Lessons from Mom: Local attorneys strengthen bond with new partnership

By Jay Turner

As a newly minted private practice attorney and PhD student who is also a wife, a mother of a toddler, and now a homeowner, Premela Deck is in the midst of a crash course on the elusive phenomenon known as work-life balance.

Fortunately for Deck, she has the perfect mentor to help her navigate these waters in Reuki Schutt — an expert in the field who also happens to be her law partner, her greatest inspiration, and her mom.

Attorneys Reuki Schutt and Premela Deck

“I don’t think there are words [to describe how I feel about her],” said Deck, who is the oldest of three daughters. “I’m very proud of my mom in all that she does.”

Widely known across the Canton community from her many years of service on the School Committee, Schutt transitioned from a sales career to the legal world when her children were young and has operated a successful solo family law practice in downtown Canton for the better part of 20 years. But the past few years in particular have brought many changes, starting with the purchase of a new office at 789 Washington Street and more recently with the addition of Deck to the firm.

While Schutt remains the principal owner, Deck, who is fully licensed with her own impressive list of credentials, has joined the practice as a partner, and together the mother and daughter duo have rebranded under a professional corporation called SD Law, P.C. (S for Schutt and D for Deck). Both attorneys primarily specialize in family and probate matters, including divorce, custody cases and elder law. However, they also have experience in real estate transactions, contracts, estate planning, and prenuptial and cohabitation agreements while Deck has completed the public defenders’ training and is interested in branching out to take on some criminal cases.

As for their paths to the legal profession, Schutt attended New England School of Law as a part-time student while raising young children and built her practice from the “school of hard knocks,” learning through experience what worked best for her and developing a client base almost solely through word-of-mouth referrals.

As a humanities major as an undergrad, Schutt said the law seemed like a natural choice after deciding to make a career change and she soon discovered that she loved it. At the same time, her top priority was her children, and so she designed a practice that would enable her to meet the demands of family life.

“I would drop my kids at school and go to work and then I would pick them up after school and go to their sporting events, so maybe I was an 8 to 2 worker,” she said. “And if things were very, very busy my husband would cover and I could come back at night. But it was fantastic for me as the children aged and needed me less — you know, they get their own way of getting around and they’re hanging out with their friends — and I was able to just grow my business. So I couldn’t have asked for a better business model for what I wanted.”

In contrast to her mother, Deck has been a lawyer in training going back to her teenage years, starting with her participation in the mock trial program at Canton High School. (She has since returned to the school to help coach the program alongside her former coach and advisor Donna Bauman.)

After completing her undergraduate degree at Mt. Holyoke College, Deck enrolled in a joint degree program and went on to obtain both her law degree and a Master of Social Work (MSW) in three and a half years through a partnership between Western New England School of Law and the Springfield School of Social Work. She then sat for the bar and subsequently enrolled in a PhD program in social work at the University of North Carolina while her husband, Chris, was attending UNC Law School.

Deck said it was while she was in North Carolina that she first started doing some work with Schutt, preparing motions for cases and assisting with other tasks. But she had always relished the thought of one day working alongside her mom, adding that Schutt was a big reason that she became a lawyer in the first place.

Schutt said she too had long envisioned the two of them working together, although she never applied any pressure and even wondered for a time if Deck might be better off putting some time in at a larger firm. But in the end, the partnership seemed like a natural fit and the two could not be happier with the present arrangement.

There are still growing pains on both sides to be sure, but both share a mutual love and respect — as well as many common legal interests — that make them confident that the arrangement will not only last, but thrive.

“I think both of us were a little bit like, ‘This would be great; oh god I hope it works,’” Schutt joked. “My husband [Roger] laughs at the kinds of fights we would have, but we do think a lot alike and I think we’re respectful to one another, so it’s been a really good situation for us.”

Deck also brings a new dimension to the practice due to her training as a social worker — a background that both attorneys see as an ideal fit for a practice focused mainly on family law.

And being both a woman and now a mother — and learning the ropes alongside her own mother and getting to see her in a new light as a colleague — are experiences that Deck believes informs, and hopefully will strengthen, her practice as an attorney.

In terms of the day-to-day nature of their work and how they mesh as partners and share the workload, both agreed that it’s been a work in progress, although the kind of work that they thoroughly enjoy. The big key, they said, is maintaining open lines of communication, and to that end, Deck makes a point to mark out a block of time on Schutt’s calendar each week for the two of them to meet and discuss their cases.

At the same time, because they are so close, Deck said they are always “talking work,” yet in a way that both find to be productive. “So it’s just like this extension and our practices feel very organically weaved together and just a part of our daily life,” she said.

Schutt said she is already quite comfortable entrusting Deck with managing the firm’s operations, which has enabled her to breathe easier when she is away from the office.

“It was amazing,” she said, “Roger and I went to India last month for two and a half weeks and I didn’t have to worry because she had it under control and that was very liberating. And as Roger and I are aging and we start talking about [traveling to] some of those more adventurous places now before we’re too old, it’s nice to know that the home fires are burning properly and Prem has got an eye on things. So it works out really well.”

While being an attorney is still very new to her and she will undoubtedly evolve and grow in her professional life, Deck knows one thing for certain: she wants to be a lot like mom when she grows up.

“Seeing how she was a mother and an attorney — and always a mother first but always a professional — that’s who I want to be,” Deck said. “I want to be able to be very present in my children’s lives but also be able to [thrive in my career]. You know, women are challenged with the question, ‘Can we have it all?’ And I want my kids to know that if we can’t have it all, we can get really, really close.”

For more information about SD Law and attorneys Schutt and Deck, visit sdlawma.com.

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