This morning a sixth-year associate announced that she'll be moving to a "part-time" schedule because she wants to spend more time with her year-old daughter. She's in for a surprise. Part-time has been the biggest boon for the firm since we instituted the policy a few years ago, reluctantly, since a number of our peer firms had done it. What we didn't realize at the time, but has become abundantly clear now, it that all part-time means is that people work 100% of the time they used to work for 80% of the pay. It's a profit center. It's fantastic. Technically, the people working part time don't come in on Fridays. That's the part-time part of it, the 80%. But their clients come in on Friday, and the partners in charge of their cases come in on Friday, and meetings get scheduled on Fridays. So they end up spending a few hours working from home on Friday, so as to not get behind. But then they usually end up coming in over the weekend to catch up too, and in some cases they're here more weekends than the people working full-time. Their "flexibility" just means they substitute some weekend hours for Friday hours, they work just as hard, but they get 20% less salary, and lose pretty much any chance to ever make partner. The truth they don't realize is they could work from home on Fridays as a full-timer anyway if they were careful about which partners they ended up working for. I won't usually tolerate it, but a lot of people here would have no problem if the work product was good. But I think in a way they know this when they go on part-time schedule. They know they're going to work just as hard. They want to work just as hard. But they're willing to spend 20% of their salary just to be able to tell themselves, and everyone they meet, that they work "part-time" for the good of their children. That they're making some sort of sacrifice. It's self-delusion, and it makes them feel better about putting their career first if they can tell their husband / friends / hair stylist that they only work "part-time" and they're giving up such magnificent career opportunities all so they can get by with only one nanny instead of two. Pathetic. But the firm loves it now. The more the merrier.
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