It’s well past midnight. My desk is a toppling tower of case files and civil procedure treatises; from the next room, I hear the soft, hiccupping snores of my two daughters, ages 2 and 6. In seven hours, I’ll be standing in the Los Angeles city attorney’s office, ready to defend the city against a negligence claim. In nine, I’ll race to campus for evidence. And in 12, I’ll be back in the carpool lane, fielding a debate over whether one bedtime story really means three.
That night-shift snapshot captures what the past semester has been: a running experiment in balancing three identities—mother, law student and public service extern—without dropping the kids, the grades or the briefs.
Lawyering from the crib: Turn parenting skills into practice skills
My first revelation was that every “mom skill” has a billable-hour counterpart. The toddler-tested arts of triaging, priority-shuffling and crisis-containment translated cleanly into docket management. I blocked my life into color-coded chunks: research from 5 a.m. to 7 a.m., campus from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., family from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m.; and I defended those borders like a temporary restraining order. The discipline paid off: Assignments that once swallowed whole weekends now took a disciplined Tuesday-morning sprint.
Law schools teach IRAC—issue, rule, analysis, conclusion; toddlers teach GTD—getting things done. The key is to honor the calendar block the way you honor a court deadline—no bleedover, no excuses.
Asking is advocacy: Self-advocacy isn’t a luxury, it’s a legal skill
In week three, a high-stakes filing thrust the entire unit into 14-hour days—just as my youngest spiked a fever. I confessed the predicament to my supervising attorney, half expecting an eyeroll. Instead, she authorized a remote-work window that let me edit motions in the pediatrician’s waiting room and clock back in after bedtime.
The episode taught me a lesson most syllabi omit: Candor about constraints is not special treatment; it’s strategic disclosure that lets the team allocate resources. Once I started articulating needs—a quiet space before hearings, a hard stop for school pickup—the office responded with flexibility, not pity.
That courage to ask has deeper roots. As a first-generation immigrant who arrived from Belarus with two suitcases and $350, silence has never been safety. Whether you’re petitioning the state or requesting a schedule shift, clear communication is advocacy in its most elemental form.
Community is a power tool, not a perk
Formal support helped too: The city attorney’s mentorship program paired me with a 25-year litigator and fellow parent who showed me how to redline a brief at 1 a.m. without waking the household. Informally, a ragtag posse of externs swapped outlines, snacks and survival memes.
The broader Los Angeles legal network amplified that safety net—bar mixers, diversity roundtables, even a lunchtime CLE on caregiver bias. I left each event with actionable hacks (use Outlook’s “delay send” to avoid midnight-dated emails) and a reminder that the profession’s future hinges on retaining talent that doesn’t fit the traditional mold.
Own the edge your story gives you
Motherhood and migration aren’t resumé blemishes; they’re lenses that sharpen legal judgment. In one mediation memo, my background as an asylum-advocacy volunteer helped spot language access pitfalls that a monolingual team missed. Clients, judges and jurors live complex lives; lawyers who understand complexity have a strategic edge.
If diversity drives better corporate boards, it certainly drives better legal analysis. The trick is to position that lived experience as a professional asset, not a personal anecdote.
3 takeaways for the profession
• Normalize flexible externship policies. A municipal law office proved you can safeguard deadlines and let a parent attend a pediatric appointment. If the public sector can manage it, private firms can too.
• Teach “request drafting” in professional responsibility. We drill students on client letters but ignore the self-advocacy memo. Make it a graded exercise: Draft an email that asks for an accommodation while outlining how you’ll still deliver value.
• Reward mentorship that crosses identity lines. My most impactful mentors were not “mom attorneys” but senior litigators who simply believed good advocacy outshines personal circumstance. Track and credit that behavior the way we credit pro bono hours.
Why this matters now
Nontraditional students—parents, caregivers, career changers and veterans—are entering the profession amid record burnout. The pandemic normalized remote hearings and toddlers in the Zoom frame. The question isn’t whether the culture will shift but whether law offices will lead or lag. By embracing schedule transparency and outcome-based metrics, we keep talented caregivers—and that means more viewpoints at the table, richer argumentation and, frankly, better law.
A closing brief
When I began this externship, I feared that the inevitable spills (literal and metaphorical) would mark me as less committed. Instead, the spills became talking points, and the solutions became skills I’ll market to future employers.
So here’s my midnight verdict: the profession doesn’t need superhumans who never miss a recital or a reply brief. It needs realistic humans who can triage, adapt and ask for what they need to deliver excellent work. If we design pathways for them, we design a stronger bar.
As I type the final sentence, the toddler snores turn to morning giggles. A new shift begins, but the lesson holds: Balance isn’t a destination; it’s a series of calibrated, candid asks—each one an act of advocacy, each one a step toward a profession that looks like the clients it serves.
Dzina Nelson is a third-year law student at Southwestern Law School in Los Angeles, a former extern with the Los Angeles city attorney’s office and a mother of two budding negotiators. A Belarusian immigrant, she co-founded a volunteer network that delivers groceries to families of political prisoners, fueling her passion for human rights and technology.
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