Miriam Airington Fisher: Episode 1088

Transcript

[0:00:29] INTERVIEWER: Good morning everyone and welcome to another episode of Author Hour. Today, I’m talking to Miriam Airington-Fisher, who is a lawyer, author, and speaker, on a mission to make the legal profession more accessible and rewarding for working mothers. She’s the owner and lead attorney of Airington Law, a seven-figure women-led law firm, based in Richmond, Virginia, which she founded and built while raising her three kids. Talking to Miriam was an absolute delight, we’re talking about her forthcoming book, Mom’s A Lawyer: How to Start a Firm and Take Control of Your Life, where she gives very practical tips and tricks on how to create something when a system is not designed for you. I had a great time talking to her, I think she really hammers home that anything is possible, and she is just an amazing person all around, who does it all. I really hope that you enjoy listening to her as much as I enjoyed talking to her. And be sure to pick up a copy of her forthcoming book, Mom’s A Lawyer: How to Start a Firm and Take Control of your Life. Enjoy. Good morning everyone, thank you for joining Author Hour. I am here with our author, Miriam Airington-Fisher. Good morning Miriam, how are you?

[0:01:53] Miriam Airington Fisher: Good morning, I’m great, how are you?

[0:01:54] INTERVIEWER: I am excellent, thank you for asking. Where are we finding you this morning?

[0:02:00] Miriam Airington Fisher: I am in my office in Richmond, Virginia.

[0:02:03] INTERVIEWER: Okay, beautiful. How long have you been in Richmond?

[0:02:06] Miriam Airington Fisher: So I’ve been in Richmond for almost 15 years. I moved up here after law school and I’ve been practicing here ever since.

[0:02:14] INTERVIEWER: Okay, excellent. Well, I hear great things about Richmond as I’m sure everyone else does. Anything surprised you about it when you got there?

[0:02:21] Miriam Airington Fisher: Richmond has changed so much over the last 10 years but we have a really great restaurant scene and beer scene, and that is not something that I associated with Richmond before I moved here. So, that’s been an awesome surprise and also an area that the city has really grown in over the last decade.

[0:02:40] INTERVIEWER: Amazing. Well, I don’t know anyone that can say no to a good restaurant and beer scene. So I assume you’ll have an influx of visitors after this.

[0:02:49] Miriam Airington Fisher: That would be great. It’s a great place.

[0:02:52] INTERVIEWER: Yeah, amazing. Well, we are here today to discuss your forthcoming book, very exciting, it’s called, Mom’s A Lawyer: How to Start a Firm and Take Control of your Life. I would love to start just by giving the listeners an idea of your personal background, aside from what you just gave us.

[0:03:12] Miriam Airington Fisher: Sure. So my personal background, really starting back at the beginning of my legal career when I moved to Richmond and kicked off my career as a trial lawyer. It was really a passion of mine to be a litigator and in particular, with criminal defense, and I had some really great opportunities early in my career in Richmond working with phenomenal lawyers, great opportunities to try cases and work on really exciting things. And I really loved it and I did that for several years and in 2016, my personal life changed quite a bit. The most exciting part of it was that I became a mom, my daughter was born and the other part of it was that I got divorced, and so I essentially, overnight, in a very short period of time, became a new mom and then a single mom. And at the time, I was working as an associate at a firm doing a lot of trial work and before this, I had been working a lot but really loving it but really working a lot, sometimes seven days a week. I realized that I hadn’t really planned out what that was going to look like after becoming a mom and I definitely hadn’t planned out what it was going to look like after becoming a single mom. So it just hit me like a ton of bricks that I needed to figure out how these two pieces of my life were going to work pretty much immediately. So I resigned from the firm that I was working at and I started a law firm.

[0:04:51] INTERVIEWER: That’s amazing. I love that you coin that, becoming a mother as the most exciting part because that’s what it should be, and then to come to the realization that you had to juggle that with your career and taking that on. Taking the bull by the horns is pretty impressive. You said you obviously became a mother and that was a big change and now, I believe you have three kids, is that correct?

[0:05:15] Miriam Airington Fisher: I do, yeah. So I’m married again and I have two more kids. I inherited a bonus son in my remarriage and then my husband and I had our youngest son.

