• Nationwide, 98 percent of law firms officially allow their lawyers to work reduced schedules, according to the National Association for Law Placement; only 6 percent of lawyers actually work part time.

Ms. Chase told me that one of the major benefits of working at the Geller Law Group was that she wouldn’t have to disrupt her career path when she decided to have a baby. Find Maria Simon reviews and more on Advocates for Special Education. “It was: ‘How does this work? She agreed to join part time. At 3 p.m., Ms. Simon and Ms. Geller were scheduled to meet with a client, a team of political consultants who wanted to incorporate as a partnership.

“I’m going to have a sugared-up kid.”, She did not say this with dread. “I saw no role models who didn’t have a husband as a stay-at-home dad,” Ms. Geller said of the partners at the large firm she left before starting the Geller Law Group in 2011. “Mommy, I have an idea,” he said after being strapped into his car seat.

While Maria’s practice is quite versatile, Maria specializes in family law, business law, and litigation, where she has represented major corporations and small business entities alike. In addition to her work for businesses, Maria spearheads the firm’s Wills and Trust practice and its Divorce and Family Law practice, areas of the law that go hand in hand protecting families during stressful times. But she sold her practice 10 years later, after her older daughter hit adolescence.

© 2020 Super Lawyers®, part of Thomson Reuters. She represents clients in the Fairfax area. But she values the flexibility to duck out — for an afternoon preschool party, for example — and make up the time at night.

“Once he sees me, I can’t leave,” she said. “My old firm would drive me bonkers,” Ms. Geller said.

After Barack Obama won the presidency, he committed to making his White House family-friendly, to which Rahm Emanuel, then his chief of staff, aptly retorted, “Family-friendly to your family.” The Geller Law Group tries to be family-friendly, but not in the White House sense. She was awarded this distinction for 2016 - 2017.

They did this partly to encourage their employees to work from home and on their own schedules. Ms. Simon is a partner at the Geller Law Group, a six-woman firm, the founding credo of which is family-friendliness and whose stance on office face time is best described as “militantly against.”, In addition to practicing law, Ms. Simon and her law partner, Rebecca Geller, have a near-evangelical determination to show that parents can nurture their professional ambitions while being fully present in their children’s lives. The firm shuns a permanent home in favor of a shared work space managed by a company called Metro Offices, where it rents a conference room for an hour, an office for a day, as needed. Maria Simon joins the firm after many years at a boutique litigation firm based in Washington, D.C. You may need to download version 2.0 now from the Chrome Web Store.

All Rights Reserved. Ms. Geller wanted to spend part of her daytime hours around her children without giving up on a legal career. Co. v. Fresh Louie's Produce Co, LLC, 2010 U.S. Dist. Completing the CAPTCHA proves you are a human and gives you temporary access to the web property.

Many of her tasks, like introductory phone calls and managing the daily inflow of client queries, can be wedged in throughout the day. The widely read and debated 2012 essay in The Atlantic, “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All,” by Anne-Marie Slaughter, a former State Department official, is a particular source of irritation. Rising Stars is a designation of top-rated practicing attorneys selected through extensive evaluation. In place of this certainty are dozens of tiny trade-offs: When is a client matter urgent enough to delay parenting, and which clients can be put off or rescheduled as the need arises? Maria C. Simon is an attorney at Geller Law Group PLLC and helps clients address Business Litigation legal issues. Maria Simon, a lawyer in Washington, drops off her 4-year-old son, Jack, at school before work.

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This selection process includes independent research, peer nominations and peer evaluations. Maria Simon graduated in 2007 from American University Washington College of Law. Later, “it was important for me to not just be there physically but emotionally.”. “I sent six emails.”. They spent part of their get-to-know-you coffee meeting talking about their kids’ schedules. She considered the chance to spend a few hours with a bouncy 4-year-old one of the chief benefits of her job. Ms. Geller, who has two boys ages 6 and 4 and a 12-month-old girl, spends Tuesdays and Thursdays with her younger two children, shepherding them to music classes and play dates and squeezing in work while they rest. It’s one of the conundrums of the work-life conflict: Large firms have the resources to accommodate lawyers’ family obligations. And so their partnership became a small-scale experiment in parenting while employed. The answer, it seems, is this: There would be no revolution. Despite the firm’s low overhead, losing one lawyer’s revenue for several months of maternity leave would be a major strain on its finances, the partners said. Their lives are not so different from those of many other parents. Consumers Produce Co., Inc., v. Georgiana Produce, Inc. La Grasso Bros., Inc. v. Am.

