Interview of Robyn Crowther (hired Sandy Tholen)

Q: Let me begin by asking you to state and spell your name so we have it on the videotape.

A: It's Robyn Crowther ROBYN CROWTHER.

Q: Ok. And how long have you been with this firm?

A: With this firm I started in August of 1998.

Q: And before that?

A: I graduated from Georgetown Law School in 1996. I went and clerked for a US District Court judge in Orange County for a year and then I started with [large law firm] and was there for just about a year before I moved here.

Q: Can I ask why you moved?

A: Sure. The way that our firm recruits is that we send a letter to all of the Federal clerks within the 9 th Circuit and the district courts that are in the 9 th Circuit just kind of describing our approach to the practice of law and litigation in our environment and at the time that I was clerking and got that letter I had actually accepted a job with [large law firm]. But I really liked the small environment that I had with my co-clerk and the judge and our secretary and her courtroom deputy and I really felt like that gave me an opportunity to have access to this great amount of experience in the judge, but to also be an important and substantive player in what happened next. I was curious as to whether I was going to be able to recreate that at [large law firm]. I was excited about going to [large law firm]. I liked the people that I met there. They were smart lawyers with interesting work, but I think I was starting to see that maybe it wasn't going to get me the experience at the rate that I wanted if I went to a big firm. So I interviewed with this firm which was then called Hedges & Caldwell during my clerkship and reached a point where they had one opening for an associate and three candidates that they liked and they couldn't make up their mind. So the interview process dragged on for a couple of months. For family reasons there was a possibility that my husband and I would have to go back to the east coast within the next year or so after my clerkship. And I thought if I were at [large law firm], they have a Washington, DC office. I could easily make that move so I'll just start there and the timing just didn't feel right to come into this small firm. So that's what I did. They hired the other two candidates. I stayed in touch. Fast forward about a year I was five weeks pregnant and someone from the firm here called and said listen we need an associate can we hire you now. At that point it had been a challenging year at [large law firm] with ups and downs and I had no idea how I was going to make it work once we had a baby. So it was earlier than I had planned to leave the big firm environment. I was thinking maybe 5 or 6 years down the road would be something that I would look at, but this firm combined the opportunity to work with smart people, to do interesting work at a humane pace and I thought it's happening now for a reason.

Q: When you say you weren't sure how it would go with a baby coming at the first firm, the big firm, what do you mean by that? What did you know?

A: I knew a couple of things. One was that I like litigation and I like being a lawyer and I wanted to continue to work where I was really in the mix. I wanted to be a real player on my cases. I didn't want to be the person who answered interrogatories or who worked you know piece meal on a case or only for one person within the firm. Because that worked out I liked being part of associate committees. I liked being part of big busy matters. I thought and I was told when I decided to leave [large law firm] that the firm would work with me to create an hourly schedule that would allow me to be the kind of parent that I wanted to be. I grew up with a stay-at-home mom and a dad who was really committed who were at my volleyball games and came to my shows and who worked in the classroom and I wanted the opportunity to do that too. But I didn't see that at [large law firm] that I would be able to combine really doing the kind of work that I wanted to do with being the kind of parent that I wanted to be because it just was too challenging.

Q: Just so I'm clear on this they could have cut you some slack on your hours, but.

A: But that wouldn't be enough for me. The firm was willing. They were instituting a part-time policy and there were some people there who actually worked on a reduced hours basis. My impression though was that those people were marginalized. And either they had kind of their own little niche where they came in and they did their work and they left and they worked for one or two people and that was enough for them or that they were just getting a lower quality of work and they weren't the people who were going to progress and who were going to make partner. I think, maybe I was too ambitious for that to be acceptable to me.

Q: Do you think that's pretty common?

A: I do. I mean it's hard to say because I have been out of a big firm environment now for 10 years or 9 and so without being there firsthand I think it's hard to really have an opinion, but my impression is that it's still a real struggle for anyone who wants to go on a reduced hour basis at a big firm to maintain forward progress, interesting work. I know someone at another firm who has been part-time for many years and is a terrific lawyer, but is not on a partnership track.

Q: You have been at this firm now for 9 years. Are you a partner?

A: I am. I became a shareholder in January 2003.

Q: And this despite, well tell me about your situation regarding your career and your children. How did that work here?

