CT Calvert & Associates

New NALP Report Shows Slight Decline in Part-Time Lawyers

2012-01-19T07:47:00.000-08:00

NALP issued today its 2011 analysis of part-time lawyers in its member firms. The analysis shows that the percentage of lawyers working part-time declined slightly, 6.2% compared to 6.4% in 2010. NALP notes that this parallels a slight decrease in part-time usage among professionals as a whole; according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 13.2% of professionals worked part-time in 2010 compared to 13.6% in 2009. NALP also notes that in 2011, 70% of part-time lawyers were female.

One noteworthy tidbit: the percentage of male partners working part-time has increased significantly in recent years. NALP reports that in 2006, 72% of part-time partners were female, compared to 66% in 2011 (up slightly from 2010, when 64% of part-time partners were female). Before we get too excited thinking that this increase in part-time usage among male partners means that part-time work is becoming less stigmatized at law firms, let's consider the likely cause: law firms including in their counts of part-time lawyers those partners who are working reduced hours because of voluntary or involuntary phased-in retirement. Including such lawyers allows the law firms to report more attractive numbers, of course (a high usage rate is considered by job seekers and award-bestowing organizations to be a key indicator of the health of a firm's part-time program). It also may have the salutary effect of easing the stigma of part-time work at firms; if revered, successful, senior male partners are labeled "part-time" and placed under the auspices of the firm's part-time program, more fair treatment of part-time lawyers may ensue and part-time status may become more accepted in the firm's culture. Maybe.

Overhauling Fruitless Women’s Initiatives

2011-11-11T08:59:00.000-08:00

The annual survey by the National Association of Women Lawyers is out, and it reports that women lawyers are not doing well in large law firms: the percentage of women lawyers has declined and further declines are projected; only 15% of equity partners are female; women are found disproportionately in staff lawyer positions with no advancement track; women are paid less than men; and some women “equity” partners are actually fixed income partners who do not share in the firm’s profits or governance.

Disturbingly, this bad news comes from firms that say they are trying to do the right thing. The report states that 95% of responding firms said they sponsor a women's initiative.

Why aren’t the firms’ initiatives working? Are the firms doing the right things, are they supporting the efforts, are the right people carrying out the programs?

The cynical among us might also ask if the initiatives are designed merely to placate advocates without actually disturbing the status quo. Perhaps some are, but my conversations with firm chairs and managing partners lead me to believe it is more likely that the initiatives are well-intentioned but not well-conceived or well-implemented.

What would a well-conceived women’s initiative include? At a minimum, the following:

1. A candid assessment of the firm’s current position, including where women lawyers are and are not in the firm, women’s compensation and advancement compared to that of men, which networks include women, which power brokers in the firm are championing women, what is working to advance women, where gender bias is impeding women, and why women leave.

2. Education for the entire firm on hidden gender bias, including not only ongoing group trainings but informal education in meetings, conversations, and coaching sessions.

3. Alignment of firm business objectives and the advancement of women, focusing on how the women’s advancement advances the firm and all its lawyers and on the impact of firm policies and practices on women lawyers.

4. Actions to remove barriers to women’s advancement, such as restructuring the firm’s performance evaluation process to reduce bias, retooling the firm’s assignment system, instituting a nonstigmatized flexible work policy for all lawyers, holding every partner accountable for retaining and developing women lawyers, making compensation and advancement systems transparent, incentivizing championing of women lawyers, overhauling business development credit policies, and providing support for women lawyers’ business development efforts.

5. A system to measure and monitor the success of the actions, and to retool as necessary.

6. Thoughtful implementation to embed the goals and actions in the firm’s culture, including eliminating nonverbal communication that undermines the initiative, consistently communicating support from the top, creating an inclusive environment, and celebrating successes.

This isn’t easy. It isn’t quick. But it is necessary, and it needs to be done now before women lawyers slip further.

Flex Success: The Lawyer’s Guide to Balanced Hours

2011-04-04T09:00:00.000-07:00

Finally: Everything a part-time lawyer needs to know to get ahead, presented in a succinct, lively format you can pick up whenever you have a few minutes.

My new book, written with the incomparable Joan Williams and under the leadership of the Project for Attorney Retention, is now available. Flex Success: The Lawyer’s Guide to Balanced Hours (WLL Press 2011) provides a nuts-and-bolts plan for lawyers who are working reduced hours and want to achieve professional success. It is based on more than a decade of research about reduced-hours work in law firms, and contains numerous examples and tips from experts and lawyers who have succeeded on part-time schedules.

