Women Lawyers--Back on Track

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.

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.

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?

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.

 

Women Really Want A Level Playing Field

There's a great article over at the Complete Lawyer written by Cathy S. Wright:  Women Really Want A Level Playing Field.  I highly recommend that you give it a good read.

In this article she discusses the differences in the ways that men and women interact and perceive each other.  In my experience, many of her observations are right on point.  The sub-titles of the article should give you a good idea of what to expect:

• While Our Goals May Be The Same, Our Strategies For Solutions Vary In Business
• Women Often Still Feel Like Outsiders
• Men And Women Are Divided By Language
• Men And Women Are Motivated Differently
• Reciprocity Means Different Things To Men And Women
• Men And Women Bear Different Life Responsibilities

My favorite part of the article is the concluding paragraphs, where she responds to the (maddening, in my opinion) claim by some that working women have a made a "choice" and have to live up to the ramifications.  I agree 100% with her take on this issue:

Some men (and more than a few women) respond that these issues are the result of life choices. Families with an at-home partner add that they are making the financial sacrifice to have someone manage the home front, so they feel working women have no right to have their life choices subsidized by business.

I don’t think this is an either/or proposition; one reality doesn’t cancel the other. Rather, we need to acknowledge that the structure of our society forces women lawyers to assume burdens and make choices that most of their male counterparts don’t share. Women-owned business is the fastest growing segment of the US economy, and as hard as it is to start a business, these businesses are succeeding equally with businesses started by men. Many observers believe that this trend reflects the impulsion of women to set up organizations that respect the realities of their lives. These new businesses require women to work hard, maybe even harder, than they do in the corporate world, and yet they succeed. Freed of the necessity to accommodate to structures that sometimes feel unfriendly, women are finding ways to be successful. The lesson here is that women aren’t failing to accommodate to the corporate world anymore than the corporate world is failing to accommodate women. Clearly there are ways that work for women to work. 

Both genders can take steps to ameliorate the current situation. We all need to become aware of how our unconscious differences create misunderstandings. Recognizing that this is a team issue rather than a “women’s issue” is another essential component to leveraging a law firm’s investment in talented women employees. And while women lawyers need to take the responsibility for understanding the ground rules in the arena they have chosen, men need to develop a sense of appreciation, and perhaps some humility, about the home court advantages they may take for granted.

"Women's Work": Why the Law Should Intervene to Protect Families, By Protecting Those Who Choose to Both Work and Parent

From Findlaw comes an article about the British study discussed in this prior post.  In it, Douglas Kmiec discusses what he believes are a number of flaws in the study, including, as previously discussed, equating productivity with billable hours.

From the article:

First, (the study concluded that) women with children bill fewer hours. Second, flexible hours were found to have a negative impact on a man's productivity, but not on a woman's. Third, men with babies at home still work overtime; women generally do not. Fourth, men who have a stay-at-home partner get a lot done, whereas women who have stay-at-home partners don't receive any particular advantage from it.

Fifth, women without children work the hardest of all - harder than men with or without children...

In light of these findings, is there a way to create a fairer, more equal workplace - one that actually supports, rather than undermines or competes with, families? We like to think work is for the benefit of men and women, not the other way around. Moreover, I believe the workplace has a special obligation to accommodate the needs of the family as an irreplaceable cultural building block.

Yet, relying on earlier research, the study notes that the obvious way for women "to balance work and family is to reduce their family commitments, which may be accomplished by having fewer or no children." But this sacrifice is not reasonable to require.

Rather than asking still more sacrifice from working parents, we should instead consider changing the law to make their situation easier. For instance, a tax code amendment could allow workers who are also primary caregivers for children (a description that - enlightened attitudes aside - still overwhelmingly applies to women) to keep more of their income. Moreover, discrimination law could be altered: Under existing law, pregnancy - which we might view as "pre-birth child care" -- cannot be a basis of discrimination against women. Why, then, should care delivered post-birth be a valid basis for discrimination?

In this area, employment practices in the United States still reflect 19th-century attitudes. It is time we explore new employment relationships, conceived in extendedterms.At a minimum, we should better facilitate the entry and exit and reentry of women into the marketplace. The partner track for women with young children can be longer. Universities can rethink hiring practices in order to open the doors to mothers with J.D.s and Ph.D.s returning to the classroom to teach.

I agree 100% with Kmiec's conclusions, but am not at all convinced that our government or the legal profession is ready, willing or able to embrace the changes that he proposes.

The sexist assumptions of our culture are so ingrained that it will be difficult, if not impossible, to change the attitudes of those at the top of the ladder who are responsible for implementing policies and setting the tone for the country, the profession and the individual workplace.

Call me a pessimist if you'd like.  I prefer the to call my perspective that of a reluctantly resigned realist. 

Part-timers fail at work, home

There's a very insightful article from Australia with a somewhat misleading title:  Part-timers fail at work, home. 

This article addresses the problems with the current workplace set up for professional women--especially lawyers--when kids and family responsibilities enter the picture.  The basic premise is that employers' alleged attempt to accommodate women during their early family years--so-called "part-time" employment--is nothing more than lip service.

From the article:

Part-time employment has failed to deliver either at home or in the office, with large numbers of white-collar workers suffering career burnout and family stress.
Those hit hardest are women professionals who had looked to part-time work as a way of balancing family responsibilities and working life.

But a report to be published today says many part-time professionals are being confronted with reduced incomes, career dead-ends and the inability to find enough family time. It warns that many businesses will not be able to attract and retain "knowledge workers" if they do not address the imbalance between work and family life...