A: When this firm called me at the big firm and said can we hire you now I said well I need to come and talk to you about that. So I came in and I said I'm six weeks pregnant and I don't want you to hire me unless you know that's true because my ability to commit is going to be different in 9 months or 10 months or whenever I come back from maternity leave and I wanted to make sure they didn't have a one year minimum before you could take maternity leave and things like that. The response was terrific. We love kids. Please come and let us make this work for you. So I had my first child about six months after I started and I took 10 weeks of full maternity leave and then I came back part-time three days a week for a month while I was transitioning. And the following year was very difficult for me. I was doing most of the dropping off and picking up of my daughter from the daycare center. It was, I really felt my loyalties were torn because I wanted to spend time with her and yet I wanted to be in the office. I had a hard time maintaining my billable hours even at a reduced rate just because of the transition to becoming a parent is hard. It was the first time I really felt incompetent at something and that was a really difficult adjustment. The firm stuck with me. They didn't ask me to reduce my compensation to a part-time level. They didn't ask me not to count that year towards my partnership track. They said what can we do to help. How can we make it better? And continued to give me interesting work and let me develop as a lawyer and figure out I really wanted to make this work. I'm also incredibly lucky to have a supportive husband who we figured out together ways that he could take some of the burden at home off of me and so I got pregnant with our second child in 2001 and we made the decision that when the baby was born he would reduce his hours and go part-time.

Q: He is an attorney?

A: He is a computer consultant or was. He was an Information Technologies Manager and also had a job that he could go to and say listen I think I can satisfy your needs in three days a week and you don't need me here five days a week and I'll take a pay cut and how will that work? And so the second child was born in 2001 and he did that and it freed me up to be at the office more. And two years later I made partner in January and then we had our third baby in September of 2003 at which point my husband said this part-time stuff isn't working. It means I have all the stress of work and most of the stress at home. So I quit and because I had advanced in my career we were in a position to make that work financially. Now we have a lot of flexibility as far as juggling our various commitments.

Q: One question I think that the whole concept of opting in opting out, balancing career and balancing family these are only dilemmas for the well to do.

A: We are the only ones with options. We are the only ones for whom there are choices. There is no question about that. You know to afford high quality childcare is an unbelievable burden. As it should be. It's such an important job. The people who take care of our children should be well paid and in fact are dramatically underpaid in my opinion for the value of what they contribute. But you can't ask somebody who makes $30,000 a year to be able to pay a reasonable amount in childcare. It just doesn't work that way and it's a tremendous disservice to families.

Q: You mentioned earlier this law firm that you are with now prided themselves on being family friendly. Give me some examples.

A: Well, we are about to be a 17 lawyer firm. We have 8 shareholders, 7 have children. Since I have been with the firm I believe that 5 or 6 babies have been born to attorneys and staff members alike. We have four firm social events during the year. Children are invited to all but one when we insist on a night out and a nice dinner to thank our staff for their hard work. Most of the offices here have toys in them because children come to visit. In fact, later this afternoon due to scheduling issues two of my daughters will be visiting for the afternoon in my office and while I take a conference call one of my colleagues will sit with them and make sure that they don't do anything tremendously bad. And if that happens they are more successful than I am. When I leave the office to do something with my children to go to their school that's where I say I'm going and when I come back people ask me how it was and how it was and want to see pictures. I don't have to say I'm going to the doctor's or that I'm at a deposition and hope nobody finds out that I'm with my kids. It is just an ingrained part of the culture. It's also, the firm puts its money where its mouth is because we have a reduced hours expectation most lawyers I think about 10 years out at a big firm would bill I think 2100 to 2500 hours in a year is not unreasonable especially if they are in a litigation practice and they have a case that goes to trial. Our target is 1800 and we mean it. Over the last 3 years there have only been 2 lawyers who billed more than 2100 hours and they were different lawyers and in different years and they involved enormous cases where the work just dictated that they put in that amount of time.

Q: This is how many hours per B

A: It is 2100 hours per year and to put that in context if you were to bill every hour Monday through Friday 9:00 to 5:00 52 weeks out of the year that's 1800. So every hour that you work after 1800 comes from a night or a weekend and if you take a vacation or you have a little bit of a lull or you have a sick day that's time that's got to be put in. So our expectation is basically a 9:00 to 5:00 schedule which for professional lawyers is reduced.

Q: It sounds like you have been lucky your whole career.

