When Kate Ashmor found that her 2.5-year-old daughter was consistently the last to be picked up from childcare, she decided something needed to give.
While the lawyer’s daughter was thriving at her local childcare centre, Ashmor said her own heart wasn’t in it enough to make the mad dash across town on public transport to pick up her car, drive to pick up her daughter, and then arrive home well after dark.
The former head of the Australian Women Lawyers is certainly ambitious, but was finding regular office hours as a lawyer working for somebody else restrictive and preventing her from having the life she craved at work and at home.
So she decided the timing was right to get started on one of her biggest ambitions – launching her own law firm and creating a more flexible career. She had the experience, confidence and family support to branch out on her own. And it was now or never.
“I wanted to have more time and flexibility to do other things, and being stuck in a city office for half the day just wasn’t compatible with those things,” she says.
“If I didn’t take a leap of faith now, I feared never having a convenient opportunity to do so again. Having a supportive and encouraging partner [her husband Tom] has made much of this possible.”
Last week Ashmor officially launched Ashmor Legal, a residential conveyancing IP and ICT practice which she’ll run out of her own home. The move will give her a more flexible working and personal life – allowing her to continue with the activities she pursues outside of the law, such as her role on the board of not-for-profit Alola Australia and position as deputy chair of the board of Caulfield Park Bendigo Bank.
She’s using her experience and networks to take control of her career, joining a new wave of small law firms that are rejecting traditional office hours and even standard billing procedures in order to redefine the delivery of legal services.
“The legal profession is rapidly changing: the top-heavy big end of town firms are not as appealing as they used to be, especially to Gen Y’ers like me who have multiple interests and who have no desire to be enslaved as a minion for years on end,” she says.
As Ashmor notes, the high salaries usually associated with lawyers isn’t that appealing if you don’t actually have time to spend it or live your life the way you want. Meanwhile, as a former in-house lawyer herself, she knows clients are losing interest in subsidising the expensive structures of large law firms. They simply want competent, practical and efficient advice.
“Perhaps it’s the over-confidence and rebelliousness of being a Gen Y’er that has given me courage to question the status quo and do something about it. Perhaps it’s being the grand-daughter of Holocaust survivors that has given me an appreciation of life and a desire to pack so much in, on behalf of all my ancestors whose lives were cut so tragically short,” she says. “Whatever it is, I’m not going to live with any regrets or thoughts of what could have been. I’m not going to sugarcoat. No excuses. And now: may fortune favour the brave!”
Ashmor’s already enjoying a more relaxing commute, while her daughter is experiencing shorter days in childcare.
“Now, I’m able to pick her up during daylight and drop her off later in the morning, so she’s no longer grumpy about being bundled into the car, half-asleep, during the morning rush.”
It’s a way of working that’s working for her. “What I’ve learnt is that there is no right answer for everyone: it depends on individual circumstances, interests and support structures,” she says.
Kate Ashmor is a Women’s Agenda contributor and will soon launch a new, regular column with this publication.