Following my two maternity leave periods and new responsibilities as a mother it became clear very early on that returning to my fulltime, desk bound job would be a challenging option. So I handed in my notice, not at all clear as to how I might use the skills that I not only enjoyed but had spent so long acquiring. Fast forward the all-consuming early stages of parenting & time spent toying with the idea of re-qualifying as all sorts of things to fit around my schedule as a mother, what I found started to emerge was a pattern I had never realised would be available or achievable.
I finally decided that the most effective use of my time during the hours when the children were at school was to try to do what I had been trained to do. A friend introduced me to Virtual Law (www.virtuallaw.eu), a firm which recruits experienced, usually ex-City, solicitors as consultants who work from home as and when they want and as and when the work arises. At the same time, other opportunities presented themselves – often from longstanding friends in need of ad hoc assistance.
I now operate a consultancy from a corner of my living room, with probably 70% of my time focused on providing employment law advice and the rest a medley of art history research, copy writing and providing assistance to an African based environment consultancy. It is not always easy; it’s not always possible to get everything done by 3.15pm for the school pick up and getting to this point wasn’t straight forward. This is why I fully understood the concept of BTSR when Louise first mentioned it to me at the school gates.
Katy is a mother of two young boys and qualified lawyer specialising in employment law.