[0:05:27] INTERVIEWER: Amazing, congratulations, how old is everyone?

[0:05:30] Miriam Airington Fisher: Thank you. So the baby, my baby boy is four, my daughter is six now and the oldest son is 14.

[0:05:39] INTERVIEWER: Beautiful. All fun ages from what I hear. Maybe 14 is a little difficult but I have confidence that you’ll get through that.

[0:05:48] Miriam Airington Fisher: Every age has challenges for sure but they’re all good kids and it’s a fun and happy time, but it’s a crazy time too. It always is.

[0:05:58] INTERVIEWER: Yeah, yeah. Well, they have an amazing mother to look up to from what I’ve read, so that’s excellent. So Miriam, what insights or experience inspired you to write this book? I know that you said that you found yourself in the midst of juggling new motherhood and then working a lot and then in your book, you do talk about falling into entrepreneurship which is certainly not, it never happened to me. So I don’t know what that looks like. So how would you say what came to you really getting inspired to take that path of entrepreneurship and then write a book about it?

[0:06:42] Miriam Airington Fisher: So a big part of the book is what I wish I knew or what resource I wish I’d had back when I started my firm. It was a really challenging time in my life and a lot of the things that I did in my career felt I was doing it out of necessity, and just trying to figure out a way that I could balance the different pieces of my life that I wanted to maintain. Being in the situation I was at the time, being a single mom I mean, I had to keep working in a very real sense but I also wanted to, because law was what I love to do and trying cases was a passion of mine. And although the environment that I worked in was very supportive in a sense that I never felt discriminated against as a working mom or anything like that, the system really wasn’t designed to have a balance. It was very much a rat race, working long hours, working every day, being on call all the time. Sort of my first step was, “I’ve got to just work for myself so that I can just answer to myself.” And it was almost a little bit of giving myself some breathing room so that I could figure these things out without running into other people’s expectations. So I didn’t have a big runway and I didn’t have a lot of planning or capital. I talk about this a little bit in the book that it was really like, “I need to find an office and I need to buy a laptop,” and that was kind of how I started. Once I became this accidental entrepreneur and I had a law practice, there were really two areas that I needed to develop. One was, I needed to learn how to run a business and this is I think common for a lot of first-time entrepreneurs, just because you’re good at whatever your job is, whatever your field is, to start a business and run a business is a completely different skillset. So being a great lawyer and having a lot of experience in that area doesn’t automatically translate to running a successful law firm. So I had a huge learning curve of learning about firm management and human resources and finances and marketing and all of the things that go into running a small business. At the same time, I needed to do it in a way that accommodated my responsibilities to my daughter. At the time, it was just me and so the only hours that I could work with were the hours that she was in daycare and if daycare was closed or she was sick, I couldn’t work. And I have some anecdotes that I shared in the book of, there were times when I had to take her to court with me or work all night or have her in meetings and things like that. And although we made it work in the beginning, I really wanted to build a more sustainable approach. I wanted to be able to have a successful legal career and a successful law practice and also be the kind of parent that I wanted to be. I didn’t want to be juggling both all the time. I wanted to have a balance, I wanted to have some separation, and that was an area where I really didn’t see a template for myself in the legal field. As far as running a business, there are many resources out there that I have used and that I continue to use in terms of running a business and the nuts and bolts of running a law firm as a business and legal marketing and so on and so forth. What I didn’t have and what I don’t think really exists is a model for how to do that in a way that’s really sustainable for parents. What I consider to be sustainable for parents is that you can have your business and practice law and have meaningful quality time with your family and not be completely stressed out and up all night. So, having a law firm that accommodates a personal life is not something that I saw that I could model my business after. So that piece in particular is what I really focused for several years, on building in a sustainable way. I’m very fortunate that I’m in a place now where I feel that we’ve done that. I’m very proud of the firm that I have and I have at this point many people working with me and that’s a culture that we’ve sort of built while at the same point, being profitable. So when I reflected on the fact that I hadn’t had a guide to do that and I know that there are other working lawyer moms who want a similar opportunity, I thought it was time to at least share my experiences and the lessons that I’ve learned and the things that have worked for us here at my firm in the hopes that it will help others.