Some of the topics from the table of contents:

Chapter 1: Work/Life Balance

High Billable Hours and Attrition

The Solution: Balanced Hours

Work/Life Balance: Not for Mothers Only

Chapter 2: Setting up a Balanced-Hours Schedule

The Planning Process

Considerations: Schedule; Workload; Compensation; Benefits; Advancement; Duration; Clients

Negotiating Your Balanced-Hours Schedule

Chapter 3: Tools for Making Your Schedule Work

Time Management

Delegation

Technology

The Ability to be Flexible

Protection For Your Schedule

Chapter 4: Running the Obstacle Course: Hidden Bias

Hidden Bias in Law Firms

Situations Where Bias Commonly Arises for the Balanced-Hours Lawyer – and How to Deal with It

Chapter 5: Positioning Yourself for Advancement

Make a Career Plan

Manage Your Image

Be Strategic About Assignments

Strengthen Your Network

Become Indispensable

Get Credit

Make Rain

This book is a sequel to our book for law firms about how to implement nonstigmatized part-time programs, Solving the Part-Time Puzzle: The Law Firm’s Guide to Balanced Hours (NALP 2004). It is available through Amazon, and will soon be available through PAR. Watch PAR’s website for upcoming events about Flex Success events (or contact PAR to discuss scheduling an event for your firm, bar association, or other group).

PAR Annual Conference Provides Proof Balanced Hours Work

2011-03-31T09:51:00.000-07:00

I attended the sold-out annual conference for the Project for Attorney Retention yesterday, and it was terrific. A few of the highlights:

Walmart GC Jeff Gearhart detailed the business reasons clients want law firms to have non-stigmatized reduced hours and flexible work programs, including continuity of service for better and more efficient results, lower costs, and increased diversity. He discussed Walmart’s requirement that its law firms have effective balanced hour programs, and said a recent survey showed that almost 500 of the company’s outside lawyers are working reduced hours. Drawing murmurs of appreciation from the audience, he revealed that several of the lawyers on the Gibson, Dunn team that argued on behalf of Walmart in the Supreme Court the previous day were or had been working reduced hours.

DLA Piper joint CEO, Lee Miller, provided insights into his firm’s successful launch of its alternative work program last summer. The firm developed a very sophisticated and effective communications effort designed to inform everyone at the outset about the details of the program and management’s support for it, and the business reasons behind it. The firm now has a remarkable and commendable 10% of its lawyers working reduced hours. Equally remarkable and commendable, 29% of those are men, and two of its new partners for 2011 are working alternative schedules. Miller said the program has enhanced the firm’s success in recruiting, particularly because new hires are eligible to participate in the alternative work program.

Allstate GC Michele Coleman Mays emphasized that communication was one of the keys to success for her department’s balanced hours policy. When Allstate rolled out its policy, it anticipated the hardest questions its lawyers might have and answered them in a series of FAQs posted on its website. The program has allowed the department to retain its talented lawyers and has been so successful that the initial pilot has been expanded to all lawyers and even the staff.

SNR Denton chief executive Elliott Portnoy discussed his firm’s successful reduced hours program. He provided many examples of lawyers at his firm who were working reduced hours when they were promoted to partner, including “tier one” (equity) partnership, and who successfully remained on a reduced hours schedule. Also remarkably and commendably, almost 10% of the firm’s associates are working reduced hours. He pointed out the importance of publicizing success stories to reinforce the success of the program.

This is just a sampling of a day that was full of practical information, innovative strategies, and inspiring stories. Other topics included how hidden gender and flexibility bias can undermine a firm’s move from lockstep to a competency-based program, a report on PAR’s preliminary results of its current in-house work/life study, new models of legal practice, and roundtable discussions of how clients and outside counsel can support one another in the advancement of women lawyers. In addition, PAR’s new book, Flex Success: The Lawyer’s Guide to Balanced Hours, was unveiled. PAR’s conferences should be a must-attend on the calendars of all who care about the future of the legal profession. (If you tried to get in this year’s conference but it was already full, here’s a tip: law firms and law departments that are PAR members get two free tickets to the conference and are allowed to claim their tickets before they go on sale to the public.)

Why the Grass Looks Greener

2011-02-15T09:36:00.000-08:00

“All the women who have left our firm recently left for different reasons. I really don’t think the problem is with our firm – I just think the women just had other things that they wanted to pursue,” a woman told me after one of my recent presentations on advancing women in law firms.

One went in house, she told me, and is very happy. Another’s husband got a job in another state. Two more had decided to go to other firms, one decided to go back to school to get an MBA and one decided to stay home. Six women had left the firm in the space of a year – six out of a total of 15 women in a 60-lawyer firm.

