life balance" policy will not be a terrible career move?

I am a junior associate at a major U.S. law firm. In the name of "work-life balance," my firm's compensation policy permits us to specify any fraction between 0.75 and 1.00, whereupon all of the following will be multiplied by that fraction: our hour expectations, our salaries, our bonus thresholds, and our bonuses.

In theory, choosing a fraction other than 1.00 will not affect our career trajectories -- we'll have the same chances of making partner, on the same timeframe and with the same interim salaries and seniorities that we otherwise would have, and we'll have the same chances of being fired.

If I take this policy literally, I will be best served by choosing a lower fraction for my first few years with the firm, and then accelerating my workload dramatically after my salary has increased. After all, why would I work for 2500 hours in 2012 in exchange for $n, when I can hold back for a few years and then work the same 2500 hours in 2016 in exchange for $(1.4n)?* (And this remains the optimal strategy even when I take into account the fact that deferring income to later years costs me interest, and the fact that concentrating income into the same year costs me taxes.)

But I find it hard to believe that I can take the policy literally. Seriously, my seniors really aren't going to think any less of me if I show that I have 75% of the ambition they do? Or resent me for heading home on weekends that they have to work? Or view me as gaming the system, which a true "team player" would never do?

I don't really want to ask my superiors for their advice yet -- seems like the very fact that I had asked about the policy would affect their opinions of me, no differently than actually invoking the policy.

Am I wise to worry? Who, if anyone, is most likely to be annoyed by my choice? What steps could I take to mitigate their annoyance? Alternatively, should I take them at their word, on the theory that maternity leave and paternity leave are giving way to a more parenthood-neutral theory of flex time, or on the theory that it's in the firm's interests that its associates should be refreshed and content?

Very interested in input from (i) people who have dealt with similar policies, whether or not in law firms, and (ii) people who have worked in large law firms long enough to have developed an instinct for their workplace culture.

(Maybe that famous askme magic can conjure up advice from the hiring partner who administers the identical policy at the firm next door to mine?)

Respectfully, I am not so interested in input from people who lack personal experience with either topic.

I'm also interested both in advice that assumes that I want to make partner, and in advice that assumes that I don't care -- I haven't yet decided whether that's part of my life plan.

Anonymous advice can be directed to [e-mail], and I will not reveal it to anyone other than the family members with whom I am making this decision.

*Particularly since the hours being worked would be deferred into the future, and thus should rationally be discounted in significance due to the possibility that I will die before having to perform them.

posted by anonymous to Work & Money (18 answers total)

This is going to vary pretty dramatically depending on which firm you're with. Some of them really mean it, and some don't, and you need to figure out which one your specific firm actually is, which means talking with people who work there now and people who have worked there in the past. Are there associates a year or two ahead of you who could clue you in? How's your law school's career services office? Some schools keep anonymous feedback about this sort of thing. Know anyone who has left your firm in the last few years? Ultimately, advice from people who understand law firm culture generally isn't really going to help you any unless you know that they understand your law firm's culture.
posted by decathecting at 7:37 PM on May 3, 2012 [1 favorite]

>>Can I take seriously my firm's assurances that invoking a "work-life balance" policy will not be a terrible career move?<> .
No.
posted by LonnieK at 7:43 PM on May 3, 2012 [11 favorites]

BigLaw? In my experience (which is admittedly limited), taking advantage of this type of program will, in practice, cause one's career to suffer.
posted by ellF at 7:51 PM on May 3, 2012

I am a senior associate in biglaw. I would not take this policy seriously unless I had legitimate family obligations to attend to (child, ailing parent), and only in such a case would I think the exigencies would outweigh the fact you're on the "mommy track"--not good for your career at all. If you're cutting your hours just because the hours suck (which they do, and they never get better), it will become known, and people will not want to work with you; you don't want to work! If I'm a senior and have my choice of juniors, I will always pick someone on full time, because if you're not there when I need you, I have to do the work. I would not lower my time; just get another job (get me one too).