[0:11:27] INTERVIEWER: Incredible. So you got to this point where the system wasn’t designed for you and so you said, “I have to break this and designs something that works for me,” and then embarked upon on the journey of becoming an entrepreneur and that’s something that you hadn’t done before. I know that you alluded to several years. How long would you say it took you to ramp up making that decision to feeling confident in, “Okay, I believe to the best of my abilities, I now know how to run a business and am confident in running my own firm?”

[0:12:05] Miriam Airington Fisher: Well, it depends what day you catch me on, because there’s always changes that can never really rest on your laurels. But I feel, in terms of my firm, I feel the last three years we’ve had exponential growth. 2020 was a really interesting time because of all the challenges that the pandemic posed to businesses and looking back, that actually was a very pivotal time for my firm. We grew a lot during that time for a lot of different reasons. So I would say, the first couple of years were a significant learning curve. I did grow each year and so our revenue grew each year. I’ve hired people each year but the progress in the beginning was a lot of trial and error and very slow and steady, because I was learning on the job and we really hit our stride I would say in the last three years.

[0:13:01] INTERVIEWER: That’s incredible, congratulations. And especially congratulations for making it through COVID and really embracing that as a pivotal time. I feel like it really got to the point for most businesses where it was a make-or-break moment. So always amazing to hear the people who made it and really a beacon for others. So congratulations.

[0:13:21] Miriam Airington Fisher: Thank you. It really was a pivotal moment for us and as a business owner now, it’s one of those things, times where I feel empowered because nobody saw that coming. So if we were able to put our heads down as a team and survive and thrive through that period of time, it actually gave me a lot of confidence to continue to expand further.

[0:13:45] INTERVIEWER: I can only imagine. If you can make it through that, you can make it through anything, I feel is the common mindset for businesses coming out of that, so that’s incredible.

[0:13:53] Miriam Airington Fisher: Yeah and that’s a great mindset for any business to have.

[0:13:56] INTERVIEWER: Completely agree .And then as far as who the book is for, so obviously, it’s in your title that you’re looking to encourage women, it seems to me, to do the same thing you did in terms of if the design isn’t working for you and the system isn’t working for you, make something that works for you. So would you say that the book is for women who are better suited to start their own law firm or do you have a different audience in mind?

[0:14:32] Miriam Airington Fisher: The audience really, I think there’s a few people that I hoped the book reaches and helps. I thought a lot when I was writing it about how narrow or broad to make the focus and there is a lot of things that go into, you know, how do you address a problem in a particular field? I just ultimately decided that I really wanted to speak from personal experience as much as possible. So I’m really speaking to other lawyer moms, other women who are practicing attorneys or want to be practicing attorneys and either have children or planning to have children or want to have that balance in their life, and law in particular is not an area that people generally associate work-life balance, and there’s a lot of data on this. In the book, I talk about the ABA study and the results of that which showed huge numbers of dissatisfaction among women lawyers and huge percentages of women attorneys who leave their careers because of family pressures. There’s in fact a Harvard economist, Claudia Goldin, has researched and written on specifically the impact of work-life pressures on women attorneys. So, I really designed my approach for other women attorneys who are dissatisfied with traditional legal jobs. Whether it be that they’re women who are currently in traditional legal jobs and don’t have the balance they need or women who have stepped away from a legal career, because we know that up to one third of women leave their legal careers during their child raising years. So women who have done that but now are thinking, “Well, if I can go back to the law in a different way, then I want to do that” I think anybody can start a law firm and any working mom can start a law firm. I think it’s a way to take control of our own lives and create, from the floor up, the kind of balance that you want. And starting a business is really I think the only real way that you can truly just imagine your career completely on your own. On a larger scale, my hope is also that if more women become law firm owners and build firms up, that it will create change across the profession in greater numbers, and I’ve tried to be true to that in my own rule as a law firm owner. When I first started my practice, I was very much doing it for myself. I was creating for myself what I needed, and now we’re here seven years later and I have a law firm. I have a team of people working with me, I try to be true to that with our work culture. And we have other working parents who are on staff here and we consider things like generous leave, parental leave policies, flexible work schedules, things like that, sort of paying it forward. I think that women are really well-positioned to create the changes that they want for themselves, and then the next step is to offer it to others.

