Go Premium for $25 and get
Already a member? Log in here.
When I began my first year of law school, or 1L year, I was a single parent, and this status meant that I was going to spend all three years of law school as a “PL”, or “Parenting Law Student.” My long days included
I am a law student at the University of Georgia (UGA) and a father to two beautiful girls. Unfortunately, 1,400 miles separates me from my babies. Their mother serves in the Air Force, but I separated from active duty after our divorce to pursue a legal career.
Law school isn’t tailored to students with kids, so create an academic experience that works for your family.
For many students, law school marks the first stage in a student’s life where they are living on their own, away from on-campus housing, away from their parents, maybe even away from roommates (if they’re lucky). As a result, students start considering the ultimate responsibility: parenthood—that is, parenting a four-legged roommate.
Law school is stressful by pure design alone. The strenuous course schedule and endless reading assignments, learning and reprogramming your brain to think like a lawyer are the challenges most law students face in addition to outside pressures. However, there is one particular group of law students who are often not mentioned during discussions of time and stress management: parents.
Michelle Travis, a professor at the University of San Francisco School of Law, a Dean’s Circle Scholar and co–director of USF’s Labor and Employment Law Program, has just written a children’s book, My Mom Has Two Jobs. And she has great advice for women in the legal profession.
The Law Student Division is working to bring this issue before the ABA House of Delegates to urge all ABA accredited Law Schools to provide a place for nursing mothers to pump and store breastmilk and will continue to advocate for the rights of all law students. Together we can reach this important goal.
The practice of law is not known for being particularly portable or forgiving of taking “time off” from one’s career. But, for the future of our noble profession, I hope those things are changing. And I believe that they are. For example, as an increasing number of states adopt the
Linda Chanow is executive director of The University of Texas School of Law's Center for Women in Law. She is a liaison to the ABA Commission on Women in the Profession. She also co-chaired the ABA's Toolkit for Gender Equity in Partner Compensation, an initiative of the ABA
I usually write about strategies for prelaw/law students and lawyers who are looking to break into BigLaw despite perceived obstacles such as grades, school, or background. But what if you actually do achieve what you want – ie: you get that BigLaw job – but are then faced with an entirely