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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 Sarah Feldman Horowitz back to our pages. Click here if you’d like to donate to MothersEsquire.
They say the only constant in life is change. Nowhere is this truer than the motherhood journey. No matter what we do, our children continue to grow, and their needs seem to change on a daily basis. It sometimes feels like as soon as we become experts in one thing (sleep training and handling toddler tantrums, for instance), new challenges arise (when to introduce smartphones and social media bullying).
Just as my children’s needs have evolved, so too has my law practice.
I started my own law practice nearly six and a half years ago, motivated in large part by my parenthood journey. When I started my law practice, my children were 5, 3, and 1, and shortly after, I would become pregnant with baby No. 4. At that stage in my life, I was rarely sleeping through the night, and felt like I wasn’t together enough to appear in an office, dressed in formal attire, much less have time to prepare and eat healthy meals, and exercise.
Fast forward to today, my oldest child is in middle school, my youngest child is in her last year of preschool, and my life feels different. We are done with diapers, and our family of six can fly on a plane without it feeling like the end of the world. My kids are turning into awesome people who are fun to spend time with, AND they are also becoming useful members of society who can do chores and make their own school lunches. While our family is still very busy, the intensity of the beginning years of parenting have died down, and there are at least moments, hours, and days, of relative calm.
While life has continued to evolve in my family, my law practice has evolved as well. When I first hung out my shingle, I was mainly focused on where my next client would come from and earning enough Google reviews to look credible. Now, after years of practice, my former clients and professional relationships have created what feels like an endless stream of work that often can feel difficult to manage. Over the years I have gone from a true solo to hiring a team of support staff, while still serving as the only attorney, which means that I need to invest mentally in each of my clients’ cases. Juggling my clients’ needs in addition to the needs of myself and my family can feel challenging as there are only so many hours in the day.
When I first started my law practice, I felt that the most difficult part was making the decision to jump off the proverbial cliff, quit my job, and put out my shingle. Everything after that was hard work, but nothing was as scary as giving up my reliable income as a government employee to becoming self-employed. My recent decision to expand my law firm and hire attorneys feels just as daunting, but I know (or at least hope) that once I do so, my life will feel more manageable, and I’ll feel like I have time to breathe again.
An article about self-care that really resonated with me said, “True self-care is not salt baths and chocolate cake, it is making the choice to build a life you don’t need to regularly escape from.” Instead of working with the intensity and time commitment I wanted to escape from when choosing to work for myself, I want to take this leap to hire additional attorneys with the hope that my workload will feel more manageable with more hands-on deck. Although the decision to expand feels paralyzing at times, I feel motivated by the opportunity to offer flexible, part-time, work to other attorneys balancing parenthood with their professional lives. By building a nontraditional law firm structure where attorneys can choose their caseload, and work from home at the hours they choose, I hope I can give others (who may not be interested in running their own firms) the flexibility I sought when I felt like I needed a change with my work-life balance.
In the first article I wrote for Above the Law five years ago, where I showcased how I reached the decision to start my own law firm, I wrote, “I think that work-life balance is always evolving and that the key is to constantly examine where you are and where you need to be in order to achieve optimal balance.” I guess I should take my own advice, and not be afraid to change and evolve. Our kids don’t give a second thought to their own natural evolution; I probably shouldn’t either. And as I know from experience, taking the first step is usually the hardest part.
Sarah Feldman Horowitz is a mother of four, lawyer, and law firm owner in Chevy Chase, Maryland. Her law practice, the Sarah Horowitz Law Group, represents clients in Estate Planning and Adoption in Maryland and the District of Columbia. Sarah is passionate about living life to the fullest, and enjoys spending time with her family, building community, and spending time in nature. You can contact Sarah directly at sarah@sarahhorowitzlaw.com.
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