Women Lawyers--Back on Track

Jumping Off the Law Firm Track

There's an interesting Law.com article entitled "Jumping off the law firm track" which offers examples of non-traditional legal career paths.  It gives hope to those of us who went to law school but always intended to do "something else" with our degree.

From the article:

Everyone, including Spencer Baretz, thought his law career was off to a flying start when he accepted a job as clerk to U.S. District Judge I. Leo Glasser in the Eastern District of New York...

In 2002, after three years in the corporate practice at what is now Katten Muchin Rosenman, Baretz left the firm to launch Hellerman Baretz, a communications consulting firm specializing in law firm marketing.

"I really enjoyed the law, but until your fifth or sixth year you are a paper pusher,'' Baretz said. "It's not that intellectually stimulating. Here, I'm running a business, negotiating deals, pitching business.''...

Jonathan Levitt was clearly not giving much weight to job security when he launched Outside GC in late 2001...

Outside GC now employs 20 attorneys who handle day-to-day legal work for as many as 10 companies, working a total of 25 to 50 hours per week, depending upon their preferences.

"I wanted to work for myself, and I was always thinking more about growing a business than being a lawyer in the usual sense," Levitt said. "It is a difficult slog trying to make partner. I don't talk to a lot of law firm lawyers who are really happy."...

David Galbenski had been a commercial litigator for just four months at Timmis & Inman in Detroit when his frustration from looking for staff to perform document reviews gave him the idea for a law firm staffing company.

In December 1993, he put a phone line in his basement and spent the next year practicing law and nurturing the business that has grown into Lumen Legal, with offices in 17 cities nationwide.

Galbenski is the CEO but also incoming president of the Entrepreneurs' Organization, with 7,000 members in 33 countries. He is completing a book on entrepreneurship reshaping the legal services industry.

"I didn't dislike practicing law; it was just that I always had this entrepreneur bug," said Galbenski. "A lot of people go to law school not really understanding what it means to practice law and how that impacts your life. The societal trend around the globe is a greater interest in entrepreneurship. I find more and more people interested in transforming legal services through entrepreneurship, and they don't see doing that inside a large law firm.''...

"Going to law school at [New York University] opened a new city and way of thinking to me. I put a lot of work into the law, and I learned a lot, but when I found something interesting, I moved."

Broumand said the opportunity was obvious to him. He knows how to have a good time, but a lot of people need some pointers.

"Initially, it was a big hit to the bottom line. I was doing extremely well at the law firm and not half as well at UrbanDaddy, but when you love what you do and do it well, the money comes," Broumand said.

"My understanding of being a lawyer came from TV and movies. It didn't turn out to be so sexy. It was a challenge for me to sit behind a desk, thinking, 'Should I use a semicolon or a comma?'"

Are successful women avoiding motherhood?

So asks this article from a San Francisco ABC affiliate.  It's an interesting article, but the title is poorly worded in my opinion.  The article implies that the only way to be "successful" is to have a full-time career.

I completely disagree with that.  Success is in the eye of the beholder, as far as I'm concerned.  There is not one way to define success, and balancing a part-time schedule for a portion of one's career with family and achieving happiness is certainly a form of success.

That being said, it's an interesting, although somewhat depressing article.  I'm looking forward to the day when the statistics quoted in the article tend to be more favorable toward women with careers and families.

From the article:

A new study from Washington & Lee University shows professional women are walking away from motherhood and marriage -- more than the general population.

Law professor Robin Wilson's research makes up a chapter in a new book called "Rethinking Business Management."

She says, while four-fifths of senior male lawyers have children, only two-thirds of senior women do, and there is a similar break from marriage.

She looked at more than 100,000 people with at least a college degree, and found that women lawyers, doctors and MBA's are opting out of marriage at a higher rate than their male counterparts. When they do marry, women professionals have a harder time making it last...

"Professional men are much more likely to be married to homemakers or women who don't have the financial withdrawal to leave, even if they want or need to," says Williams.

Wilson's research show that among women with a law degree, just shy of 6 percent have a stay-at-home spouse, versus nearly 40 percent of male lawyers. For MBA's, nearly 10 percent of women have a spouse at home, compared with 44 percent of men. For MD's it's just over 12 percent for women versus 48 percent for male MD's.

