Susan DeSantis' article “Lawyers, Increasingly Busy With Billable Hours, Look to Delay Childbearing by Freezing Embryos and Eggs” raises an important issue for attorneys in their childbearing years. When I was a law student at Cardozo Law School, there was a panel discussion with women from all stages of their career and varying legal careers regarding the “best” time to have children. The consensus across the board was that there is, in fact, no best time. The stresses and workload of a young partner are not significantly less than an associate. Each stage of a legal career raises different challenges and time commitments. Personally, my husband and I had our children when we were both associates and now that we are partners in our respective firms and our children are in elementary school, we still need to balance the after-school games and activities with our work.

As a matrimonial attorney, I have seen clients who have had children in their mid to late 30s despite having reservations about their significant others because of concern of their ticking biological clocks and hopes for biological children. It is those individuals whom I believe should benefit most from freezing their eggs (though the process is most effective when done in a woman's 20s or early 30s). Lawyers should not be encouraged to freeze their eggs simply so that they can devote all their time to churn out billable hours. The work-life balance will not be significantly less challenging if a woman has children in her 40s. A woman's decision to bear children should be a personal one and not limited by her rung on the law firm corporate ladder. The legal community will benefit from women choosing to have children when it best suits their personal lives and then providing both women and men with the flexibility to care for their families while satisfying their work obligations.

Aimee Davis is a partner at Goldweber Epstein.