A New Generation Defines 'The Office'
Elizabeth and Will Windsor
Photo by Karen Meyer
Sometimes in the evenings, while her husband watches sports on the flat-screen and her 2-year-old dashes around the family room in his Lightning McQueen pajamas, Elizabeth Stroyd Windsor looks up from her laptop and thinks about her dad.
He, too, was a lawyer who would work in front of the television at night. But he often went back to the office after family time, while Windsor, 33, is instead snug in her black leather Barcelona chair in the Pittsburgh suburbs, connected to her colleagues at Morgan Lewis & Bockius by wireless Internet and BlackBerry.
An employment litigator and pregnant mother of one, Windsor represents a shift in the struggle for work-life balance. She’s part of a new generation of attorneys who are changing what it means to be “at work.”
Savvy and assured, these lawyers are building reputations, then deftly leveraging their clout to get the flexibility they need. Technology has provided a bit of an upper hand, allowing them unprecedented control and creativity in maneuvering the tenuous balance between work and family.
“The lawyers who have the most creative schedules tend to be the most responsive,” says former lawyer Julie Tower-Pierce, author of Staying at Home, Staying in the Law.
Continue reading “Taking Charge of Work and Life” in the February issue of the ABA Journal online.