As for having families, we asked Williams, what was wrong with careers where you can't have children.

"There aren't careers where you can't have children. There are careers where women can't have children. So the question is, are we going to design careers so that only men can have them if they want a conventional family life? Or are we going to design careers so that either men or women can have them if they want a conventional family life?"...

Williams says Gen-X and Gen-X men show signs of being different than their baby-boomer dads. The WorkLife Center hotline is frequently hearing from young men about issues like paternity leave.

Incoming ATLA-NJ President Understands Balance

I came across an enlightening article that describes the top two goals of incoming ATLA-New Jersey president Tommie Ann Gibney, one of which is to recognize the importance of balance and flexibility in the legal profession.

The article is misleadingly titled Woman targets victims' rights, so I nearly passed it over.  I'm glad I didn't, though, since Ms. Gibney offers great perspectives on an issue that is increasingly affecting the legal profession.

From the article:

Gibney is in favor of flexible work schedules for men and women to give them time to care for children.

"The business of law has to change to reflect the reality of the American family. It's inappropriate that women have to choose between a career and a family.

"Success has to be measured by more than the amount of your take-home pay," Gibney said. "Women attorneys should be hitting their stride after 10 or 15 years of practice.

"Instead, firms are seeing an exodus of women attorneys and it's extremely expensive for law firms to replace them," she said. "They've spent that time in training, developing relationships with adversaries. Because firms can't accommodate their needs because of family responsibility, they have to bring in someone else."

Her message is not new.  It's been said before many times on this blog and elsewhere, but bears repeating.  Perhaps one day, people will actually begin to listen. 

If not now, that day will come when legal employers lose money hand over foot as they attempt to replace the Gen Y underlings that have flown the coop in search of greener pastures.

We can talk until we're blue in the face.  I've already accepted that our warnings are falling on deaf ears.  But, money talks--quite loudly.  Eventually, the head honchos will hear the music.  Of that I am sure. 

Leaving the law over lack of maternity leave

Thanks to Susan Cartier Liebel of the Building a Solo Practice LLC blog for bringing this article from Lawyers Weekly to my attention, which discusses maternity leave issues encountered by our colleagues on the other side of the border in Canada.

The article examines the familiar dilemma many women lawyers, regardless of citizenship, face after the birth of their children:  have kids, lose business, lose credibility, lose standing, lose income, lose all that you've worked for. 

Is there a solution?  You bet there is. Legal employers planning for and accepting the inevitable.

Legal employers should presume that 80% of their women attorneys will likely have children during their fertile years and that most will take 3 months maternity leave and might also want to work a reduced schedule for a few years while their children are young.  Smart employers will ensure that their office and staffing infrastructure will accommodate these predictable life events and temporary schedule changes by allowing case management by teams of attorneys rather than a single lawyer.  That way, one lawyer can run with a case when another is out on leave.

In the long run, firms will save money by retaining employees and avoiding the cost of hiring and training replacements, even if there is a temporary loss of income due to the birth of a child. 

Of course, most firms are shortsighted and fail to appreciate the long term benefits of retaining good lawyers who happen to have been born with a reproductive system that requires them to bear the burden  of carrying offspring to term and caring for the child in the months after its birth. 

Perhaps that sad fact will change sometime soon.

From the article:

Maternity leaves don’t come easy for women practising in small firms. Financial challenges loom large; hanging on to clients poses a major difficulty. The result: they have been leaving private practice in droves...

“There were two main issues we heard recurring,” Warkentin said. “The first was the hardship to maintain an income during a leave of absence, and the second was maintaining the practice during the leave. If you take a leave of absence, you lose the income flow, and you also lose your clients — you don’t have a practice to return to"...

(E)veryone agrees that women in small firms need help with maternity leaves in order to stem the tide leaving private practice.

“The financial hurdles faced by female sole practitioners...are so big that the decision to have children really comes down to ‘can I afford to do it?’” Newton-Smith said. “The fear of not being able to have a family drives many women out.”

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.