Though Gallina put in the grueling 2,200 or more “billable hours” a year required of most lawyers at big law firms,40 she deviated from the norm by working some of those hours at home to make time for her family.
While other associates stayed at their desks, eating the take-out meals ordered by the firm, Gallina tried to leave the office at 6:30 most nights to make it home for dinner and bedtime. Then she went back to work on her laptop, often taking client calls from the West Coast long after 11 p.m. She was always available; her BlackBerry was always on.
Her problems started, she said, when she put a photo of her two-year-old daughter on her desk. The partner she worked for had a wife at home and never saw his kids, she told me. “His perspective was, if I can’t see my kids, why should you see yours?”