The Truth About Being a COO, Litigator, and Mom (Spoiler: Nobody Prepared Me for This)

Hi. I’m Heather. I’m the COO of a rapidly growing plaintiffs’ employment and personal injury law firm, a litigator who still writes briefs and shows up in court, and a mom to three kids under 10. Yes, that’s exactly as chaotic—and as unhinged—as it sounds.

Picture this: it’s 10 AM on a Tuesday. Our new intake system isn’t integrating with our case management system automatically when literally EVERYONE said it would integrate automatically, so leads are floating in the ether. A new hire is beating herself up because she accidentally sent a confidential client email to the wrong person. The new WiFi system we had installed is crashing. I’ve got a motion to dismiss response due that I still need to proofread and edit. And in the middle of it all, my phone buzzes with a reminder that football practice was moved from tomorrow to today.

That’s the reality of straddling three worlds with three brains – COO brain, litigator brain, and mom brain. It’s not so much multitasking as it is constantly living in split-screen mode.

This blog isn’t going to be about the “working mom” angle of my life. My kids come first, always, but that’s not the point of This Is Fine. What I will do, though, is acknowledge how that third identity shapes everything else, often in hilarious or exhausting ways. Because sometimes, the mom role crashes right into the COO role, which collides with the litigator role, and suddenly you’re explaining discovery deadlines to a partner while also Googling “best at-home exercises for suspected dysgraphia.”

The reality is that my worlds collied daily, in ways I hardly ever recognize at the time. Like a few months ago when my 9-year-old was going through a phase where he ended every sentence with “period.” For a while, I thought I’d been watching too much RuPaul while cooking dinner. After a week, I finally asked where it came from.

“You,” he said.

And he wasn’t wrong. At home, I live on voice-to-text emails and Teams messages, which means I have to say the punctuation out loud. Apparently, he’d been listening:

“Mom, when you’re on your phone you’ll say ‘blah blah blah, period. blah blah, question mark.’”

That was the moment my worlds hilariously collided: COO + litigator + mom = my kid turning punctuation into a personality trait. “Period.”

Hilarity aside, here’s what I’ve learned: the chaos isn’t a bug—it’s a feature. Every fire teaches you something. Every breakdown reveals a weak point you can strengthen. Every courtroom win or loss feeds back into how I design systems that survive pressure. And every parenting curveball reminds me that no system is ever foolproof.

What This Blog Actually Is (And What It’s Not)

This isn’t going to be another sanitized business blog where everything is “synergistic” and “optimized for maximum efficiency.” You won’t find stock photos of people in suits pointing at whiteboards or listicles about “10 Ways to Leverage Your Operational Excellence.”

This is the unvarnished truth about building, breaking, and rebuilding the operational backbone of a law firm while still walking into a depo with your box of documents and then driving straight from there to Meet the Teacher.

Think of it as your backstage pass to controlled chaos. I’ll show you the systems that actually work for us (spoiler: they’re often held together with digital duct tape and prayer), the spectacular failures that taught us everything, and the small wins that keep me from abandoning it all to open a bakery/bookshop/coffee shop (though, let’s be real – that’s always on the table).

Seven Categories of Controlled Burning (Or: How I Organize My Operational, Litigation, and Parenting Trauma)

I learned pretty quickly that if I didn’t organize the chaos somehow, it would swallow me whole. So, I built myself a framework—seven recurring segments that let me process and share what it really feels like to juggle COO fires, litigation battles, and the everyday circus of parenting three kids under 10.

Think of them as buckets for my trauma: some are about systems and workflows, some about the people who make or break them, some about the wins that keep me sane, and some about the life outside the office that inevitably bleeds into everything else. These aren’t polished lessons or “thought leadership.” They’re survival notes from someone living three lives at once, trying to make sense of the mess in a vulnerable and authentic way that will, hopefully, help people realize that you don’t always have to have it together –  you just have to keep trying.

SOPs & WTFs
The nitty-gritty of building systems that don’t immediately collapse

People-ing Is Hard
Why managing humans is like herding cats—cats with law degrees and strong opinions

Mistakes Were Made
Where I publicly admit to being human and occasionally wrong

Wins, Metrics & Micro-Miracles
Proof that we occasionally know what we’re doing

Hot Takes from the Helm
Unfiltered opinions about legal tech, leadership myths, and industry sacred cows

Lessons from Outside the Office
How youth football or surviving a pediatric dentist visit makes you a better leader

COO Diary: Week in Review
The raw, unfiltered download of what actually happened

Who Should Read This

If you’re a COO: Welcome to the club nobody asked to join.
If you’re a litigator: Welcome to the other club nobody asked to join.
If you’re a parent doing either: bless you, you’ve unlocked nightmare mode.

And if, like me, you’re foolish (or ambitious) enough to do all three: pull up a chair. This is your support group. It’s only me so far so…sorry about that.

Let’s Build Something Worth the Mess

Here’s what I believe: every organization deserves operations that amplify their impact instead of holding them back. But building that requires acknowledging the path is rarely straight, the solutions are often counterintuitive, and sometimes the person designing your workflows also has to leave early for school pickup.

That’s its own brand of chaos. But it’s also where some of the clearest thinking happens—when you’re forced to strip away the posturing because you literally don’t have time for it.

So if you’re here to learn how to manage the flames, welcome. If you’re here to watch me get singed, well…those make for the best stories anyway.

– Heather

P.S. If you’re a lawyer who secretly doubles as your firm’s COO (or got voluntold into it), or you’re trying to juggle firm life and family life without losing your mind, I see you. We should probably start a group chat.