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Proctor : November 2014
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Regular features November 2014 | Proctor 45 My flexibility story An unhappy time as an employed solicitor led this female practitioner into another profession. However, her story has a happy ending. The Queensland Law Society flexibility working group welcomes your comments and stories on this important topic. Please contact flexibility@qls.com.au to share your experiences with flexibility in the legal profession. This contribution was edited for space reasons. I did not enjoy any of my experiences as an employee solicitor, and actually left law after five years due to my disappointment with the way law firms operated. I was just another money-producing item, and a cog in the corporate machine. It was a soul-destroying time. I didn’t like the people in the profession, which was such a shock after the high aspirations of law school. The emphasis seemed to be on how many clients you could bring to the firm, but law school doesn’t teach us how to be salespeople. It also really depends on what circles you move in and your contacts, as well as your salesmanship. The worst part for me was the expectation I would bring in clients and then hand the work over to the staff and find more clients for the firm. Not being able to manage my clients as I wanted meant I lost some clients who wanted me to work on their matters and had moved firms with me. I left law and spent a decade in a different profession in which I experienced a much happier workplace environment. There was an emphasis on looking after staff and appreciating them, and working co-operatively and positively as a team. Due to a relocation for family reasons, I reluctantly returned to law as I needed a job and couldn’t find one in my other profession. While I was an employed solicitor I suddenly found myself needing to care for my elderly father. Without family support it was just me, and Dad needed me. Over time as my father became more frail, it often meant nursing him or attending to him through the night. Sometimes I struggled to get to work on time. If I was a minute or two late I would walk in and notice the eyes of the secretaries flick to the clock with scowls, and they were too busy (too unfriendly) to respond to my ‘hi’. I hated that because they had no idea how I had spent the 15 hours or so since they last saw me. The negative and critical attitude starts at the top and it is the partners who need to change their attitudes and culture, and demand a more respectful and tolerant workplace from all their staff. I only worked four days a week already, which meant I could make Wednesdays ‘Dad day’, and we went to his hospital appointments, physio, lab tests, and lunch at a shopping centre, and then the weekend revolved around things I could do with him and my child (then aged 11 through to 13). While this was the best I could do at looking after Dad, at the same time I did not have the time to socialise at parties or join and participate in organisations to make contacts and sell the law firm to them to attract new clients, and I knew achieving billable hours would be difficult. At the start when Dad still wanted to live independently in a unit near me, I thought he could rent a unit in the building where I worked. I was told by the directors that if he moved into the building it was not to interfere with my work and he wasn’t to come to the workplace to see me. I then decided it would be easier and better if Dad lived with my child and me, and I was pleased to have him in my house. Personal conflict and stress As the responsibility of caring for parents and children tends to be left to daughters, I suddenly lived the tightrope of maintaining a professional life while being a carer in private life. It is very tiring. I know I internalised a lot of personal conflict and stress and professional disappointment. I felt there was no compassion in the law world and yet personal experiences such as caring for elderly or very young family members build compassion. As I did not bring in enough money for the firm over this time, my hours were cut. In the end, after my father’s death, I had surgery, which had been delayed while I was nursing Dad, and it required three months’ convalescence. I had a letter saying on my return to work I was assured of work two days a week, but in the end I found I did not have a job to return to, and it left me with a sense of relief. I spent the next three months trying to find another law job, but couldn’t find one even within an hour’s drive. Setting up my own firm is the best thing I have done in law. My own firm has given me flexibility and released me from the unhappy workplace tension and anxiety I felt all the time as an employed solicitor. I had a friend who was a legal secretary who had left work due to cancer and chemotherapy. I asked her to be my secretary and work the hours she could around her own health needs. She also knew how to manage my client appointments around the needs of my child, who was depressed after Dad died and was suffering bullying at school. On our doctor’s advice, my child was removed from school and home schooled at my office for most of Year 9. My secretary and I did our legal work and shared school supervision. Over this time my secretary also maintained her follow-up cancer treatments and hospital visits, and she knew that with me there was no stress about things such as appointments or days when she felt too ill to come to work. We maintained a calm and happy work environment, the law work got done and our clients stayed happy. I love the variety of the work and clients, the opportunity to provide excellent customer care where the focus is on quality not quantity, and the independence that self- employment offers. I do my best to encourage each of my staff to be an important member of a team and find their work rewarding, and I offer progressive training and upskilling. I think my staff are happy; they look happy – and I think this is a simple satisfaction gauge, because if you walk into a law firm and look at the faces of the staff, you can tell if they are happy or not. Flexibility | back to contents
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