Balancing family, career and a business

In November 2026 our firm will celebrate its fifth year. Wow.

Times flies when you are knee-deep in the day job whilst also co-running the business and juggling family life. It hasn’t been easy, but would I change it? Not for the world.

As we plan the next five years, it got me thinking about how far I’ve come since qualifying and, as a partnership, our journey from family lawyers to co-founders. I was encouraged to share some of my reflections.

We all have our own journeys, challenges and motivations and if you take anything from this, if you find yourself at a crossroad, or with an opportunity that feels like it might just be something, trust your gut, go with it.

A little about my journey

I was the first person in my family to go to university. It’s cliched, but I always wanted to be lawyer. After my gap year, I decided to go law school. I felt a mix of excitement, challenge and dread. Was I good enough?

Then came training contracts. So many applications, so many rejections. Disheartened conversations and digging deep to find the will to keep going, keep applying, not being deterred. Eventually, and many tears later, I found myself as a trainee solicitor in a small litigation practice in the City. It was a baptism of fire, and I had to hit the ground running, and fast. I almost bailed out 18 months in, but I was convinced to stick it out and I qualified and spent seven years there. Those early years shaped me immeasurably, personally and professionally. I pushed myself to limits I didn’t know existed, working from the ground up. I soaked in everything, got exposure to every inch of practice, and no job or case was too big or too small. I owe my sanity to a close group of professional colleagues I still have the pleasure of working with today, and who have provided much-needed wisdom over the years.

I reflect on those early years with a great deal of fondness, but also with a sense of unease. I am where I am today because of the exposure I had and the resilience and determination it instilled in me along the way but, with the benefit of hindsight, I also understand that I developed unhealthy working habits which have been hard to break as the years rolled on. You justify this when you only have yourself to worry about, but when life changes and you have children and family responsibilities, working all hours and running on air is simply not sustainable.

So then came the pandemic. It seems so surreal now, looking back on that period and reflecting on how we lived, the fears we faced, the grief we experienced, and the decisions we made professionally and personally. When lockdown was announced, I was a partner and head of family at a regional firm and 12 weeks pregnant with our second son.

At that point, I hadn’t ever really worked from home in any meaningful way. Yes, I’d catch up on emails or work to finish up in the evenings, but I liked going to the office. I savoured the commute – whatever time of day it ended up being. I reflect now on the cycle of walking from my bedroom to dining room each morning, and re-emerging 12 hours later with only the occasional walk, or meal not at my desk. Stuck behind a screen and growing (literally) by day, but without any balance or mindful focus on my own needs and wellbeing. Being completely immersed in solving other people’s problems, not being present, missing precious time with my eldest son. I didn’t want to eat our evening meals in the dining room with papers and screens everywhere. I was overwhelmed and began to resent the space and what it represented.

I went on maternity leave in late August 2020, relieved to be able to shut my desk down and reclaim my dining room for its purpose, but with the overwhelming feeling things needed to change. I just wasn’t quite sure what I wanted or needed to do to make that happen, and those thoughts swiftly got buried with the arrival of our second son, and onslaught of sleep deprivation and chaos that having a preschooler and a newborn brings. However, long nights turn out to be an excellent time to make big life decisions!

To sidestep or jump?

Roll forward to Spring 2021. Nicki and I both yearned to work differently; we felt constrained professionally and personally and craved to work in a way that met the individual needs of our clients, ourselves and our families. After much debate (and some might say a little bit of “toddler style” whining about what we didn’t like) my husband piped up and said, “you both know what you want, you should both just set up on your own”. And so, the journey began!

Much could be said about the lessons learned in those early days. The time, energy and patience needed to set up a firm (so much paperwork…) and the number of ducks that you need in a perfectly aligned row to get started, let alone keep it going. Somehow, with a very long to-do list, that all comes together.

So, what makes us who we are and what have we learnt along the way?

1. Our values

Our firm is grown from the foundations of our friendship. We first met in 2013 and quickly realised we shared the same values, work ethic and had each other’s backs. Nicki is my dear friend, my confidant, and I would not have started on this journey without her being in it with me. Whilst we bring different views and experiences, and the years behind us in practice have shaped us in different ways, we are aligned in what we want for ourselves, our clients, our team and our business. Of course we don’t always agree, but we do always talk it through, hear each other out and compromise when we need to. It’s a marriage in business after all!