[0:17:51] INTERVIEWER: Amazing, I really love that you have really contentiously made that a part of your entire culture and building up your staff that way, and then having other working parents there, I feel like that is really a great example of walking the walk and building other people up in that regard. I know you mentioned in your book that when you have more women in a position where they are benefiting financially, running their own business, empowered, they are actually far more likely to contribute back to and reinvest in being a consumer in the economy. So I feel like you’re really giving everyone a very firm spring board there.

[0:18:32] Miriam Airington Fisher: When I was doing some research for the book, I mean, some of the data on women in the economy was really interesting to me even in some surprising ways. Obviously, I had some anecdotal experience but just seeing the numbers on how women contribute to the economy and the impact that it has in communities and even within your own family, there is a statistic that girls who grow up in a household where both parents work outperform, academically, children who grow up in households with traditional gender roles. So there is a lot of interesting data out there. Anytime I talk about parenting, it’s a very delicate subject because people have really strong emotions on what’s the best way to be a parent, and so I tried to be really clear that there are a lot of ways to do it all or to do what a woman wants to do. My message is that this is another option. It doesn’t mean it’s the only option. You know, women do not all have the same desires or the same goals. There are women that are very happy in traditional legal jobs; there are women that are very happy leaving the legal profession. I really just wanted to do my part to make sure that there was this option for women who felt as I did, which is that they wanted to do both and they wanted to balance both in a healthy way.

[0:19:53] INTERVIEWER: Well, we thank you for that. Digging into that a little bit more about how being a woman looks different for every woman, being a mom looks different for every woman. You address mom guilt in your book and I would imagine that many of your readers will be women who are currently attorneys in law and expecting to have children, but they haven’t had them yet and they’re getting to that point and kind of wanting to prepare. So can you talk us through what mom guilt looks like and what those women who are attorneys or in law, who aren’t mothers but are planning to be, should know about that?

[0:20:33] Miriam Airington Fisher: Sure. I mean, mom guilt really is, it’s the feeling of inadequacy. It’s the feeling that you are not getting it right and there are so many messages to women today about how to be the perfect mom or how to look perfect, and in particular I think in the legal fields, so many of us are type A overachievers. I think there is this maybe predisposition to seek out perfectionism, and we’ve had to work really hard to get to where we are in our careers. It is also a field where there is a lot of responsibility on us. People rely heavily on us. In my practice, we represent people who have civil rights litigation pending or who have been wrongfully convicted of crimes or who are facing deportation. So we have a lot of pressure on us to get it right and to not let people down, and when you add in a role of being a parent and there is nothing that could feel more important or feel more critical. It’s very common and maybe unavoidable in some ways to feel like if you’re excelling in one area, you are letting down another area. I don’t think that mom guilt is exclusive to working moms or to lawyer moms, but I think it’s certainly heightened. So, the feeling of mom guilt at least as far as working moms is, “If I am at work and I am really committing to my clients, am I letting my kids down in some way?” These conversations happen every day in mom groups, “I had to miss a fieldtrip because I was in trial” or “I wish I could pick my kid up from school but you know I don’t get off work until five” or “I felt really bad I had to take calls from the soccer game.” And so it’s this feeling of when you are trying to balance everything, you are inevitably letting something or someone down and that can be really crushing.

[0:22:40] INTERVIEWER: Yeah, I can only imagine. You actually, first of all, I love the book. It has such practical knowledge in it. It is such an easy breakdown, step-by-step, that again, you said that you wish you’d had. I found myself really relating to although I am not a lawyer mom, so you did a really amazing job with that, in what you were just talking about with the mom guilt and being in the position where you had to miss the field trip because you were in trial, things like that, I really love the time blocking piece of your book. Where you talk through setting expectations and managing boundaries with current and potential clients, have you found that a lot of your advice applies to professional women who are not in law? And then can you talk us through some of those tips that you go through in your book?

