Women Lawyers--Back on Track

Big-Firm Lawyers Partner to Open Women-Owned Boutique

This Texas Lawyer article describes a phenomenon that I think will become all too familiar in the near future:  experienced women lawyers in their 40s abandoning BigLaw and creating women-dominated and/or family-friendly law firms.

It makes sense that women with a good amount of experience would leave once their kids are a bit older--perhaps entering grade school.  The women are probably completely burnt out from burning the wick at both ends and trying to juggle it all.  And, they're probably sick and tired of banging their head up against the walls created by naysayers who refuse to compromise and sit high atop the hierarchy of the firms. 

I know a large number of women in this situation and know firsthand that it can be incredibly frustrating and energy-draining to attempt to swim against the tide with no end in sight.

So, read and learn my friends--and keep on eye on this trend.

And, note that a male lawyer jumped ship  from BigLaw in order to join this ground breaking firm with a focus on alternative billing arrangements as well.  Interesting stuff, indeed.

From the article:

A new women-owned firm in Dallas, Spencer Crain Cubbage Healy & McNamara, formed by five veteran Dallas lawyers from four firms, opened its doors May 1.

The five lawyers -- all were partners or shareholders in big firms in Dallas before their new venture -- do litigation, labor and employment law, business immigration work and dispute resolution.

The founding shareholders are Jennifer Jackson Spencer, a litigator who left Fulbright & Jaworski; Gayla Crain, a management-side labor and employment lawyer from Epstein Becker Green Wickliff & Hall; Brenda Cubbage, a litigator from Greenberg Traurig; Elise Healy, a business immigration lawyer from Epstein Becker; and Larry McNamara, a labor and employment lawyer from Locke Lord Bissell & Liddell...

Spencer, the lawyer whose dreams led to the firm, says, "[W]e envision about 30 lawyers in two to three years."

She says the time is right to launch a majority-women-owned firm in Dallas. "It just seems like a lot of the companies ... had committed to diversifying their legal firms," she says...

"It was my 45th birthday, and I have 20 years left to practice, and what better way to hook up with lawyers that I like and have immense respect for and create something that I thought was woman-owned and [with] the ability to come up with some flexible billing arrangements," Spencer says...

McNamara, who calls himself the "token" male partner, says he decided he was interested in a change and likes the opportunity to pick the lawyers with whom he will practice.

The Spencer Crain business plan calls for the partners to bill out at rates lower than at their former firms, although those fees aren't set in stone yet, and to offer alternative billing arrangements to their clients, including blended rates, project fees, fixed fees and flexible fees for smaller clients, Spencer says.

"This is a great business model in terms of ... my client base, more regionally based," Cubbage says.

"It seems like many businesses are finding the larger firms are not cost-effective for their needs," Spencer says.

When All Efforts Fail to Retain Them, Unintentional Biases May Be at Work

Ellen Ostrow wrote a great article for the New York Law journal that was published last week:  When All Efforts Fail to Retain Them, Unintentional Biases May Be at Work.

In it, she discusses the underlying assumptions and stereotypes that people have about women and how they react to women who exhibit traits in violations of the stereotypes. 

Most often, it is this type of bias that women lawyers encounter on a day to day basis.  Throughout my legal career--in fact, it started as soon as I entered law school--I 've run into this type of bias time and time again.

I encounter it far less now that I'm practicing law on my own terms.  But I'm still searching for the perfect balance that will allow me to be myself without losing face in the legal world.

Articles like this one help me better understand how to do just that. 

From the article:

(D)iverse attorneys, more than their white male counterparts, bump up against other cultural norms that have been part of law firm mores for so long that they appear to be professional requirements rather than preferences or the way things have always been done.

In particular, unintentional biases may lead many women and attorneys of color to leave their firms. Psychological research indicates that unintentional biases arise from the normal human tendencies to categorize things and people into groups, to prefer familiar things and similar people and to cognitively simplify our complex world. These mental processes evolved no doubt due to their survival value (e.g., it's essential to differentiate dangerous enemies from our kin.)...

It is also the case that we favor our own groups and their members while disparaging or discriminating against groups to which we do not belong. For example, we are likely to see them as less able than in-group members, to recall their errors while easily remembering the successes of similar others, to be less generous and at times to behave more aggressively toward them...

Cognitive psychologists have demonstrated that stereotypes and biases can operate outside of our conscious awareness, distorting our perceptions, judgments and memories and influencing our behavior. Implicit biases most often reflect stereotypes that people truly do not know they have and often consciously reject and abhor...

A partner who consciously or unconsciously believes that mothers are less committed to their legal careers than are attorneys without children might be likely to interpret a woman's absence from her office as a sign that she's home with her children rather than with a client. In fact, this is precisely what surveys conducted by the Project for Attorney Retention have found.

