Baird supports the best for current, future generations

Listen to this article

The 1960s, sixth-grade version of Kathleen M. Baird wrote an essay about how women can do anything they set out to achieve and nothing was going to stop her in pursuing her goals.

Today’s 60-year-old version, now an attorney/mediator, is equally optimistic about what the future holds, both for herself and other women in the profession.

“Sixty is the new 40,” Baird said. “I feel very young in the profession because I came back into it not too long ago. Where some people are wearing out, I feel like I’m just hitting my stride and that’s a great feeling.”

As for the women who are following in her footsteps, she says, “What I see in young women lawyers that’s so heartening for me is their ability to be true to themselves, and balancing all areas of their lives, talking about it and insisting that others allow them to be whole in all of the roles in their lives.”

Baird took a hiatus from the law in the 1980s when she left her job as a family court commissioner in Milwaukee to raise her young children. Back then, flextime or part-time work was unheard of. “Women fit in by trying to be like the men, and if you needed to leave the office and it was for a child-related reason, you couldn’t tell anyone that.”

So she left. “It was the right choice for me, but I dreamed of starting my own practice for the entire nine years I stayed home.”

The dream was realized once her youngest child was in school full-time.

A few years later, however, she discovered she enjoyed her work as a mediator, but her divorce litigation practice was becoming less fulfilling.

That’s when she learned about collaborative divorce. In 2000, she became one of the state’s first collaborative practitioners as well as one of the founders of the Collaborative Family Law Council.

“This process came along and it was like a breath of fresh air,” she said. “You’re really supporting the best in people, rather than their dark sides. And the difference is enormous, in terms of their satisfaction and yours.”

These days, she notes, “I’m really operating almost entirely within dispute resolution spheres. I’m part of the invisible good work that’s done.”

To read all of the Women in the Law profiles, click here