[0:23:28] Miriam Airington Fisher: Oh, I think absolutely it can apply anywhere. Creating boundaries is I think one of the most important things that you need to do to create work-life balance for yourself, and it’s also the hardest thing to do because you have to assert yourself against other people and sometimes, let other people down or at least inconvenience them. So that is something that I practice what I preach. As I mentioned earlier, in the very beginning days of my business when I really, I was doing it all myself and also as a single parent, I did have to make a lot of compromises that I wasn’t really thrilled about. I mean, nobody wants to take their baby to court with them, that’s crazy, but I had to. So I really made it a priority to build up my business to a point where I wouldn’t have to do those things. Pragmatically speaking, when your kids are really little and they are in daycare, usually daycare is a longer day. So you can maybe work eight to five and then still make it. For me, a big turning point where I reassessed all of my boundaries was when my oldest started kindergarten because then, it’s a shorter day and instead of picking them up at five, you pick them up at three and that starts to mess with the traditional 40-hour workweek. So I did really put firm boundaries in place. I pick my kids up from school every day. I leave the office at about 2:40 and I don’t do appointments after that. I pick them up and I do the mom thing all afternoon and I don’t work weekends, and so I think that it is difficult to do that, and I don’t want to gloss over that and suggest that everybody just start leaving their office at 2:30. But I think that there are opportunities, certainly for people who are going to be self-employed, where they can create boundaries for them self. Then I hope that there can be a conversation among companies to reassess, what can be done to be creative about employee schedules, as I have done in my firm, but I think that it does tie into the guilt of if somebody wants to meet with me at 4 PM, how do I tell them no? This feeling of, “If I assert these boundaries, I am going to lose out on a case or I am going to lose a client” or things like that. I think that that’s a very natural fear, but what I have found is that a lot of that was in my head, and when I just started doing that in a way that as I lay out in the book, you make yourself reasonably accessible and available during your work times and then you set boundaries for the times that you are not working, it actually all works out. Your career does not turn on a client’s ability to meet with you at 5 PM. You can offer them other appointment times, and so I even put some scripts in there of what to say if somebody asks for a meeting or tries to schedule a hearing or something like that outside of the boundaries that you’ve set. So I think it certainly applies to women in all fields and it is very unusual in law, but I think we can change that.

[0:26:36] INTERVIEWER: I love that and for the women who are listening to this, cringing at the idea of setting that boundary and not necessarily being accessible during the weekend for instance, I know one of your particular scripts was pushing off either a current client or a potential client and saying, “I am actually out of pocket this weekend, I will get back to you on Monday,” and we’ll see if your answer is positive or not but either way helpful. Do you find yourself, with their knowledge that you are a mother and prioritizing that, when you do say, “Hey, I am out of pocket this week and I’ll get back to you on Monday,” do you find yourself getting a lot of pushback to that in 2022?

[0:27:17] Miriam Airington Fisher: You know, it is kind of interesting. I go back and forth. On the one hand, I don’t think that we owe people explanations or detailed explanations as to why we’re not available, so I don’t necessarily say in every situation I am not available because I am taking my kids on a field trip, but as I have been working more on this book and working on some other products for women attorneys, I’ve actually tried to be more mindful about, I guess, normalizing that. So I do say now, “I am not available after three because I pick my kids up from school,” and I have a couple anecdotes that I shared about this but I do some civil litigation where often times there is numerous lawyers involved, and typically I’m one of the only female attorneys. It is just it is still a very male dominated field even though law is very much 50-50. Litigation heavy practices are male dominated and we were trying to schedule a hearing, I believe, and we are kind of going around with all the attorneys on an email chain and everybody was available on one day and one guy replied and he goes, “Oh, sorry. I’m fishing that day” and everybody was like, “Okay,” and then we picked another day. And I’m thinking that’s totally not a big deal. If he can go fishing, then surely I can go pick up my children from school or fill in the blank, you know, it’s golfing or whatever. So I think that we are, anybody, whether you’re a parent or not, you are entitled to have boundaries and as long as you’re doing your job and you are being reasonably accommodating to other people’s needs, I think you can have your personal boundaries, whatever they may be. But in particular with being a parent, it is such a normal thing that society needs people to be parents and parents need to take care of their kids, and it shouldn’t be this controversial thing that we have to hide and dance around. So more and more I do feel that I am trying to take on some of the responsibility of helping to normalize that and I think that I would love if other parents similarly felt comfortable asserting those boundaries.