Also, the universal experience seems to be part timers end up taking a bigger cut in salary than they get a cut in work. You get shafted.
posted by Admiral Haddock at 7:58 PM on May 3, 2012 [8 favorites]

It completely depends on your firm's culture and specifically on the people in your practice group. At a big firm, each group has its own set of rules and expectations. You just have to give yourself time to get to know the people, figure out who is doing .75 and who isn't, and see who is respected and who is advancing. I don't think there's a substitute for personally learning first-hand about how it's playing out for the people a few years ahead of you. Find ways to bring it up without making it about you to test the waters and commit to doing full time the first year to bank a lot of social capital, make a strong first impression, and get experience you can rely on later. Then if you choose to back it off you'll be making an informed decision and people will have a basis for their opinion of you based on your work product and not your fraction selection.

There is flex time at my firm, and knowing that meant nothing to me, but now that I have worked with people who actually use it, I have a much better sense of what the consequences are and aren't.
posted by prefpara at 7:59 PM on May 3, 2012

Ha, no, you should not for a second think that the firm cares if you are "refreshed and content." You need to figure out what you want out if this - if it's to make partner, the only way to do it is to work your ass off. If it's to make some money and move on, then sure, do the flex time. If you are bright and do your work well, then you should be able to do that. I would suggest though that you take your reduced hours in chunks as your workload permits, rather than leaving 2 hrs before everyone else. If you don't work as hard as your team, then you will be greatly resented. Instead, take the flex time as extra vacation, or use it to go home at 5 for a few weeks in a row during lull times. But don't cut out at 7 when everyone else will be there til 10 during a crunch time on your case.
posted by yarly at 8:11 PM on May 3, 2012 [1 favorite]

This varies way too much by firm. You need to find someone you trust and ask them on the DL, and until you do that, don't take this reduction.

That said, my instinct is it is a bad idea. It's a worse idea if you want to make partner, because of course if you don't want to be there long term you just need to not get fired until you leave.

But there's another problem beyond the perception issue: will you actually be working less? Are you going to be able to turn down work just because you are on pace to meet your hours requirement? If there's a case and shit needs to be done and you're ducking out, I guarantee that will be a problem -- even in the short term.
posted by J. Wilson at 8:20 PM on May 3, 2012

The overwhelming consensus amongst my many friends that work for law firms is that going part time most definitely will hurt your career progression, and that even in organisations where it's an official policy and supported by the leadership, individual partners etc may disagree with it vehemently and approach any part-timers with extreme prejudice.

Not saying this is the case in your case - there are exceptions to every rule - but be aware it would be an exception.
posted by smoke at 8:21 PM on May 3, 2012 [1 favorite]

I didn't work for a law firm. but for a bank, and I can tell you that they talked about work-life balance, but if you wanted to shift things around, there would come down on you a hammer like few others you would find in the company. They generally smote the snot out of attempts to do things like flex-time and work at home if you suggested it.
posted by mephron at 9:26 PM on May 3, 2012

If you did still want to take an advantage of this, you would also need to factor in that you're basically in training at the moment, or at least in a phase of your career with a steep learning curve. So you'd also need to multiply the amount you would be learning by 0.75 or whatever factor you choose. Probably not a good idea if you're really expecting to move up just as quickly as if you'd selected 1.00.
posted by hazyjane at 10:38 PM on May 3, 2012 [4 favorites]

I don't work for a law form, but for a government department. Governments practically live and breath the work-life balance thing and yet, if you take advantage of things like fractional work, you absolutely will not progress as fast as if you are are on 1.0. Think if it this way - if you are employed at 0.8, someone else needs to be found to work the same job at 0.2 to make up a whole team member. It rarely works from a management perspective and only then if you can find two people willing to effectively job share.

If you want to make partner or have any sort of traditional career path, I very much doubt that you can do that part-time in any large organisation. However, if you aren't on the career track, it probably won't affect your prospects at all in the long term.
posted by dg at 12:08 AM on May 4, 2012

Anecdotally, mommy-track lawyers rarely make junior partner at my firm, much less equity partner.

That said, how many hours would you be expected to bill at 100%? While it may not seem like an enormous difference, the amount of life you can have "outside the firm" is drastically different at 1850 v. 2100 hours. I speak from experience.
posted by lalala1234 at 2:49 AM on May 4, 2012

I don't work for a law firm, but I do work for a big US company that counts the legal industry as one of its biggest markets. Meaning, we understand the culture and in some cases, align our own culture as a business strategy. Further, I am directly involved in policy-making/revising on employee relations/engagement issues at my own company.

