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A couple of lawyers with three kids and a dog have chucked their demanding jobs to try to strike a balance from home.
By PAMELA GRINER LEAVY
© St. Petersburg Times, published July 5, 2000
ST. PETERSBURG -- More than anything else, Patrick and Kathleen Calcutt want to be home with their kids: Matthew, 6, Mary Catharine, 4, and Billy, who celebrated his first birthday in February.
To that end, the Calcutts, both lawyers, fired their nanny and said goodbye to downtown high-rise office buildings, paralegal assistants and expense account lunches at private clubs. They also bid farewell to everyday long commutes and late-night hours away from home.
Kathleen Calcutt, now 34, made the move first after suffering a miscarriage in 1997, leaving her job with the Polk County public defender's office to be a stay-at-home lawyer and stay-at-home mom.
"I always wanted to be a public defender; that's what I am at heart," said Kathleen Calcutt, also called Kathy by co-workers and friends. "The only reason I'm not is I have children who need me. "When I was practicing law outside the home, I don't think I ever did it as well as I do it here. I was constantly worrying about my kids. I wanted to be home."
Patrick Calcutt, 35, followed suit in 1998, ending a six-year relationship and partnership with the then Tampa civil law firm of Alpert, Barker & Calcutt.
"I read about older business executives and professionals who had given it all up to spend more time with their families, but I didn't want to wait until I was 50 to make that decision," he said.
"I got tired of not being here when I was needed. I couldn't make my family happy and the law partners happy. I picked the important ones."
Now the law firm of Calcutt & Calcutt practices civil and criminal law out of a 1915 three-story Victorian home in St. Petersburg's Old Northeast. The cramped office at 165 Seventh Ave. NE is about 100 square feet, the size of a small den or dining room. No more than two people can sit comfortably. A reproduction Oriental rug purchased at Home Depot covers the hardwood floor. Instead of a company bulletin board posted with memos, colorful crayon drawings by children of trees and houses are taped to the back of the kitchen door.
There is no conference room, and clients rarely come to their house. Meetings are held at clients' offices or a Fourth Street N restaurant such as Bennigan's or the Ringside Cafe.
Their "typical" day starts with Patrick Calcutt rising at 5:30 a.m., working for about an hour, and then making breakfast and lunches as his wife gets the two older children dressed. While school was in session, together they chauffeured Matthew to kindergarten at St. Raphael's Catholic Church and Mary Catharine to preschool at Grace Lutheran.
In the meantime, Billy is at home with Glenda Bowen, 54, a neighbor who has worked for the Calcutts for more than a year.
Called by the Calcutts the "key that makes it all work," Bowen, who receives $10 an hour, arrives by 8 a.m. She helps Billy with breakfast and spends her day answering phones, sending faxes, changing diapers and setting legal appointments. She leaves about 3 in the afternoon.
Bowen calls Billy her "No. 1 fringe benefit" and takes care of him when the Calcutts are on the telephone, out of the house for meetings and in court.
Patrick Calcutt ventures away from the home office two days a week, on the road to Hernando County in his 1998 Ford F-150 pickup truck, equipped with a cell phone and personal computer. He represents clients in Hernando County: horse owners, veterinarians and the Show Palace Dinner Theater.
Besides managing the household, taking care of Billy and planning summer activities for Mary Catharine and Matthew, Kathleen Calcutt assists her husband and is representing a woman seeking child support from her children's biological father.
Between the two of them, the Calcutts work as lawyers about 80 hours a week, some of them in the middle of the night, some of them the early morning before the children wake up.
While a housekeeper comes in twice a month to do the heavy cleaning, Bowen says she doesn't mind helping keep the house picked up. If the Calcutts run out of milk, or dog food for Miles, a 5-year-old chocolate Labrador, Bowen runs to the grocery store.
"I personally think it's the best idea not to have to leave home and go out there in this (workplace) jungle," said Bowen, offering her opinion on the culture of corporate America. "I'm a home-type person and this is better. This way, Kathy can still be a stay-at-home mom and a working mom."
When Bowen took the job, she told the Calcutts she wanted time at her cabin in Vermont in the summer. "No problem" was their quick response. They would hire a law clerk.
The couple advertised during the spring of 1999 in the e-mail job bank at Stetson University College of Law. While they touted a "flexible working atmosphere," they neglected to include that the law clerk would be working at a private home, complete with three small children and a dog.
Andy Reeder, 25, was one of four students who responded to the ad. He interviewed with the Calcutts over lunch at Bennigan's. "I don't think I found out the office was in their house until they told me I had the job," said Reeder, who remembers the interview as "very informal."
He was well qualified, but the factor that clinched the job for Reeder, the Calcutts said, was that he was social chairman of his fraternity, a signal to them that he had a sense of humor.
On Reeder's first day on the job, he was introduced to the office environment and the children. "I was a little surprised," said Reeder, who "guarantees" that no other Stetson student had a similar law clerking experience, "but they are easy to get along with and so friendly. The kids are great. It really wasn't a big deal at all."
Reeder worked for the Calcutts from last May until the middle of December. Besides the usual law clerk duties of drafting pleadings, attending hearings and meeting with clients, he helped Bowen out around the house and spent at least one entire day holding Billy outside a courtroom while Kathleen Calcutt was inside on a case.
"This was fine, not an everyday thing," Reeder said. "When they needed an extra hand, I was more than willing to help out." (Reeder did balk at one thing: changing Billy's diapers.)
Last December, the Calcutts' home was on the Old Northeast holiday home tour. Kathleen Calcutt stood in the high-ceilinged living room in a long red dress, welcoming more than 1,000 strangers, offering them punch and homemade chocolate fudge. Reeder spent that Sunday sweeping the steps of the Calcutt home.
Would he ever consider working from home? "Maybe one day," said Reeder, who received his law degree from Stetson in May. "I'm sure there are a lot of benefits. At the same time, I see a lot of drawbacks. Patrick is very disciplined, has the ability to focus on one particular thing, can shut out the world around him and what's going on around the house if he has a deadline.
"I am not sure I could do that with three young things like they have. He obviously enjoys it. Kathy enjoys it. It works out great for them."
The Calcutts did not hire a law clerk this summer.
Instead, Patrick Calcutt's cousin from Southern Pines, N.C., Nicholas Calcutt, 18, is living with them. Nicholas, who will major in prelaw at the University of North Carolina in September, is helping around the office and with the children while Bowen is in Vermont.
The Calcutts met at Florida State University law school in 1991 and married in 1992. Kathleen Calcutt grew up in Shore Acres. Her parents, Rose and Bill York, still live in the same home she was raised in, on 14th Street NE. Kathleen attended Shore Acres Elementary, Riviera Middle and Northeast High School.
Patrick Calcutt went to Florida State University from Norfolk, Va.
The couple made their legal careers a priority when they moved to St. Petersburg in 1993. But both now prefer jeans and T-shirts to three-piece power suits, and they don't miss business lunches or nerve-racking daily commutes across the Howard Frankland and Gandy bridges.
"I would rather enjoy the kids running through my office than sit in a meeting with other attorneys and fight traffic," Patrick Calcutt said.
"I'll take screaming children any day of the week."