“Mommy? What are we going to do today?”
Jayden Hall asks her mother, lawyer LaShann DeArcy Hall, some variation of this question every weekend morning. The 5-year-old keeps a tight schedule that rivals some adults, dashing from her kindergarten class at Chapin School on the Upper East Side to dance lessons, swim classes, and play dates around the city.
No stranger to a packed schedule herself, DeArcy Hall relishes in being able to say, “Today, we’re just going to relax.”
Of counsel at Morrison Foerster, one of New York City’s most respected law firms, relaxation isn’t something DeArcy Hall gets to do a whole lot of, she admits. There are the untold hours spent working on commercial and civil litigation trials, acting primarily as a defense lawyer for a number of Fortune 500 companies. Last fall she was appointed as a commissioner for the New York State Joint Commission on Public Ethics, adding to her role as a commissioner of the New York City Taxi & Limousine Commission, to which she was appointed by Mayor Michael Bloomberg. And somehow DeArcy Hall also fits in pro bono work, as well as championing diversity in the legal world.
“At the end of the day, it’s stressful, we work long hours, but I am doing what I love to do,” DeArcy Hall says. “I get to have a career that is the career I would choose for myself, and it’s not just one that I’m doing because I have to.”
Surprisingly enough it’s a career she wasn’t quite sure she wanted to pursue. Her other option may surprise you.
Read more of LaShann's story and meet these other fabulous mothers at matermea.com.
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