Unfortunately, I would not just yet trust that despite the on-paper commitment, you won't be penalized (however quietly, a comment here, a shrug there) for observing the letter of the policy.

A better determinant is your culture: Do women hold significant and meaningful partnerships (not just quota)? Is working remotely encouraged and practiced by leadership? Does your company put their money (not just communications) behind their work-life benefits -- stress management programs, health coaches, gyms, tuition assistance, elder/childcare, domestic partner benefits, etc etc? Does your company make sure that front-line managers (not just the visible leaders) understand that work-life balance increases productivity, rather than decreases it? (Lots of old-school corporate folks believe that if you are not sitting at your desk, you are stealing time from the company -- that's a change management issue.)

I could go on and on. The point is, look to the culture for your answer. If work-life balance issues seem embedded in the business goals and strategy, then, cool. If not, it's either a lip-service policy designed for optics, or someone in HR championed it once and the appetite for it has been lost.
posted by thinkpiece at 4:27 AM on May 4, 2012

(i) people who have dealt with similar policies, whether or not in law firms,

I work at a place with, on paper, some of the most flexible and supportive polices I have ever seen. Tuition support, flexible schedules, going to school on the clock, you name it and my policy manual will probably offer it. And we'll even keep you at 100% salary, too, so there's not a financial penalty.

In practice though, my experience is that taking that track absolutely puts you on a "not really advancing" path. Doesn't mean you'll get fired, but it does mean that raises and promotions won't be happening like they will for the person working the regular track. That's ok in some situations, and can work well for everyone, but it would be a kick in the teeth for someone who was ambitious but didn't ask around before taking advantage of all the offerings. As a manager, that person isn't offering me very much, so why would I promote them or fight to carve out budget support for a big raise?

I agree with the advice to a) ask around quietly and b) look closely at people who have been doing this for some years and see what their career trajectory is looking like.
posted by Forktine at 6:09 AM on May 4, 2012

If I'm a senior and have my choice of juniors, I will always pick someone on full time, because if you're not there when I need you, I have to do the work.

This. I am in house now but I was on a committee at my old BigLaw firm that drafted their first work/life policy. In talking to associates while we were writing the policies, the fear that we kept hearing was that the associate would sign up to that policy and then either lose all of their work or just end up working the same amount for less pay. Because when a brief is due, it won't space itself out to meet a flex schedule. Either you will blow through your flex time and work more than you want to, or a different lawyer will do the work and bill the hours.

Also, even as our firm was pushing hard to be a work/life balance friendly place, there were a number of senior partners who were openly skeptical or even dismissive of the idea. There are some great lawyers and good parents at big firms (I worked with many of them, thankfully), but BigLaw is a place that is naturally hospitable to some of the worst kind of people, too. No matter what the policy says, and notwithstanding that it's your clear right to take advantage of it, some of them may resent a young person who they see as opting out of available work (and profits in their pocket).

If you are really really really organized with your time and you have a really really really understanding team up the chain who will protect you, you can make it work. But know what you are up against.
posted by AgentRocket at 8:11 AM on May 4, 2012

I don't work for a law form, but for a government department. Governments practically live and breath the work-life balance thing and yet, if you take advantage of things like fractional work, you absolutely will not progress as fast as if you are are on 1.0. Think if it this way - if you are employed at 0.8, someone else needs to be found to work the same job at 0.2 to make up a whole team member.

This is certainly how people think of it, and so it's functionally true, but it isn't really true. Work doesn't automatically come in full-time-employee-sized units (as anyone staffing a retail establishment knows).
posted by redfoxtail at 9:32 AM on May 4, 2012

In the abstract, I totally agree that this depends on individual firm culture.

Example: At my first firm, I got grief for not being at my desk at 9:00 am. One of the partners I worked with (and who was on the management committee) regularly got into the office at 7:30 am. He felt my rolling into the office past 9:00 reflected poorly on my work habits (notwithstanding the fact that I exceeded my annual billable hours target). "Work at home" time at that firm was, candidly, a pipe dream.

