Women Lawyers--Back on Track

Toe Cleavage: Offensive to the Legal Profession?

Apparently, a group of lawyers in Memphis recently spent a lot of time mulling over just such weighty issues as toe cleavage.  According to this Memphis Daily News article, a bunch of Memphis lawyers and judges met to discuss the issue of a dress code for local lawyers. 

The meeting included "an impromptu modeling of shoes to determine if either pair represented “cocktail shoes,” and if they did, whether they were inappropriate or disrespectful to the courts."

Some attendees were particularly "offended by too-short skirts, too much cleavage or too much arm being shown, and running shoes being worn in the courthouse."

At issue was a dress code proposed by a number of Memphis Bar Assocations.

The proposed rule at issue reads as follows:

“All attorneys should wear appropriate attire. Men shall wear coats, ties, slacks and appropriate footwear, which does not include athletic shoes or shoes without socks. Women shall wear professional and conservative attire, such as dresses with jackets, suits or pantsuits (with appropriate tops), and appropriate footwear, which does not include cocktail shoes or sandals or athletic shoes."

I think my favorite part of the rule is that the attire for women is specifically described as "conservative."  For some reason, men need not dress "conservatively".  Presumably 1970's style leisure suits would be perfectly appropriate for men to wear court.

And, one wonders how cold-weather-climate attorneys like myself are expected to handle the issue of boots in the winter.  Boot are most certainly not "appropriate footwear" under the proposed rule.  However, they are an absolute necessity when you have to walk a few blocks to court in the middle of an Upstate NY winter. 

When I was an Assistant Public Defender, I would drag my 60 files behind me in a box on a luggage trolley through sidewalks covered with snow, wearing boots and carrying a bag with my heels inside of it.  I'd then change my footwear prior to court, but was lucky enough to have a place to store it, since I was essentially a fixture in the courtroom

Things were more difficult once I began working at a law firm.  I attended court only occasionally, and would have to change my shoes before entering the courtroom.  I always had a difficult time figuring out where to leave my boots, since there was no place set aside for that purpose.  Sometimes I'd just carry them inside the courtroom and leave them, wet and covered with salt from the streets, at my seat.

Men had the luxury of slipping "rubbers" over their (flat) shoes.  Many of them wore the unattractive foot coverings into court as well, and I never heard any complaints about that particular practice.

Meanwhile, the ABA Journal blog recently discussed the issue of dress codes for lawyers as well, and referenced this Wall Street Journal article:  Bare-Legged Ladies: Hosiery Reveals Office Divide.

I think that most women would agree that, in general, nylons are ridiculously uncomfortable.  And,  Nylons in 90 degree, humid weather are downright torture.   Lined pantsuits in the summer are even worse.  The only bearable option is a skirt without nylons.

Nylons are simply not an option in the summer.  Period. 

So, I would respectfully suggest, my fellow lawyers, that you take your dress code and implement it in a jurisdiction where the sun don't shine (and the snow don't fall). 

 

We Needed a Study to Figure This Out?

I was honestly amazed to read this article summarizing a study that concluded that "female lawyers more likely to practice in firms, less likely to make partner."  It wasn't the results of the study that surprised me--it was that the study was conducted in the first instance.

Apparently, a University of Iowa sociologist "analyzed data collected from two groups of Michigan Law School graduates -- the classes of 1972-78 and 1979-85 -- who completed surveys one, five and 15 years after graduation."

After conducting extensive analysis, she concluded that:

The legal profession's efforts to promote diversity are working to get women lawyers in the law firm door, but once they're in, they remain less likely to be promoted to partner...

The study...found that women who practiced in a firm for five or more years were 13 percent less likely than men to make partner, even if their qualifications were equal and regardless of whether they had children.

I could have told you that without conducting a study.

The article did have some interesting observations about the reasons for the disparity, even though the results of the study seemed fairly obvious.  From the end of the article:

"Older men tend to feel less comfortable spending time with a young woman than with a young man. With the guys, it's more of a father-son bond -- let's play some golf, let's hit happy hour, and I'll give you some advice about your career and see what I can do to help you," she said. "Men might shy away from that type of mentoring relationship with a young woman because they're afraid of what people will think."

And, Noonan notes, the selection process for partnership isn't necessarily objective. Even if a woman does well in her work, colleagues with the clout to name partners may still have difficulty picturing her in a position of power.

