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What's Missing From the Conversation About Work-Life Balance
What's Missing From the Conversation About Work-Life Balance
www.entrepreneur.com
Achieving a work-life balance starts with you.
Just as Anna Jarvis from Grafton, WV wanted to celebrate her mother’s efforts in organizing women’s groups to promote friendship and growth with the first Mother’s Day in the United States, it is fitting that this month’s MoreThanALawyer recipient is Jami Cooper, an attorney in Bridgeport, WV with Cooper Law Offices, PLLC, who strives to improve the legal profession for women and to also protect our children in the world of cyberspace. Jami was nominated by the immediate past State Bar President, Monica Nassif Haddad. Read below for her inspiring story.![]()
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Jami is a full time attorney and mother and realized quickly that balancing both roles requires significant support from both her family and her colleagues. She also learned that women attorneys face many obstacles and challenges being female in what was historically a male dominated profession. Jami went to work on behalf of her female colleagues, serving on the Board for the National Conference of Women’s Bar Associations in 2018 where she continues to work with her contemporaries from around the country and Canada to provide support and programming for multiple women’s bar associations. In fact, Jami is currently helping to plan the 2021 Women’s Bar Leadership Summit. We are also fortunate to have Jami working for women attorneys in West Virginia as the co-chair of the WV State Bar’s Women in the Profession Committee (WIP). In its inaugural year, Jami, along with her co-chair, Lee Hall, held its first program addressing issues unique to our women attorneys in conjunction with the West Virginia State Bar Annual Meeting. The WIP also sponsored on behalf of the WV State Bar the first West Virginia Law Day Contest for West Virginia K-12 students, which introduced the Law to students with contests on the theme “Advancing the Rule of Law Now.” Jami is also involved with the West Virginia Women Attorneys.![]()
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“The statistics, if you really study them, are staggering. One that gives me a jolt every time is that at the current rates of attrition and promotion of female lawyers, there will not be gender parity in terms of equity partners until 2181.” (See “Special Report: Big Law is Failing Women” The American Lawyer, May 28, 2015). “That should be both shocking and unacceptable to everyone involved in the legal profession.” As Jami notes, and her professional women’s groups are well-aware, the statistics are even worse for minority women. Jami’s son, Brennan, is one of the reasons that Jami is so passionate about making the path to success for women lawyers less difficult. “I know he’s watching his parents and learning from us. I want him to see that we all contribute and that the path for women to success has challenges that men don’t necessarily have. Hopefully, he will grow up to be an advocate for women in whatever profession or line of work he chooses – or at least have some level of knowledge and mindfulness about it.”![]()
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Combining her knowledge of the law and her motherly instincts, Jami has another passion-project, which concerns educating children and parents on Internet safety with the goal of opening lines of communication, providing information about the risks of social media, and offering suggestions on how to minimize the risk. Although the focus initially was upon students and parents in grades 4-8, the program has grown and Jami now presents to high school students, middle school classrooms, local bar associations, school nurses, church groups, and other professionals whose work finds them addressing these important issues. The presentations include difficult topics such as how to recognize and address risky online behaviors in young people, predatory behaviors of cyber-criminals who target children, human trafficking, cyber-bullying and teen suicide. ![]()
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As if this working mom doesn’t have enough on her plate, Jami volunteers with the Bridgeport High School Athletic Boosters to assist her son, Brennan, in his activities of cross-country, golf, basketball and track. “I’ve made more popcorn than anyone should ever have to make; I’ve rolled more meatballs than anyone should ever have to roll; and I’ve distributed more post-game Chick-fil-A boxed meals than anyone would think reasonable. The work we do is for the kids, though, and the BHS Athletic Boosters is an inspiring group of people that work tremendously hard for the successes of our student athletes.” ![]()
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Jami practices with her husband, Dan Cooper, and credits him for her ability to balance her careers as a mother and lawyer. “Without Dan’s support, being a full-time lawyer and full-time mom would be next to impossible. I think he’s learned a lot about what women – moms or not – face in this profession, and he is incredibly supportive of my work in improving the path to success for women in the legal profession.” Jami and Dan live in Bridgeport, WV and between them have four children – Adam, Danielle, Andrea and Brennan – and four grandchildren – Orin, Silas, Brooks and Briar Rose. ![]()
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Thank you, Jami, for putting women and children at the forefront and for being MoreThanALawyer! Your State Bar and Bridgeport community are grateful.![]()
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What is our MoreThanALawyer campaign all about? It highlights all the ways West Virginia’s attorneys impact lives within and outside of their profession. West Virginia's lawyers are service members, volunteers, mentors, coaches, musicians and committed advocates. In all of these roles, they make a difference in their community. Each month we share a MoreThanALawyer story on West Virginia State Bar’s Facebook and Twitter pages.