(The partners limit their litigation business because court appearances and filing deadlines mean less control over their schedules.) (Ms. Simon and Ms. Geller, who bill themselves out at $280 an hour, conducted market research. Ms. Simon and Jack at home. LEXIS 65896 (M.D. Uninvited Song Cover Little Fires Everywherehawaiian Music Israel. Some days they do not. (Ms. Geller later brought up that comment happily. I’m glad she said that.”). Ms. Simon has such conviction on this point that she is almost personally offended by suggestions it might not be possible. “I saw no role models who didn’t have a husband as a stay-at-home dad,” Ms. Geller said of the partners at the large firm she left before starting the Geller Law Group in 2011. This month, they finally bought short-term disability insurance that would enable them to offer 60 percent paid leave for eight weeks and an additional four weeks unpaid. “I think women can have it all,” she said. Maria Simon is a Business Attorney in Chicago, IL. The firm was growing rapidly, helping clients set up trusts and wills, doing small-business incorporations, even handling the occasional marital dispute, and Ms. Simon found the work exhilarating.

By 10 a.m. on that Wednesday in March, Ms. Simon was seated in front of a client, formerly the president of a condominium association that was now suing him. Women accounted for a mere 16.5 percent of law partners in 2013, according to the National Association for Law Placement, despite graduating from law school in roughly equal numbers as men over the previous decade, according to the American Bar Association. One reason Ms. Simon and Ms. Geller don’t feel they have to sneak out of the office is that there are no offices. Foodservice, L.L.C. Rising Stars is a designation of top-rated practicing attorneys selected through extensive evaluation. Edward G. Rahll & Sons, Inc. v. Zach, 2008 U.S. Dist. Not least is that would-be partners must typically bill more than 2,000 hours a year, easily a 60- to 70-hour workweek once you allow for human interaction and trips to the bathroom. You may need to download version 2.0 now from the Chrome Web Store. In 1982, Helen Gurley Brown, the longtime editor of Cosmopolitan, published a book called “Having It All: Love, Success, Sex, Money, Even if You’re Starting With Nothing.” As Jennifer Szalai noted in a recent essay in The New York Times Magazine, Ms. Brown didn’t have children and wasn’t especially eager to incorporate them into her vision of modern womanhood. Ms. Geller typically appears there once a week; Ms. Simon two or three times. “Did you ever falsely represent yourself as an attorney?” The client explained that he had once told a local agency that he was appearing before it as an attorney but that he had meant it “in the British sense,” in that he had power of attorney. Along with Maria’s zeal for the practice of law, Maria is an avid runner and yoga practitioner, loves cooking, and spending time with her husband and two sons at their home in the Crestwood neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Maria is frequently requested to speak at events about work-life balance and the complexities that come with being a working parent. With offices located throughout the Northeast, our attorneys have a reputation for aggressively representing victims of motor vehicle accidents, slip and falls, and medical negligence matters. Cloudflare Ray ID: 5ed65e0b9fcbea18

“I had five minutes once Emily calmed down,” Ms. Geller said, thrilled to have a productive window during the chaos of the annual checkup. Ms. Simon joined the Geller Law Group two years ago. Maria has considerable experience in Federal District Court, U.S. Court of Appeals, Bankruptcy Court and State courts, appearing in court nationwide frequently on behalf of her clients. Ms. Simon began to review each count of the civil complaint against him, MacBook open and legal pad at the ready. At 4:30, Ms. Simon extricated herself from the political consultants, leaving Ms. Geller to cover. Completing the CAPTCHA proves you are a human and gives you temporary access to the web property. She is a partner at the Geller Law Group, whose guiding principle is family-friendliness. (One telltale sign: An opposing counsel asked why she was still emailing him while in labor.) She has worked on many cases concerning complex contract interpretation, drafted appellate briefs, and has a number of favorable decisions published on Lexis exemplifying these achievements.

The rainmakers are expected to schmooze with clients on a golf course; the worker bees are supposed to hover over their desks. She also assists clients regarding Family Law, Estate Planning & Probate and Business / Corporate issues. Maria was selected as a Super Lawyers Rising Star in 2016 and 2017 for Virginia and the District of Columbia. LEXIS 16297 (E.D. “Why don’t we eat noodles and watch superheroes?” Ms. Simon, a sly grin on her face, allowed that it was a good one. The firm’s lone male associate, Michael Munson, told me he quit in January because he craved the camaraderie of colleagues. At a traditional law firm, this can lead to vastly different expectations of office time. Ms. Simon’s extension and direct dial go to a landline at her home in Washington — a custom-ordered Vonage number with a Virginia area code and the same first digit as the firm’s.

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