How Constant Connectivity Helps and Hurts Working Parents

The rapid technological advances over the past two decades have made significant impacts on the legal industry and the practice of law. There is also a new generation of lawyers who have been raised in the high-tech era and demand a career that embraces the flexibility of these advances. The legal industry has embraced laptops, smartphones, electronic filings, and remote work spaces. So many of these advances offer the working attorney much-needed flexibility to allow for a level of present parenting not previously possible for prior generations. We are now more easily able to attend doctor appointments, soccer games, and gymnastics practice. We are home for dinner and able to take those amazing vacations with our families. We are more easily able to fit our work around our life, as opposed to fitting our life into the time our work allows. But that’s not to say the flexibility we are afforded comes without a cost. In fact, the cost of this level of flexibility is significant and constant connectivity. We can be reached by our offices and clients at any time on our cell phones. We get emails instantly on our smartphones. We have remote work spaces that allow working from home, airplanes, or really anywhere. Immediate responsiveness and access are expected and generally required.