I resisted the urge to tell her that this exodus furiously waved red flags, that her firm was having a serious woman problem that it needed to address immediately. As if losing ten percent of your lawyers wasn’t sign enough, it was more than a third of their women – and it happened during a recession!

I instead asked her one simple question: “Why do you think those alternatives were more attractive to these women?”

I rarely take at face value the reasons lawyers give their firms for leaving. The lawyers don’t want to burn any bridges, or don’t want to appear weak, so they tell the firms what the firms want to hear. It is only when the lawyers are talking confidentially with researchers or answering anonymous surveys that the real reasons come out.

When talking to this woman, though, I decided to take the reasons at face value and still use them to make a point. Why was going in house more attractive than staying at the firm? Many possible reasons come to mind: a desire for fewer hours (although in-house hours can also be very long); to have more responsibility for one’s caseload; for greater advancement opportunities; to have clearer lines of reporting and performance expectations; to have fairer and perhaps higher compensation. Similar reasons may have been behind the move to business or to other firms.

Why wasn’t the law firm providing these things? As research has shown, law firms in general aren’t doing a great job of providing nonstigmatized flexible schedules, a level playing field for advancement, equitable assignments and opportunities, best-practice talent management, and fair compensation.

As we talked about the women lawyers’ reasons for leaving and why they couldn’t find what they needed at the law firm, some patterns started to emerge. The firm discouraged part-time work, there was little associate development, evaluations tended to be a low priority and often went undone, and women rarely received the top bonuses. It didn’t help that there were only two female partners.

It appears this firm grew quickly and had not taken the time to learn how to develop and manage its legal talent. It also appears that some flexibility bias and hidden gender bias may be undermining its ability to be as fair as it would like to be. There are some easy fixes that can be adopted while the longer-term fixes are put in place. But first, the law firm has to understand why its women lawyers left.

South Carolina Bar Program on Lawyer Retention

2011-01-24T11:47:00.000-08:00

I had the pleasure of speaking this past weekend at the South Carolina Bar Convention as part of its law firm management seminar. My keynote presentation addressed retaining valued lawyers with flexible work, elimination of bias and bias-related career obstacles, and connecting them with their firms - all with the goal of providing better client service.

At the outset of the program, Barbara George Barton of the Barton Law Firm in Columbia and Chair of the South Carolina Bar's Professional Potential Task Force presented results from the South Carolina Lawyers: The State of the Profession survey. If you haven't seen this, I highly recommend taking a few minutes to review it. It is one of the most comprehensive surveys of lawyers I have seen, and it received a remarkable 25% response rate. Its findings discuss such gems as why lawyers are dissatisfied, their work/life experiences, whether they have seen gender-based condescending behavior, the effect of income and debt levels on young lawyers, and the costs of attrition. Importantly, about half of the respondents work in small legal organizations (2 - 20 lawyers), and an additional 25% are solos, so this survey gives insights into the legal profession that research into BigLaw misses.

After the keynote, I joined a panel of exceptional and esteemed speakers: Barbara George Barton of the Barton Law Firm in Columbia, Joseph West, Associate General Counsel for Outside Counsel Management at Walmart, and Rhonda Amick, Chief Operating Officer at Turner Padgett Graham & Laney, P.A. We delved into the practicalities surrounding reduced hour work, including why it matters to clients like Walmart and why Walmart is now requiring its outside counsel to have nonstigmatized flexible work programs, and whether reduced hours work is more costly to firms.

I would like to thank everyone who made this program possible. The sponsoring organizations were the South Carolina chapter of the Association of Corporate Counsel, the South Carolina Association of Legal Administrators, the South Carolina Bar Professional Potential Task Force, and the South Carolina Women Lawyers Association. I am also grateful to sponsors F3 Concepts and Square Boxx.

NALP Report: Part-Time Lawyers OK in Recession

2011-01-06T10:25:00.000-08:00

NALP released today its 2010 report on part-time lawyers, and its findings answer a question that many people have been asking me: how did part-time lawyers fare during the recession? While the fear has been that part-time lawyers were laid off more frequently than their full-time counterparts, NALP’s report provides evidence that part-timers were not disproportionately targeted.

The new report shows that the percentage of part-time lawyers among NALP member firms has increased from 5.9% in 2009 to 6.4% in 2010. Doing some simple math using the total number of lawyers in both years, one can see that the number of part-time lawyers stayed stable: 8,277 in 2009 and 8,270 in 2010. Given that the total number of lawyers fell by more than 11,000, part-time lawyers actually fared pretty well in the recession.

