黛布拉·布鲁诺
二零一七年六月十二日
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Maybe the takeaway here is to make sure you start strong.
Lawyers who are looking for a work–life balance plus a flourishing career might start by looking at what Kathleen Moriarty 穆勒, counsel at Sidley Austin LLP, 已经做了.
穆勒, 52, stepped almost entirely out of the workforce for 10 years. In 那 period, she tended to her two small children and went on to add two more to the family. In 2010, when all four were school age (5, 7, 9, 和11, 准确地说), she decided she was ready to jump back into the workforce. She approached Sidley, asking for a part-time schedule with the firm, not on the partner track. Sidley hired her almost immediately.
Sound ideal for many working moms? There is one caveat here: By the time 穆勒 太k her years off, she had already established herself as a star. A summa cum laude graduate of Northwestern University School of Law, she served as Coordinating Notes and Comments editor on the Northwestern University Law Review. From 1990 to 1991, she clerked for Judge Patricia M. 世界银行.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Next was a clerkship with U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens. That got her to the Justice Department, where she served as both appellate staff attorney and trial attorney for the Federal 项目 Branch of the DOJ.
In other words, these are not your average humdrum legal credentials. That’s probably why when 穆勒 decided to reach out to Sidley about restarting her career, she was offered her schedule. It means she gets to the office by 7:30 a.m., and leaves in time to do the afternoon carpool pick-up at her children’s school. (Her husband, Don 穆勒, is a budget analyst for the Navy.)
卡特菲利普斯, chair of Sidley’s executive committee and former managing partner, says he was immediately interested in 穆勒 because she was a Northwestern alumnus (like him) and clerked for Stevens, one of his “favorite justices.” When 穆勒 came along, 菲利普斯 says he knew “she was one of the superstars of 那 generation” and brought her into the firm’s Supreme Court and appellate practice group.
There, he says, she is “remarkably tenacious. She focuses on a problem and then just wrestles with it.事实上, 菲利普斯说, 穆勒 is “one of only a handful of lawyers who consistently force me to be at the top of my game.”
彼得Keisler, co-leader of Sidley’s Supreme Court and appellate practice group, says he also was immediately on board with this hire. “I thought at the time we were lucky” to get her, he says.
“When I’m working on a case she hasn’t been involved in, I almost always ask her to moot me for the case in advance, 如果她有空的话,他说. “She has an uncanny ability to ask the questions 那 judges turn out to ask, and sometimes they are questions 那 had not even occurred to me.”
Mark Haddad, in Sidley’s Los Angeles office, says he worked with 穆勒 on Kerry v. 喧嚣声, the 2015 Supreme Court case 那 examined whether there was a constitutional right to live in the U.S. with one’s spouse, a case 那 is still seeing reverberations in today’s legal climate. 穆勒, 哈达德说, had a “critical role” throughout the briefing process and moot court preparation.
超越法律的眼光, 菲利普斯, Keisler, and Haddad all pointed to one other thing about 穆勒: her personality.
“She’s unbelievably cheerful for a woman who has four children and works as hard as she does on as many different matters,菲利普斯说。.
“She’s a wonderful person—a great colleague, 心情愉快的, 支持, 种类, 和你在一起很有趣,凯斯勒说.
“I remember I’ve had calls with her where she’s calling from the sidelines of a soccer field,” waiting for one of her children to finish practice, 哈达德说. “It’s clear she’s fully engaged with her family, but she also manages to be fully engaged with the work she takes on.”
穆勒 attributes some of 那 perspective to her clerkships. “I learned from both Judge Wald and Justice Stevens the value of politeness and civility. They were invariably tough in oral argument,” asking pertinent questions 那 probed weaknesses, but they “did it in a way 那 was both civil and polite,穆勒说。.
“I wish more judges would be like 那,她说。. “You don’t have to be nasty or personal to make a point or to be a zealous advocate.”
穆勒 also offers advice for those who might be considering her path. First of all, she says, be sure you love doing what you do. “I love being a lawyer,她说。. “I was one of the only [few] people 那 liked law school.”
“When people now ask me about being a lawyer, I say you have to do it because you’re really interested in the law, and not because it makes you a lot of money or you want colleagues to think you’re a smart person,她说。. That’s also why she knew she didn’t want to be on the partner track at a firm. “Sidley doesn’t expect me to be responsible for the management of the firm or all the financial part 那 goes with it,她说。.
As for the part-time schedule, 那, 太, requires a certain sense of limits and a full understanding of what part-time is. Her in-office hours add up roughly to 35 hours a week. But many days find her working in the evening as well.
Since she concentrates on appellate litigation, most of the time her schedule is predictable. Then again, she says, there are days when she works from 10 p.m. 到2a.m. 简短的结束.
“If you’re doing what you really like,她说。, “the stress is bearable. When you don’t really like what you’re doing, there’s no point.”