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.

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.

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.

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.

 

What Women Lawyers Can Learn From Hillary Clinton

From Texas Lawyer comes an interesting article:  What Women Lawyers Can Learn From Hillary Clinton.  I'm not sure that I agree with all of the "lessons", but the article includes some useful information:

Never underestimate an opponent...if women lawyers find themselves up against their own version of a junior senator from Illinois -- one they think has neither the skills nor the preparation to stand up to their brilliance -- they shouldn't underestimate him -- or her.

Stereotypes are tough to shake, and they can help and hurt women lawyers... Women lawyers should follow suit. They don't have to be likeable or warm or nurturing to get the job done. In fact, for most of them, that would work against them -- and their clients' -- interests. But, when the timing's right, a bit of femininity doesn't hurt. In fact, it can work greatly to women lawyers' advantage.

Being thick-skinned is invaluable...

Appearance matters...(I)t's true. By most accounts, Clinton excels in this area. She's always pulled together. She's attractive but not so much so that she risks being objectified. Clearly, a lot of thought goes into everything she wears. The good news for women is that although being attractive helps, it's not really about having a pretty face. It's about looking polished and professional: nice clothes, good hair and all those other things that go into looking well-groomed.

Fear not the "B" word... Women often go to extreme lengths to be conciliatory and diplomatic, all to avoid being called a bitch. If there's one lesson learned from the Clinton campaign, it's that being dubbed a bitch is not an instant death sentence (in fact, a recent "Saturday Night Live" skit almost made it seem like a prerequisite for the job). Clinton is usually quite composed, but she's also shown some fire now and then and has come at her opponents with both barrels. It hasn't always made her friends, but at least nobody can claim she's a pushover.

Women Lawyers Bill More/Less Than Men--Depending On How You Spin It

Over at Legal Blog Watch, Carolyn Elefant posted about very interesting British study with intriguing--and somewhat controversial--findings: that childless women lawyers are the most "productive" workers, while women lawyers with young children are the least "productive".  And, fathers were more "productive" than their childless male counterparts.

As Carolyn aptly noted, the way that "productivity" was measured--the amount of hours billed--was a questionable methodology, since:

(A)s we all know, hours billed don't necessarily correlate to efficiency; indeed, longer hours may signal less productivity, not more.

Another interesting point from the summary of the study:

Further analysis showed that female lawyers with children usually had to juggle professional and domestic responsibilities because they tended to be married to a partner who also worked. On the other hand, male lawyers with children were likely to have a partner who did not work, and who was therefore able to take responsibility for domestic duties.

Wallace and Young said another unexpected finding was that family-friendly organisational work practices had a negative effect on the productivity of male staff but not female staff. Moreover, the sexes used the benefit of flexible hours differently - professional fathers spent the time pursuing leisure activities, whereas for professional mothers this time was spent largely on domestic duties. It seems the old adage 'a woman's work is never done' still rings true in the twenty-first century.

Mark Cohen at the Minnesota Lawyer Blog had this to say about the discrepancies in the "productivity" of lawyer dads vs. lawyer moms: 

One wonders if this "productivity" isn't a means of dodging out on domestic chores. Billing an additional hour may not look so bad when the alternative is to go home and change a diaper ...

He raises a great point that brought to mind something that occurred early on my legal career.  A male lawyer with kids and a stay-at-home wife was one of the only lawyers to make it into the office during one of the worst snowstorms that we'd ever had in Upstate NY and made a telling comment that I'll get to in a moment. 

But first, the storm.  I grew up here and was used to driving in snow, snow and more snow, and for the first time in my life, after nearly sliding off the road three times and passing 6 ditched cars, I had to turn my car around and head home after driving only 1/2 mile.  It was the only time that I've ever found myself unable to navigate safely in the snow.

I eventually made it into the office around 10 a.m. and there were only 4 (out of 20) lawyers there.  This particular lawyer was one of them and he told me that he'd been the first to arrive at 8 a.m.  I asked him how he even made it in, and he replied, "Are you kidding?!? The alternative was being stuck in the house with my wife and three kids on a snow day.  Hell.on.earth."

I've never forgotten that comment. 