I think we’d describe ourselves as a boutique firm with a heart, and stand by our core values:

• Building trust
• Transparency
• Empathy
• Collaboration
• Belief in ourselves

Whilst the firm may evolve and will inevitably change shape as the years roll on, we are defined by our commitment to these and make every decision with these in mind. We work best when we work together. This is our USP.

2. Balancing family and career

We launched when my eldest was four years old and my youngest had just turned one. Nicki’s daughters are both in their 20s, she’s been through the tough times, has done the juggle, and gets it. I was under no illusion that I was suddenly going to have oodles of time spend with my young family, but we were honest and intentional about how the balance could be managed and that is the reason we are based in Richmond, which is also where I live. A sacrifice I am forever grateful to Nicki, who shoulders a much longer commute each morning and evening when she works from the office. As a result it has helped me shake off (most) of those unhealthy habits, be more available, manage my share of the nursery and school runs, get to school events, do the phonics and homework and be able to be there when they are poorly. Proximity to home and flexibility have been key.

Still, the juggle is very real, and I am forever in a state of “mum guilt” v “work guilt”. I tried for a long time to instil rigid boundaries with start times, finish times, certain days where I pick them up etc, but actually that doesn’t work so well. We need to be able to pivot. What works better for us is I now look at just the week ahead and strike the balance as best I can, some weeks more successfully than others! It’s rare that I end the week feeling I’ve got it completely right, but equally I try not to be too hard on myself. Without a doubt, the autonomy and personal flexibility running our own firm has given us is worth every sleepless night, stressful week and big decision.

3. Support systems

We spend much of our professional lives building teams around our clients, tailoring the support they need and ensuring this is in place at the right time. As will be the case with many who work in this field, some of our most important working relationships are with divorce consultants, IFAs, accountants, counsellors and therapists, who we hand pick for our clients.

The same applies in business. We have surrounded ourselves with a team of people who know their jobs better than we could ever learn them. We outsource and draw on expertise where we need to: marketing/websites/SEO/branding; IT; legal cashiering; admin; operations. We also immerse ourselves amongst others who are growing businesses, and not just in law. There is always a lesson to be learnt or a different perspective of how to do things from any founder. I have made some wonderful friends and connections who are doing just that, and the female founder space is one of the most loyal and supportive.

4. Building a team

It’s important to us to build a team that embodies our values but that doesn’t come at personal sacrifice. It is no surprise that the number of female solicitors leaving the profession is as high as it is when so many working practices don’t adapt to their workforce, and age-old assumptions and stereotypes remain in place. We’ve learnt from our own experiences and feel strongly that we want to ensure that we create a working environment which is supportive to home life, where our team has the chance to thrive and not miss opportunities, but are able to make choices with the confidence that a balance can be struck. That can’t just be a privilege we enjoy.

Asking Madeline Harris to join us as head of wills and probate, in 2022, was our first decision to grow. She took a leap of faith in joining us, hot off the back of her own second maternity leave and with two young children of a similar age to my own. Extending the firm’s offering beyond family law was a huge decision for us but it felt right, it was gut-led.

I don’t mind sharing that we then did hit a bit of a wall. We had some hiring issues. We were really busy, we had great cases, referrers and networks but, on reflection, we were a little too cautious and worried about expanding our team. We also underestimated how difficult (and time consuming) recruiting would be in practice, and appreciate now that you need to begin searching before you know you need someone! We had good candidates but struggled initially to find people who understood we were a growing firm and that it was an investment for them as well as us. I’m pleased to say that we’ve overcome that hurdle now, but it’s been a steep and long learning curve.

The cost, financial commitment and responsibly to take on staff and nurture and grow them also felt really big. So for a while we kept juggling the clients, the admin and the business between us and straying back into bad habits. Then we’d hit the age-old lawyer problem of worrying when there is too much work, and worrying when it’s feels a little too quiet. This can impact our confidence to make decisions. These worries are real, they don’t go away, but we have learnt to channel our efforts in those quiet times to working on the business, rather than in it, and shifting the work life balance as we need too.

It hasn’t been plain sailing but looking back on where we were five years ago, and what we’ve built so far, this year feels a pretty big milestone for us. So, we are patting ourselves firmly on the back and are looking forward to what the next chapter holds.

Emma is a co-founder, partner and accredited mediator at NE Family Law, and chair of South West London Resolution

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