[0:29:22] INTERVIEWER: That’s incredible. Women and parents everywhere thank you for it. We are coming up on time here, I do want to talk more in the nitty-gritty of the book. You literally walk us through, I mean, you said it, getting down to the point where it’s as practical as picking out an office having the laptops, having Internet connection, and you go all the way through down to how important marketing is. Somewhere in there talking about presenting professionally, by the way, you mentioned a struggle then which made me laugh out loud. I love that .But going back to taking your baby to court, you talk about the importance of social media in terms of marketing and putting yourself out there. Two questions there for you, one, do you have a favorite social media network personally and why is it your favorite and then two, in thinking about creating content for all of the mothers out there reading your book, do you ever incorporate your identity as a mother into the content creation or even your actual children in your content?

[0:30:26] Miriam Airington Fisher: Yeah, those are great questions. So I think my default is Instagram and I probably fall into the demographics. Actually, in the marketing section of the book, I talk about the breakdown of the target demographics and on the platforms, and think that I am aligned with Instagram. So I have marketing both for my firm, my law firm, and I have a marketing team at the firm that handles a lot of that and we’re across all different channels. Then I also have marketing under the Mom’s A Lawyer name and that is more of a creative outlet, where I share a lot about me personally, a lot about my story, and also content to hopefully inspire and help other working lawyer moms. So the name is pretty easy, it’s @momsalawyer and so I do share a little bit of my personal life and struggles, and we’ve all been there when it’s like there’s a last minute snow day and it’s a scramble to try to figure out how you’re going to work and have your kids. So I think it is important to really achieve real equality and parity in the workplace and in the legal community for working parents and working moms in particular. I do think that we need to normalize that a little bit more and not have our family life and our parenting responsibilities be something that we have to tuck away out of sight and kind of work around. I think it should be more integrated and our professional life should accommodate our personal life.

[0:32:11] INTERVIEWER: I love that holistic mindset and that work-life balance that you talk about, and really bringing that into your presence on social media. I think that that just makes things a lot more digestible, accessible, and gets people excited, so that is incredible. So obviously, a lot that we can’t cover in 30 minutes. The book is great. You dive into everything that it takes to set up that law firm. All of the finite details, time management, really identifying the ideal client for yourself, building things around that. So everyone can obviously read the book and should to find out those more practical tips and tricks but writing a book really is such a feat. Congratulations, so many over to you. If you wanted people to take away one to two things from the book, what would it be?

[0:33:07] Miriam Airington Fisher: That this is possible, that we deserve this. Now, I hope that there is at least one resource out there to help other lawyer moms have it all or at least, as much as possible.

[0:33:21] INTERVIEWER: Amazing, there certainly is, I definitely attest to that. Miriam, this has been such a pleasure. I am so excited about what you are doing. Again, the book is called, Mom’s A Lawyer: How to Start a Firm and Take Control of Your Life. Besides checking out the book, where can people find you? I know you’ve dropped that one Instagram handle but tell us again.

[0:33:41] Miriam Airington Fisher: Yeah, so Mom’s A Lawyer, I’m at momsalawyer.com. I’m on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and I love to help and connect with other lawyer moms.

[0:33:53] INTERVIEWER: Amazing. I will be hitting those follow buttons, I want to be you when I grow up, I’m sure everyone will feel the same after reading the book. Miriam, thank you so, so much for joining us on Author Hour today and everyone, go check out Mom’s A Lawyer.

[0:34:08] Miriam Airington Fisher: Thank you.

[0:34:09] INTERVIEWER: Thank you. Thanks again for joining us for this episode of Author Hour. You can find, Mom’s A Lawyer, on Amazon. A transcript of this episode and as well as all of our previous episodes is available at authorhour.co. For more Author Hour, subscribe to this podcast on your favorite subscription service and thank you for joining us. We’ll see you next time, same place, different author.