And, after hearing it, I noticed that the male lawyers with kids were always the first into the office--and upon arrival, sat around in their offices drinking coffee, feet on the desk, reading the newspaper for the first 45 minutes or so.  One wonders what justification was offered to  their stay-at-home wives as they "rushed" out the door before the kids awoke.

But, alas, I digress.

More on this study can be found at the following blogs (and of course, the comments following some of posts are full the seemingly obligatory tidbits about women lawyers taking up the space of a more worthwhile and more qualified guy):

• Bag and Baggage
• Wall Street Journal Law Blog
• Above the Law

Law Firms' New Partners Still Mostly Male

The Project for Attorney Retention just released the results of a 4 year study which charted the percentage of women making partnership in BigLaw.  There's a nifty chart in the study results, should you care to take a peek.

Not surprisingly, women didn't fare all that well.  How depressing.

From the study:

For some time now, we have known that the lack of women in leadership positions at law firms is not a pipeline issue.  Women have been graduating from law schools at a rate of 40% or higher since 1985 and entering private practice at the same rate as their male counterparts – 70% – during that time...We collected promotion statistics for a total of 77 law firms representing a variety of sizes and locations.  We chose these firms based on inclusion in prior years’ surveys, firm size, reputation and availability of information.  We also combined the new information with the data that we had collected in previous years so that, for the first time, we could see whether a particular firm has made strides or slipped over the past four years...

At a dozen firms, 50% or more of the new partners were women...

At many firms, between a third and a half of the partners promoted this year were women...

However, other firms are seriously lagging behind...

Some of the most interesting information can be found by examining the trends for individual law firms.  For instance, in all but one of the past four partnership classes at Crowell & Moring women have been 50% or more of the firm’s new partners.  Likewise, women have been 40% or more of the new partners in the past three partnership classes at Cadwalader.  DLA Piper has had three years of steady but moderate progress followed this year by a substantial increase to 54%.  In two of the three previous partnership classes at Ropes & Gray, women have been more than a third of the new partners and the firm this year was one of the path-breakers with 70% of its new partners being women.  In contrast, at Edwards Angell Palmer & Dodge, the percentage of women promoted to partner has steadily decreased in each of the last three years  (30% in 2006, 20% in 2007, and 11% in 2008).  And at some firms such as Akin Gump, Fried Frank, and Vinson & Elkins, women have been virtually absent from all of the past four partnership classes.

Law Firms Opening Up to the Idea of Attorney Re-Entry

Via Law.com comes this article: Law Firms Opening Up to the Idea of Attorney Re-Entry.  It's nice to hear, but it's a bit depressing that a) it's taken this long and b) it's news.

From the article:

By and large, however, women who want to take off more than one year often sacrifice whatever job security they have to do so. When they want to return, they face a host of formidable challenges, say industry observers.

The most significant is simply convincing a law firm to hire them even though they veered off the conventional linear law firm up-or-out path. In addition, many who left before the technological revolution worry about their computer skills. Further, re-entering lawyers also must come to grips with psycho-social factors, most significantly the fact that they're older than their fellow associates while their contemporaries are their bosses.

The ranks of women seeking to re-enter the practice of law have grown large enough that law schools and other groups are now addressing the issue. Pace Law School and University of California, Hastings College of the Law, have started programs aimed at helping attorneys return to practice after lengthy absences. Additionally, the New York City Bar recently kicked off a re-entry initiative aimed at assisting people who left the profession and are considering returning.

For firms looking to increase the ranks of women partners, reaching out to former employees is seen as one way of potentially recruiting experienced female lawyers. Some law firms have been mulling programs aimed at connecting with ex-employees since at least 2005, when a Harvard Business Review article about women in the workplace suggested that companies should maintain ties with off-ramped employees through alumni programs...

Marks also tells women to reach out to their contacts and tell as many as possible what they're looking for. "People want to help other people," Marks says. "People love to feel that they made a difference in somebody's lives."

She also advises women who want to work at specific law firms to propose working as an independent contractor on a short-term basis. "Once they get to know you, they feel comfortable hiring you," she says...

Whether they're gone for months or years, women lawyers say that maintaining contact with colleagues is crucial. "Even if it's just on an informal basis, you need to keep in touch with people," says Janice Mac Avoy, who took off five months from her position as a partner in the litigation department of Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson after her second child was born in 2001. "They don't mean to, but they could forget about you.