These Companies Are Helping Women Find Work-Life Balance

New companies are cropping up to help a growing niche: Women who leave full-time jobs to care for family or pursue better work-life balance. Organizations such as Paragon Law, The Mom Project, and The Second Shift are connecting highly skilled professionals, mostly women, with short-term or project-based work in law, public relations, finance, and marketing.

Mae O’Malley started Paragon Legal after the birth of her third child when she noted a dearth of options for working moms in the legal profession.

It used to be that lawyers left law firms for cushy in-house jobs with shorter hours but reduced pay, she explains. But that’s no longer the case as companies expect employees to put in a 65-hour workweek as well as be available on mobile devices 24/7, she says. Women who drop out of law often do so because they don’t want to work those kinds of hours anymore, she adds.

“My company was built out of my experience to find a solution,” says O’Malley, who has worked for San Francisco law firm Morrison & Foerster as well as technology firms such as Evolve Software, Escalate, Sygate, and Google. At first, she was just hoping to team up with a couple other moms and share a workload. Then “it took on a life of its own.”

Related: The LinkedIn For Women Who Have Taken A Career Break

Today Paragon has 65 lawyers working on assignments. The company’s success goes to show