A: Absolutely. In some ways I've been lucky and in some ways I think I was good at figuring out what my choices were and the pros and cons in making those decisions earlier rather than faced it with a difficult situation and having to fix it. By that I mean coming to this firm when I was pregnant with my first child rather than having struggled for three years and just having it not work out.

Q: Another thing you had your children relatively early in your career.

A: I did and I think that the laws with many careers its unfortunate that people are moving forward and making a name for themselves at the same time at least that most women are having children if they are having children. I mean they are the years from 25 to 35 basically. It’s an awful big commitment both ways. And it’s why I'm sort of in favor of this idea of allowing people to opt out and come back into the profession. I think that if you take some time off to raise your children for 4 or 5 years and make a conscious choice to come back to a profession it means you liked it. And you missed it and you want to figure it out and you're more adjusted to your role as a parent and you're not going to be in crisis mode so often unlike somebody who just feels that they are forced to continue to do it and does not have the choice those are the people who are unhappy and who are stressed and who bring down the morale of the workplace. I think it's a great thing and I watched my husband taking time away from work and being able to focus on taking care of our home and the benefits it has to me and the benefits it has to the kids and the benefits it has to him. It's the right choice for us. It may not be for everyone, but I sure wish that more of us could look at life that way and I think maybe that would work.

Q: How old are your children now?

A: My oldest is 7, my middlest—which we call her to give her own super title—I suppose is 4, and my youngest is 2.

Q: Do you ever think about opting out just to spend more time with them?

A: There certainly are days where I have been busy and feel like I have seen them for 15 minutes in the morning too long and I miss them. I look forward to when my work is going to be less demanding and I'll be able to take an afternoon off and reconnect with them. Fortunately for me those periods are relatively short and they are spread out so I don't feel like I need to take time away from this profession to be with them on any given day. Some days, the worst day, I'd rather just quit my job and stay at home and you know be the room parent and all of those things, but that's just when something completely overwhelming in terms of work has happened and puts me in a different place. I love my job and its what I wanted to do you know I had to say it but since I was 8 years old. I think I always assumed that I would be a parent, but I really pursued the practice of law and to step away from that I would really miss it. So I feel really lucky that I haven't had to make the choice between the life that I always envisioned for myself and the life I always assumed I would have as a parent.

Q: You have no idea how much hope you probably are at this moment giving law students, women law students.

A: I hope so. I've been involved over the past year with a couple more women lawyers type groups and have paid more attention to the issues of women and the law and I am often dismayed at the pessimistic tone which some of them take towards being able to do this job and have kids. It makes me think not that they aren't doing it right but that the companies they work for are doing it wrong because that's the difference between them and me. It's this place. I mean I cannot undervalue what my husband has done and his willingness to be supportive and that he is finding happiness in a manner that is not on a career path. Not everybody is like that and I think if you have two people who are ambitious and driven then the arrangement that he and I have made won't necessarily work. But if you look and if you are willing to take an alternative view and to present a situation to people who will listen and to say this is why I'm valuable and this is how I can contribute. I think there are a lot of solutions. It's a really flexible job. You can do it anywhere. You need pretty much a computer and a phone.

Q: But try telling that to a lot of the men who run these law firms. Try telling that to a lot of the women in upper echelon jobs. Have you ever run across women who said you know I did it the hard way you can too?

A: Yes and I have also heard people say it's really just a disservice to women in this profession when women have kids and don't come back to work because that just makes it harder for the rest of us. You know we are in this together and we are in this with the guys. We all benefit when the fathers take an active role and if we could reach out to them and say wouldn't you like to be able to go see your child play football or be in the play or attend their music lessons or go to parent teacher conferences. I think in some ways men have fewer options than women because their expectation is they will be back to work as soon as their wife will let them out of the house when the baby is born and it shouldn't be that way. They should be able to be active parents as well. There was one deposition that I attended I was out of town and there was the court reporter and me and the witness was a man and the opposing counsel was a man and we were having conversations about our kids and our kids were kind of similarly aged and my opposing counsel looked at me and said well who's home with your children? And I said their father who's home with yours? And just putting the question to him that way you would never ask a man how is it that you are able to travel and (unintelligible). Because a father is just as valuable to a kid and sometimes more so.

Q: You keep coming back to this law firm which sure sounds swell but you know that most law firms aren't like this.