“Women of Legal Tech: Practicing Law in a Life on the Move,” features Heather Clauson Haughian. She explains how she shares her legal life with her Air Force pilot husband Shane Haughian, and their children.

In the March 5 edition of the Legaltech news series, Haughian discusses the challenges and opportunities of developing her legal career. The family moves almost every two years, due to her husband’s work. (And moving has including both within the U.S. and overseas.)  When they couple moved to England, she jumped in to become a British solicitor. And when they came back to the U.S., she and three friends built a new firm that would be flexible for her work. She is know a co-founder, managing partner and chief technology officer of Culhane Meadows Haughian & Walsh.

Check out her story here.

CODEX EXTRAS

Here are four bonus questions exclusive for CodeX.

1. Secret to your success: Always be authentic in everything that I do. I am direct about what I want and what I expect or need from family, friends, clients, and colleagues. Particularly important: Building and fostering relationships both personally and professionally so friends and colleagues know they are respected and appreciated.

 2. Work tips re: managing: Get to know your managers’ communication style and how they like things done – even if it’s something as simple as always putting the bottom line up front in a long email so your manager isn’t reading a treatise before they get to the point.Find ways to make your manager’s job easier and make him or her look good with their manager. Don’t worry about being liked – worry about becoming an invaluable asset.

3. Dress codes? Know your audience!! Dress like those who you will be around. I remember my dad (also an engineer) advising me not to wear anything resembling a suit when I went on my first site visit to a manufacturing facility to do an environmental safety audit. If I did, he said, I would never get anyone to talk to me. Best advice ever.  So that same advice rang true when I walked into that meeting with the military brass to give my report on the environmental analysis. My dad told me to wear my nicest suit as the brass would all be in their uniforms and expect the same from me. On the days we gave those reports, I always left my khakis and golf shirts at home.

4. Balancing tips: Understand that you cannot do (or “have”) it all without help from others.  Strong women tend to shy away from asking for help, but you will be infinitely happier if you do ask for support – especially for the small stuff. Getting a trusted nanny/caregiver or a house cleaner are the obvious ones, but just as important are all the little things that add up when you are trying to balance it all. You should outsource the little things! Don’t pick up your own dry cleaning; pay something else do it for you because that’s 20 minutes of quality time you could spend reading a book to your child instead. Don’t stress over putting together your new IKEA furniture, go to https://www.taskrabbit.com/ and get someone else to do it and take that time to share a nice bottle of pinot with a friend instead.

Photos courtesy of Heather Clauson Haughian.
Cover image: Clipart.com

Monica Bay is a Fellow at CodeX and a freelance journalist. She is a member of the Calif. bar. Email: mbay@codex.stanford.edu. Twitter: @MonicaBay.