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Outside Philadelphia, a lawyer named Whitney Hoffman is wrestling with her resume. She barely worked a full year as a lawyer after graduating from Penn State 14 years ago, taking what she calls a ''mom sabbatical'' to raise her sons, who are now 10 and 13. Not that she sat around eating bonbons during those years. She researched a book on public-assembly-facility law being written by a local attorney, served on the board of a local public-service organization, helped run the community education program for her son's school, created a biweekly podcast on learning disabilities and organized a number of conferences, called PodCamp, to teach new-media skills. ''It's not that I don't have experience,'' she says, ''but I worry that I'll sit across the desk at an interview, and they'll say, 'What are you experienced for?' '' Now let's move 100 miles north, to Manhattan, where another lawyer, somewhat older and decidedly wealthier, has also been looking to land a new job. A graduate of Columbia Law School, she never really practiced, either but wrote a number of books, on privacy law and the Constitution. She has served on boards -- those of the Commission on Presidential Debates, the N.A.A.C.P. Legal Defense and Educational Fund and the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation -- where those who worked with her agree that she was hands-on and not just window decoration. And she helped turn around fund-raising for New York City's schools, raising $70 million for cutting-edge programs. She did all this while also being on ''mom sabbatical'' to raise her three children. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]