At my second firm, no one gave a damn about whether or not I showed up in the office at all, primarily because the head of our practice group (who I worked very closely with) was almost never in the office. He traveled a lot, and worked from home frequently. I, too, did a lot of travel, and it was absolutely no problem for me to work from home. We were so busy that other lawyers in the firm didn't really care that we weren't physically in the office, since they knew where to find us (and we were responsive).

But answering your specific question, my feeling is that for a first-year associate to go on reduced-hours at BigLaw in 2012 amounts to career suicide. Junior associates are fungible billing units. I am sure you are all special snowflakes, but frankly, as a senior associate and as a partner I regarded all first-years as mostly useless. And clients hated it when first-years showed up on the bill.

At most BigLaw that I've had direct experience with, at best, flexible work schedules were tolerated for mid-levels and senior associates (and junior partners) who had proven their value to the firm, or who had mentors or other powerful folks in the firm who advocated for them. (This is particularly true for mid-level associates who develop sought-after specialized expertise, or who are identified as having the potential for actual business development.)

My hunch is that at the "right" firm, you will likely be able to find people who made partner who were on a reduced hours requirement. My hunch is that these junior partners went on that reduced-hours schedule as mid-level associates, after they had proven their value to the firm.

I suspect you will NOT find any partners in BigLaw who went on a reduced-hours schedule from the start as a first-year associate, absent truly extenuating circumstances such as nepotism, possession of incriminating photos of partners in management, or business development mojo which would result in their making partner notwithstanding hours billed. Besides cynicism, I would also point out that work-life issues have really only recently been a "thing" in BigLaw, so if a hypothetical first-year went on reduced hours when the programs first became available, it's likely that they wouldn't even be up for partner yet. But who knows, unicorns might really exist, too.

I will now do the typical lawyer thing and argue the other side for you.

Going immediately on reduced hours is career suicide if you have any hope of making partner at the firm you're currently employed at. (Among other things, as others have pointed out, you would be at high risk for being first on the chopping block and being last to get "good" assignments, theoretically.) But the reality is that throughout most of BigLaw, the vast majority of the first-year class never makes partner.

If the firm really is committed to its work-life balance rhetoric, then it is theoretically possible that a junior associate on reduced hours would be able to gain experience and make bank long enough to support a lateral move to another firm, or to an in-house position. The next job usually won't care. If you survive at BigLaw for a couple of years, that's adequate credentialing in and of itself, and furthermore, you would theoretically be able to answer truthfully, "I made my hours goals" or even "I hit the bonus threshhold." That said, it is somewhat unfair to ask you to be able to predict how you will feel about your prospects as a BigLaw partner without even knowing what your actual prospects are, or what your lateral potential really is. The amount of student loan debt you're carrying, as well as your family situation (and joint income potential) is also a factor.

One final thought. Having landed a BigLaw position in 2012 is somewhat akin to winning a small lottery. You are in a vastly different position than associates from the halcyon days of the boom years a decade ago. Junior associates in 2012 are in higher demand, because attrition (layoffs) in BigLaw has been so brutal in recent years. But cost pressures are even bigger than before, and junior associates are even more fungible than ever. Always remember that there are many, many attorneys out there who are quite capable, and who would happily eat your lunch (at least for a little while).
posted by QuantumMeruit at 10:11 AM on May 4, 2012 [1 favorite]

Work doesn't automatically come in full-time-employee-sized units

True, but law firm billing is obviously different than retail; if OP's billing target is 2200, s/he may bill more or less (too much less and no bonus, or no job)--but their actual billing could be 2400, or 2500 or whatever. If the goal is to scale back to some modicum of work-life balance, maybe their target will be 1650, and s/he will actually end up work 1800. So, someone has to pick up the 700 hours that OP would have billed, but didn't. 700 hours is a colossal amount of of time. I tend to bill 200 hours or so a month--so, even if you spread that among three other associates on full time, that's an extra month of work you're dumping on someone else's plate. Grar. Don't get me wrong--if I could switch to 75% time I would do it in a heartbeat. I've proven my value, have good relationships built over years of service, and do not give a flying fuck about partnership. But as a junior? Pshaw!

One final thought. Having landed a BigLaw position in 2012 is somewhat akin to winning a small lottery.

And how! But reading your paragraph about optimizing your work/reward, you should probably be in banking, or in-house at a bank, anyway.
posted by Admiral Haddock at 10:18 AM on May 4, 2012