Jena Valdetero of Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner working from home with her daughters and a close family friend. (Courtesy photo)

A baby's cry in the background of a conference call or a child barging into a home office in the middle of a video meeting is the new reality for many lawyers. And when it comes to pairing work with raising kids, it's often mothers who are juggling the most.

With the legal industry forced to adapt to working from home, it was obvious from the start that lawyers with kids faced special obstacles. Now, as the pandemic in the U.S. stretches into a second month, lawyers who are also moms say those challenges are even clearer—but they are finding ways to cope.

"Right now, we're trying to run a team remotely while providing immediate client response and feedback," said Jena Valdetero, co-leader of Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner's data privacy and security team. "I also have two little kids—a 5-year-old and a 7-year-old—and my husband also works full time. We've all been home for the past week. In the midst of all of this, my kids are supposed to be e-learning. It has been a lot."

Chicago-based Valdetero stressed that she still felt really lucky because most of her work can be done remotely, and she does have experience working from home on occasion. But coupled with schools being closed and having two young children at home with her, it's still been a tough adjustment.

"My kids are young, and they still want a lot of attention and love," she said. "It's definitely a challenge, and my days have gotten a lot longer. I wake up earlier to get as much work done as I can before they get up. Screen-time restrictions are fairly out the window at this point."

Home with a 9-year-old and 5-year-old, Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck shareholder Alexandra Metzl, who co-leads the firm's Women's Leadership Initiative, is in a similar boat.

"My older daughter is busy with homeschooling, and that has been an amazing experience. But it's much harder for the little one, because there's not as much of a school infrastructure for pre-kindergarten," she said. "We're all dealing with our own level of crazy, but last week [when everyone in the family was home all the time] was a real shock to the system."

That's why her Denver colleague and Women's Leadership Initiative co-chair, Nicole Ament, started an email chain for women at the firm to share their work-from-home experiences and highlight the challenges they were troubleshooting. After sending out the initial email, Arment said women and mothers at the firm have been connecting with one another about how they're managing their households and children of all ages.

"I've worked from home on days when I know my kids aren't going to be here and won't bother me," said Arment, who has a high school senior and twin 14-year-olds. In her household, although her kids are old enough to manage themselves during the day, emotions have run high as prom, graduation, and sports seasons have been canceled.

"The difference for all of us this time is suddenly we're all going to be in this space together—how do we deal with this? We are women, and we all know the kids always come to us first," she said. "The email and responses gave a sense that we're all going through stuff, dealing with this, and it sucks, but we're going to get through this."

It looks a little different for everyone, but most parents are finding their stride by balancing a new routine with more flexibility.

"Generally, we have a bulletproof routine that I was really proud of, but this situation has definitely changed everything, although all the demands of work are basically the same," said Silvia Vannini, a partner at O'Melveny & Myers. In the weeks since she, her husband, 3-year-old, 1-year-old, cat and dog have been together under one roof, she said she quickly made peace that her workflow would look different for the foreseeable future.

"I've coordinated business calls with my husband more than I've ever had to," she said. "During the day, I can do calls and virtual lunches, but anything that requires true brainpower—drafting, careful reading, reviewing—gets done when the kids are asleep."

Amy Siegel, the managing partner of O'Melveny's Century City office, also has two younger kids at home—an 8-year-old and a 5-year-old—which has changed what she prioritizes and when.

"Scheduling calls is almost the easier part because you have a set time and you work with your partner to try to have as little overlap as possible," she said. "It's not that different from what happens in the office, where client calls go long all the time."

On the other hand, carving out the quiet time necessary to complete thorough, thoughtful analysis requires a lot of effort and creativity.

"It takes extra coordination and planning the night before, and you have to be more careful than normal," she said. "My mom is a retired schoolteacher, and we did a Zoom session with my kindergartner where they wrote a story together. it's whatever you can do to buy those chunks of time."

Valdetero, the Bryan Cave lawyer, said she's found a silver lining as everyone deals with scheduling issues, and children being heard in a conference call: it's been easier to open up with others and share what everyone is going through right now.

"I've become increasingly unapologetic that there may be kid noises in the background, and for the most part, everyone's been unbelievably understanding," she said. "It is what it right now. It's enabled everyone to have some empathy for each other."

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