Phew.

Male Partners: Help Your Firm by Connecting with Women Lawyers

2010-12-02T13:41:00.000-08:00

The key to retaining and advancing women lawyers may not lie in firm-wide policies as much as it does in the actions of individual male partners.

“More important than anything else is [making] sure individuals feel a connection in the workplace. Retention results from employees feeling included, accepted and part of the team,” said Charlotte Miller at a symposium about the recent study of women lawyers in Utah. Yet many women lawyers report that they have few connections with male partners, and feel socially isolated. In firms where most of the positions of power are held by men, this means the women have less access to information and mentoring. It also means they don’t have someone powerful to promote them, watch their backs, or give them opportunities.

Why are those connections weak or nonexistent? At the symposium, participants identified a key reason: male lawyers do not want to travel with, have lunch with, or mentor women lawyers because they fear someone will mistake their intentions and accuse them of sexual harassment. Additional reasons some male lawyers have told me include not knowing what to talk about when making small talk with women lawyers, and being afraid that they will unintentionally say something offensive. Other male lawyers have said that the issue just hasn’t crossed their minds, that they work and talk with lawyers without regard to gender and it is just happenstance that most of those lawyers are male.

Male partners, if you’re willing to participate in making women lawyers feel more connected to your firm, here are some suggestions:

Count your connections. Consider which junior lawyers you regularly talk to during the day, with whom you have lunch, to whom you give the most challenging assignments, whom you include in client meetings, and who gets the benefit of your advice and public praise. Notice the gender of the individuals you have named, and see if the male-female ratio is the same as the male-female ratio of your firm’s associate ranks. If it is, keep up the good work and be a role model for other male partners. If it is not, read on.

Invite women lawyers to lunch. An easy way to do this without fear of mistaken intention is to go out with a group. Invite two or three male and two or three female associates to go out together, or if you are already in a group headed out to lunch, invite a woman lawyer to come along. Plan to ask questions that will give the women lawyers a chance to talk, such as their law school or clerkship experiences, favorite music or movies, holidays, leisure pursuits, travel, the latest news. Listen attentively and look for common interests.

Make a point of talking with women lawyers throughout the day. Say hello in the hallway. Include them in conversations. Pop your head into their offices to ask how things are going, what their holiday plans are, what they are working on, and the like. It makes them feel noticed and appreciated, and others who see you talking to them will be more likely to talk with them as well.

Next time you are going to a bar event, invite a woman lawyer. Chat with her about the ways in which your bar activities have been useful to you, let her know how bar work is viewed in the firm and what expenses are reimbursable, and suggest ways she can position herself for a leadership position. When you introduce her to your colleagues, say something more than just her name. Here’s a great introduction that will get her started on the right foot: “Bob, I’d like you to meet Kate, one of our new associates. She is coming to us from a clerkship with Judge Summer. We’re very lucky to have her with us. We’ve got her working on our coverage cases, which is why I invited her here today. She’s very interested in global warming liabilities, and I told her you know everything about climate change and insurance. Are you still trying to put together a task force?” (Hint: this type of introduction would also be a fabulous way to connect her to your clients.)

Every time you take one of these actions, it will get easier. You will be increasing social capital for both yourself and the women lawyers with whom you interact. The end result will be a more stable, inclusive firm that is positioned for long-term success for everyone.

Male partners, what can you do right now to start working toward this goal?

Why We Shouldn’t Be Nice to Lawyer-Mothers

2010-11-29T08:39:00.000-08:00

Linda was an outstanding lawyer, smart and well liked by clients and colleagues. When she came back from maternity leave, the partner who worked with her most closely was careful not to overload her with work because he didn’t want to do anything to make her want to leave the firm. Being sensitive to her need to be at home more, he didn’t give her an assignment with a short deadline that would have meant working late into the evening. When one of her major client matters required travel for an in-person meeting, he brought in another associate to help and to make the trip. It was a bit inconvenient, but he was happy he and the firm were able to be so accommodating.

Linda was not so happy, however. As she saw it, ever since she returned from maternity leave, the great assignments that used to come to her routinely were now being given to others and she was being given only rote, uninteresting work. Before she became a mother, she felt she was unquestionably on the path to partnership, but now she was concerned that the firm was sending her messages that she should start looking for another job.

