Family-Friendly Law Firm Faces Familiar Problems

The Gellar Law Group, a six-woman law firm in Washington, D.C., was formed with the express goal of being flexible for attorneys with family commitments. In a profile by Noam Scheiber of the New York Times, the firm’s partners juggle staying profitable with staying flexible, eliminating overhead costs – like traditional office space – and prioritizing time with family. The women at the firm hope to create a new paradigm, unlike what they witnessed when first beginning to practice, where “I saw no role models who didn’t have a husband as a stay-at-home dad,” said founder Rebecca Geller. Overall, the firm – part of the grand thought experiment, ‘What if women ran the workplace?’ – proves that “working parents would still be exhausted and distracted and anxious about falling short in every aspect of their lives,” Scheiber writes. “But it would help at the margins.”