A decade ago, in April 2015, you would have found me working remotely from my home office. Circumstances had forced me to relocate nine months earlier when my husband was diagnosed with a brain tumor. Though I’d been remote when my daughters were young, once they entered middle school, I returned to an office out of the house where I found that I could better focus and avail myself of more networking options. But when I learned that my husband was terminally ill, there was no question, not for a minute, where I both wanted and needed to be. Within an afternoon, I packed up my boxes, set up mail forwarding, and made my way back home.
Because I’d worked from home before, my transition was seamless. With the internet, VoIP, e-filing, online invoicing, cloud-based files, a Google calendar, and a decade-long relationship with my virtual assistant in place, I didn’t experience a second of downtime. And the world outside — opposing counsel and judges and regulators — never knew that I wasn’t in my downtown office but was instead, most of the time (with the exception of in-person hearings), working from home with my dying husband.
Sadly, my husband passed away in May 2015. A month later, I returned to an out-of-home space to prepare my team of summer associates for a trial in federal court and to force myself back out into the world. Years later, when I look back at that forced respite, I hardly remember the cases I worked on — though I know that they kept the revenue flowing so that I could support my family and pay my daughters’ school tuition all on my own. What I do remember are the sunny spring days when my husband’s cognition had improved, and we’d drive in his Mini Cooper with the top down to the 7-Eleven to buy Big Gulps and junk food. I remember how my husband would plant himself in the big overstuffed chair in my office, and when I felt overwhelmed, I could sit on his lap and he’d put his arms around me and tell me that I didn’t need to be working so hard. I remember when, finally, the overstuffed chair in my home office was replaced with a hospital bed and how I was there by his side the night he left this world even though I’d been working on a pleading just a few hours before.
Unbelievably, there are still many law firms (not to mention a presidential administration) post-pandemic that still resist allowing remote practice on principle. Some don’t trust staff or themselves to work from home, while others persist in viewing a virtual arrangement as fly-by-night. Yet those views are terribly shortsighted. There may come a time when any one of us might need or want to spend more time at home with children. Or take advantage of an opportunity to live with family in a different part of the world. Or, as in my case, when tragedy strikes and all that matters is squeezing out every last minute with the person you love. Today, we have the tools that enable us to keep our work lives going when real life throws us curve balls. Let’s use them.