Whereas attorneys who are not parents are assumed to be engaged in some work-related activity when not at their desks, once women return from maternity leave, their absences are often attributed to involvement in family affairs. This assumption both derives from and confirms the theory that her commitment to her career has diminished...

The day-to-day experience of diverse attorneys is often filled with experiences of invisibility: the absence of a greeting or eye contact, minimal interaction, an unfriendly tone of voice, a facial expression communicating impatience, or cool and rejecting body language...

The subtlety of micro-aggressions makes them thorny to protest. It's difficult to imagine a woman associate complaining to a partner that he makes eye contact with the men in his practice group but not with her. People from stigmatized groups are often least likely to complain, in an effort to avoid confirming the stereotyped traits attributed to them. The fear of being labeled a "whiner" regularly silences women associates...

Instead of standard diversity training, firms might do better in their retention efforts by providing training in emotional intelligence, effective delivery of feedback, interpersonal conflict management and mechanisms for preventing biases from influencing judgments and behavior.

Once Off the Legal Ladder, Can You Get Back On?

Still no recent articles of relevance, so here is yet another post of mine from the past:

*******

Yesterday I was reading a magazine for which my sister is a deputy editor, New York Family.  There was a section that focused on working mothers and consisted of interviews of a number of working women.  In one of the interviews, an executive director of a hospital opined that she didn't judge women who left work after having a child.  But then she added the one comment that strikes fear in the hearts of parents who are considering leaving their current job:  "(T)he hard thing is, 'How do you get back in?'"

How do you get back in?  And what does that even mean "to get back in"?  Is it as hard as many would claim?  Is your professional life over if you leave work when your children are young--smack dab in the middle of what some would claim is the most important part of your climb up the ladder to a "successful" career?

My answer--nope, your career is not over.  Your legal career with that particular employer is probably over.  And, you may have to re-define what "success" means to you.  In particular, you'll have to ignore how other lawyers, especially those in law firms, define a "successful" legal career. But, you will be able to re-enter the workforce and have a successful and fulfilling career when you do decide to return to the working world.

I read a study a few years back that suggested that professionals who have left the workforce to care for their children should try to return to the workforce within three years, at least on a part-time basis.  The reason given for that recommendation was twofold:  employers have a tendency to believe that you've been out of the loop for too long after more than a three year break, and more importantly, you face a psychological barrier after three years that prevents you from believing that you can do it.

So, keep that three year marker in mind.  And, don't listen to those who say you can't "get back in."  You can.   It'll take some creativity.  It'll take some ingenuity.  You'll have to think outside the box.  And, you'll have to network.  But you can do it.  And, you will.  And, you'll succeed--on your own terms, and, most importantly, on your own schedule.

Lady Law is Not Entirely Inflexible

There's been a dearth of interesting articles regarding women lawyers, so I thought the following article that I wrote for the Daily Record nearly one year ago might generate some discussion:

Lady law is not entirely inflexible

The law can be all encompassing. It’s always been that way — hence the saying “the law is a jealous mistress.”

Attempting to juggle one’s chosen career with non-legal obligations such as the demands of family life can be a delicate and difficult balancing act for both male and female lawyers.

Recently, an interesting study was conducted by the Massachusetts- based Equality Commission. Entitled “Woman Lawyers and Obstacles to Leadership,” the report concluded that “female law-yers continue to face intractable challenges in their attempts to become partners, causing them to abandon law firm careers — and the legal profession entirely — at a dramatically higher rate than men.”

In attempting to explain this disparity some echo U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy’s language in the recent decision Gonzales v. Carhart, claiming that the reason for the variance is the special bond between a mother and child, and that women can’t help but stay at home with their children. Others allege that women make the decision to have children and must, therefore, face the music when it comes to the consequences of that choice.

I disagree. The mother and father are involved in the decision to have a child, and fatherhood affects a man’s life just as much as motherhood affects a woman’s. Once the decision to have children is made, each family must determine how to incorporate realistically that choice into their everyday lives.

Women and men with advanced degrees have more options available to them as a result of their education and work experience. As a result, professional couples, not just women, are taking a hard look at their lives and making choices that allow them to improve the quality of their family’s life. For some couples the most viable option may be for one parent to take temporary hiatus from the workforce.

Such occasional detours along one’s career path should not prevent a lawyer from having a fulfilling and successful career through the course of a lifetime. Yet, as the Equality Commission’s report indicates, the decision to scale back hours temporarily, or to take a brief hiatus from the law can have a drastic and debilitating effect on a legal career.

The time is ripe for change and I believe the impetus for change will be the generational divide. Generation X and Y employees have far different values than the Baby Boomers and, as the workforce becomes populated with more Generation X and Y employees, their values will become the norm. Their collective refusal to bill hours 24/7 will become increasingly evident as they abandon high-paying jobs requiring inhumane hours for jobs offering a better work-life balance, albeit at lower salary.

The legal field has recognized this fact far more slowly than other fields such as accounting and, as a result, has failed to respond in any meaningful way to lawyers’ requests for accommodation and flexibility.

The private sector in large metropolitan areas such as New York City, which traditionally sets the standard for firms across the country, has been especially unwilling to bend to the demands of a new generation of lawyers. As a result, dissension is growing among the ranks of lawyers, and among younger lawyers in particular. Many are simply leaving large law firms in search of greener pastures, and they represent a lot of lost talent.

I believe that Lady Law is far more flexible than those at the top of the legal hierarchy. As more lawyers refuse to be absentee parents and slaves to the billable hour, the landscape, slowly, will change. Only time will tell if I’m correct. In the meantime, I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

Good bye, headless lady.

Well, the results are in.  While not a land slide, it seems that a fair number of you, my dear readers, dislike the headless lady picture.

So, she's history. 

Say hello to her replacement:  briefcase lady!

Firms looking for ways to keep young associates around

Law firms seem to be really, really interested trying to figure out what all those "confusing" and/or "confused" young associates want.  In fact, they're willing to do study after study after study--and hire consultant after consultant after consultant--to try and figure out the answer to this oh-so-elusive question.

The Maryland Daily Record recently addressed this issue in a lengthy article that essentially rehashed all that we've heard before:  associates would happily work for less compensation in exchange for flexibility and more interesting work.  They're  bored, overworked and feel under appreciated.

One wonders how many times it needs to be said before changes are actually implemented?  Me thinks that nothing will change anytime soon, but perhaps I'm overly cynical.

From the article:

Whereas 25 or 30 years ago, associates joined a firm for life, associates today feel freer to switch firms in pursuit of their financial, professional and personal goals...

The NALP Foundation, which conducts research on the legal profession, found in 2000 that 59 percent of associates who had been out of law school for about five years had already left their first firm.

In 2005, that number was 78 percent, according to statistics cited by the consulting firm Hildebrandt International Inc. A recent survey by the Women’s Bar Association of the District of Columbia showed that of 551 attorneys polled, three-quarters of the women and half the men were considering leaving their jobs in the next five years.

Every time an associate leaves, it can cost a firm up to $350,000 to hire and train someone new...

But according to associates and associate retention experts, the major reason associates leave is not money. The top motivators are grueling hours, boring work and poisonous firm culture, they say...

“[F]orget about being able to balance work and family, they can’t even get a date because they’re so beholden to the whims of the partners,” Chanow said. Associates want to have “time with their family, time to meet people if they don’t have family, time to climb a mountain.” ...

Chanow said long hours are especially tough on women with children, so they end up leaving firms at even higher rates than men do. She said they are especially likely to leave if they feel they have no chance of becoming a partner.

Some women look around and see that no woman has made partner in their practice group in years, so they assess their chances as slim and decide to leave, she said...

Gallagher’s Linda Jones said salaries matter more to law students trying to decide where to work than they do to associates deciding whether to stay.

“Studies always show that compensation may be really important on the front end, but as long as people are satisfactorily compensated, it’s not the most important thing,” Jones said.

Are Law Firm Diversity Committees Simply Fluff?

Denise Howell, of Bag and Baggage fame, is working on her next article for her American Lawyer column, which will be about law firm women's initiatives and has asked me to try to get some feedback from my readers for her.  Keep in mind that her deadline is next Monday, 4/28/08.

Do any of you have any thoughts or anecdotes about her basic premise, which she describes as follows:

Just about every big firm has a women's initiative, or at minimum a diversity committee.  They're supposed to identify problem areas and work on solutions.  But they're a quagmire:  primarily window dressing and PR vehicles, with no real voice in management.  Even if they're able to engage sympathetic support from on high, they struggle with the fact the women (and/or minorities, depending on the committee's scope) in the firm have no unified agenda.  There are generational, seniority, and family status divides that make it difficult if not impossible to serve the interests of every constituent.  So the efforts get watered down and dumbed down, ultimately wasting everyone's time in an endless series of meetings and occasional events that accomplish little or nothing.

Personally, I pretty much agree with her premise--these initiatives serve a purpose, but are not particularly effective, since those who run things at the top of the law firms aren't receptive.  PR is the only reason that firms even acknowledge and/or sponsor these types of initiatives.

What say you?

Distracting or Relevant?

I received the following email from a regular reader regarding the photo to the right that I use on this blog on occasion:

I want to thank you for writing your blog. I love it, and often share postings with co-workers... I don’t, however, necessarily love the photo of the headless, ultraslim, pencil-skirted, stiletto-ed woman that accompanies many posts. Although this is an aesthetic I too occasionally aim for at work, I think the stereotypical aspects of it might detract from the seriousness of the information and opinion. (I’ll keep reading anyway though.)

My responsive email, in part, was as follows:

I appreciate your comment re: that particular image. I do what I can with this blog.   I only have a limited amount of time and a limited number of non-copyrighted images available to me, and this blog is a side project of mine. That particular image is simply representative of the conservative law firm image and how women are supposed to fit into it.  I use it with posts that discuss  law firms and women lawyers.   It's not intended to represent how women are supposed to look.

After giving it some thought, I've decided to leave it up to my readers.  Majority rules.  What say you, fair readers?

Keep it or can it?
	Keep it
	Can it
	What-evah.
Free polls from Pollhost.com

Cultivate Work-Life Synergy: A Guide For Women Lawyers

Arnie Herz of Legal Sanity fame wrote a really useful article at the Complete Lawyer:  Cultivate Work-Life Synergy:  A Guide For Women Lawyers.

In it he discusses ways in which to assess your current career satisfaction and ways to pinpoint areas that might need change in order to increase your wellbeing. 

Rather than "balance", he prefers the term "synergy".  I've toyed with the idea of "elasticity", which is sort of in keeping with his concept of synergy.  I think I like the idea of work/life synergy.

How about you?

From the article:

Women lawyers have been on the leading edge of this larger cultural and professional trend. Acknowledging that they want work that’s rewarding on all levels, they’re seeking what I call work-life synergy.

Work life synergy is not the same as work-life balance (a highly-charged topic that’s garnered a lot of media attention and brings people off the sidelines to debate the business and practice of law)...

(T)he American Heritage Dictionary defines “synergy” as the interaction of two or more agents or forces so that their combined effect is greater than the sum of their individual effects. Seen through this lens, work and life aren’t separate and competing forces: they intertwine. There’s no duality that compels statements like “live to work” or “work to live.” Synergy results when you infuse your life with meaning...

With a healthy dose of self-inquiry and candor, you can gain insight into what’s meaningful to you by investigating how your work as a lawyer typically impacts your energy state. Like a detective, examine how your daily professional doings—including the people and issues you engage and the interactions you have—augment or deplete your energy. Do they make you feel upbeat, positive and excited or bring you stress, anger, resent ment or even physical illness?...

If your work-life connection is out of sync, you need to reassess what you’re doing, how you’re doing it or who you’re doing it for or with. Keeping this energy-meaning connection in mind, it’s easy to see that you can experience work-life synergy when you:·

Manage your time effectively
Form mutually energizing relationships
Perform tasks that you’re passionate about...

When you hone your skill set and cultivate this synergy in your life, you maximize your experi ence and effectiveness as a legal service provider. You also send the important message that you won’t tolerate professional and workplace environments that fail to support your intention to find and sustain meaning in your everyday pursuits.

Women Law Firm Leaders Still Sparse

From law.com comes this rather unsurprising, and yet still depressing headline:  Women Law Firm Leaders Still Sparse.

If you think the headline is depressing, wait until you read the article.  It seems that there women aren't interested in managing law firms or, that the women who are interested aren't qualified, or that women are too faint hearted to handle it, or that women at the top are suddenly dropping out...or something.

I'm actually not quite sure what the point of the article is, other than to pointedly point out, point by point, that there aren't a lot of women at the top.

I get it.  Point taken!

(It's really not a bad article--it's just hard to read it without a little cynicism sneaking in.)

Here are a few choice (and mostly depressing) excerpts from the article:

For the scant few women who run some of the nation's biggest law firms, it's lonely at the top. And it seems to be getting lonelier...

"It's not for the faint of heart," said Jerry Clements, the woman in charge of Locke Lord Bissell & Liddell. As managing partner of the 700-attorney law firm, Clements said the shortage of women in leadership positions is, primarily, due to a "timing issue."...

The pool of lawyers who want to run a law firm is relatively small, but the pool of women lawyers eager to take on the tasks is even smaller, said Valerie Ford Jacob, co-managing partner of 684-attorney Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson in New York...

Because so few women are included in the upper ranks of law firm management, finding a match between qualifications and a desire to do the job is uncommon, she said.

Just 8 percent of law firm leaders are women, according to a report released in November by the National Association of Women Lawyers (NAWL)...

But the numbers aren't favorable for women in that regard, either. Among the law firms in the NAWL survey, 15 percent reported that they had no women on their highest governing committees. Some 25 percent of the law firms reported that women make up 10 percent or less of their governing committees. Only 10 percent of firms reported that women total 25 percent or more of their highest governing committees...

"Unless you put women in roles to demonstrate their leadership ability, the partners will not elect them to lead the firm," she said.