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Ed. note: This is the latest installment in a series of posts on motherhood in the legal profession, in partnership with our friends at MothersEsquire. Welcome Jamie Szal back to our pages. Click here if you’d like to donate to MothersEsquire.

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We’re coming up on the February bar exam. Every single bar exam, MothersEsquire fields cries for help from test takers around the country, needing the strength of our support and experience advocating to secure the accommodations necessary to be a successful test taker while lactating.

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OH!

THE PLACES I’VE PUMPED!

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Congratulations!

I birthed une bébé

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Who fed like an alien

All the damn long day.

 

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Those brains in my head

Repurposed themselves

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From sorting out Torts

To detangling pump hose.

As I sat down, alone, to hook up my pump

In, once again, another gross dump.

 

I’ve pumped standing up!

I’ve pumped sitting down!

Believe it, I’ve even

pumped moving around.

 

I’m in the Mile-High Pump Club!

Now that was some fun

Of course it happened while squashed into one

Teeny middle seat,

next to some large chum.

 

I pumped while in cars, traveling at speed,

My shirttails flip-flapping. My nip-slips unheeded,

As I zipped through the drive-thru for coffee I need.

That’ll be the Venti Triple Shot, Extra Whipped Cream!

 

During a quick break from depos, with no room to hide

I ran to my car, parked outside

To the back seat I clambered so I had some space

To pump milk quick-quick, my blazer hiding my face.

 

In line at SCOTUS was quite the feat,

as moving meant giving away my seat.

My savior? My poncho, which covered up

My Madonna-Cone-Bra look while I stood hooked up.

 

While taking the bar exam crammed in a room

With thousands of other test takers, next to whom

I pushed past my pumping time, and as such I leaked.

The dude sitting next to me?

Oh yes.

He peeked.

The test examiners told me I had no right

To take a break in a space to pump out of sight.

 

I’ve balanced in bathrooms,

like a mad game of Twister,

While trying to block the auto-flush sensor.

The whole time I prayed the bottles wouldn’t dip

Into the toilet.

Heaven knows I didn’t want my baby to sip shit.

 

You see, that’s what pumping in bathrooms really means.

Contaminants flying, nasty invisible things.

That land in the precious milk I just pumped

While contorting myself in those nasty, old dumps.

 

I’m sorry to say so

but, sadly, it’s true

that most pumping places

were public

or open to view.

 

It makes a big difference

to people who pump

to do so in clean, private spaces.

Not in dumps.

This fun poem includes actual places mother attorneys have pumped while managing their legal careers. I hope my tongue-in-cheek approach has got you thinking of either your own pumping experiences, or the ways this affects your colleagues.

Bar exam test takers need:

• Secure, private, sanitary space to pump — not the wide-open exam room, a closet, a bathroom, or a locker room.
• Place to store pump parts and expressed milk. The exam is eight-plus hours per day, and did you know expressed milk goes bad after four hours?
• Time to pump and clean up that does not eat into test taking time. Did you know it takes 15 to 20 minutes to fully pump? And pumping parents need to do so every 3 to 4 hours or risk serious infection?

Bar exam test takers who need to pump aren’t looking for extra time — they just don’t want to have significantly less time and flash their ta-tas to their future colleagues.

What can you do to help?

There is a resolution up for vote at the ABA Mid Year meeting on February 14 that would require bar examiners across the country to adopt policies for adequate accommodations for test takers. Please show your support by encouraging your ABA Delegates to vote in approval of this vital resolution.

Let’s work together to remove one bar to the bar.

Can we count on you?

Jamie Szal is an attorney at Brann & Isaacson, where her practice focuses on assisting businesses in all aspects of state and local tax controversy, from audits and administrative proceedings through civil litigation. Jamie actively volunteers with the alumni network and Women’s Leadership Council of her alma mater, Trinity College, as well as actively participates in MothersEsquire, the Women’s Law Section of the Maine State Bar Association, and serves on the board of a dental-services non-profit in Maine. Outside of work, Jamie enjoys raising her fiercely independent, impish daughter; singing; and hiking around Maine with her husband, daughter, and dogs.

Topics

Bar Exams, Breast Pumping, Jamie Szal, Law Schools, MothersEsquire