I made up this situation, but it is based on many stories I have heard from women lawyers and their firms. Typically, the story has played out a little further by the time I hear about it: the lawyer-now-new-mother becomes frustrated and angry and her supervising partner, not knowing what is wrong but strongly suspecting hormones, withdraws more work from her in an effort to fix the situation. She feels pushed to the margins of the firm, no longer important and valued, makes less money, and receives poor evaluations. The firm is frustrated because it has tried to do the right thing and cannot understand why her work has gone downhill or why it loses so many women lawyers once they have children. Additional negative consequences often include dead-end mommy tracks, high attrition among women lawyers, a bad reputation for the law firm, and possible litigation.

What underlies this situation is benevolent stereotyping. Linda’s partner assumed that a new mother would want less pressure and fewer hours and would not want to travel, and he arranged her work accordingly. He was trying to be nice. Unfortunately, lawyers need challenging assignments, high profile work, and client contact to gain the experience and skills necessary to develop professionally and advance in the firm. When lawyers get only rote work, they become marginalized and their growth is stunted.

So what is the right answer here? What should Linda’s partner have done? The solution is quite simple: ask. Instead of making an assumption about what a new mother might want, ask her. Many new mothers will still want the good assignments, and can make arrangements to get the necessary work done. Working from home in the evenings, sharing parenting responsibilities with her spouse or partner, or traveling with a nanny may be solutions. On the other hand, many new mothers appreciate being shielded from long hours or travel – but only for a little while. Situations change, and it is important that mother lawyers not be pigeon-holed as unwilling to travel or work late. Here, the answer is to ask again in a few weeks.

Linda, of course, has responsibility as well for keeping her career on track. If she believes she is no longer getting good assignments, she can talk directly to her supervisor and ask for the work she wants. If she can’t get it from her supervisor, she can seek out the work she wants from others. Once she understands that benevolent stereotyping is an occupational hazard for new mothers, she can be proactive and also avoid feeling personally slighted.

Some firms have a program for new lawyer-mothers that automatically allows them to work reduced hours for a few months after returning from maternity leave. These programs help to set expectations and remove any awkwardness in talking about changes in availability for work while caring for a newborn. The best of these programs apply to both mothers and fathers, thereby eliminating the sex-based assumption that women will put family ahead of work but men will not. The best firms encourage men to take paternity leave and use the gradual return-to-work option – a topic to be explored in a future posting.

The basic lesson is to keep the lines of communication open and not make assumptions. Let’s not be nice to new mothers unless we know what they consider “nice.”

Vivia’s Challenge, Round Two

2010-11-11T07:49:00.000-08:00

Anyone expecting me to get upset with Vivia Chen’s latest challenge to the work/life “movement” is going to be disappointed – I agree with her that the flexible work policies of many law firms (perhaps even most) undermine the careers of women lawyers.

This isn’t news. Joan Williams and I were among the first to identify and illustrate the very serious stigma that often attaches to working anything but a standard high billable hours schedule – and that was ten years ago. In the study that launched the Project for Attorney Retention, we documented how working part-time can be a career ender and, importantly, provided guidelines for firms to reduce the stigma.

It also isn’t news that the issue of work/life balance has to be addressed in the legal profession. Not addressing it has had as a huge impact on women lawyers’ advancement as addressing it poorly has. Work/life issues also impact male lawyers, baby boomers, racially and ethnically diverse lawyers, clients, and law firms’ business models. I don’t think any of the lawyers who are quoted in Vivia’s blog would advocate doing away with flexible work policies or ending the work/life movement, despite their criticism.

What is news is that some firms do actually get it right when it comes to flexible work programs. Doing it “right” means addressing the issue of flexibility stigma when the policy is created, and again every day thereafter. When I was at PAR, we developed a test for determining the health of a flexible work program that looks at hard numbers such as how many lawyers who work reduced hours have been made partner and how many men are working reduced hours. Happily, there are firms that score well on the test. Even more happily, when we studied part-time partners, we found that many felt their firms had supported them and did not feel stigmatized or that their careers had suffered as a result of their schedules. Many were equity partners who were rainmakers and leaders in their firms. The promise of flexible schedules is real: if firms are willing to make a real effort to implement nonstigmatized reduced-hours policies, lawyers working reduced hours can advance professionally and contribute significantly to their firms.

Disproportionate Layoffs: What Firms Should Do Now

2010-11-09T08:31:00.000-08:00

Some firms are upset, and likely embarrassed, today because of a new report by Building a Better Legal Profession that shows they had higher female attrition than male and/or higher minority attrition than white during the recent recession. Firms that are being called out by BBLP, Above the Law, law.com and the ABA Journal online include Cravath, Paul Weiss, