Melody Torbati is a partner and a member of VLP’s technology transactions practice group. Her practice is focused on agreements involving the licensing, distribution, development and transfer of technology, content and other intellectual property. VLP is a virtual firm, so Torbati has no office to commute to and she rarely meets her clients in the flesh. She works with clientsfrom her Bel Air home. We spoke with Torbati about how this flexibility impacts her work and her life.
Question: Describe your daily routine.
Answer: I get my kids ready for school, and get them to school. While my kids are in school, that’s my workday. At my firm, almost everyone works from home. Some people have outside offices they go to, but my office happens to be my home. I work when they are in school and then in the afternoon, I’ll take a break and take them to after-school activities and back home to family time. Then, when they are asleep, if I have more work, I get it done. The great thing about working from home is that I can go to an appointment and come back. On the other hand, I have to be there when clients need me, and I have clients in different time zones. Sometimes, I need to take calls at 10 p.m., but at least I don’t have to go back to the office.
You’ve worked in more traditional environments. How does working remotely compare?
I never needed to see people physically to close deals. Over the years, people have shifted to sending documents through email to get signed, instead of physically exchanging copies. I do technology transactions, negotiating agreements. A lot of the work I do is directly between me and the client. I found that, in my practice, the necessity of being together in a physical space didn’t exist. Even my clients that are L.A.-based, sometimes we’ll meet just to hang out, but very rarely do we meet to negotiate a deal. Everyone is busy, and if you get what you need to get done on conference or video call, it makes everyone’s life more efficient in terms of commuting.
What matters to clients is that the overhead of my firm is lower than other firms, and the rates reflect that. One of things I found in more traditional workplaces is that, even though I technically could work from home, the culture kind of required me to be there. There was a face-time issue, and I felt a pressure to be there during normal office hours, even though it made zero difference to how I worked. Sometimes, it was overtly said to me that I needed to be at the office more. Now, I don’t need to justify anything to anyone.
How do you stay productive when you’re working at home?
You have to be the kind of person where you can work by yourself and you won’t get distracted because you’re alone and it’s quiet. You have to be super organized. I schedule everything. When a client calls me to draft an agreement, I know how many tasks I need to do before I can get to that stage, and when they are due.
What do you wear when you work at home?
I’m comfortable. I wear jeans or pajamas. If I need to have a video call, I will wear a business shirt or sweater, and my hair will be done. Otherwise, I find I work better in casual clothing. As a woman, I would spend a lot more time looking presentable and putting on makeup when I went to an office. Working from home saves me the time I used to spend putting on my professional look before I leave the door, which means I’m sleeping more than I would have, and that’s important because I don’t get a lot of sleep.
How do you achieve work/life balance?
I think that spending time with other similarly situated people, whether they are working moms or stay-at-home moms who used to have a career, is just great because you can kind of vent out whatever frustrations you have. You see that everyone is dealing with the same issues, and that it’s normal. It gives you the perspective to see that everything is fine at the end of the day. I think the thing to remember is to look around and see how fortunate you are. If you look in the news and see what’s going on with the world, it will make you reevaluate your stress. This is nothing in comparison. It’s frustrating, and then it’s over. You will feel blessed.
What else do you do to relieve stress?
The honest answer is that I eat chocolate. Chocolate is my vice. Some people have a glass of wine at the end of the day. I have a bowl of chocolate ice cream.
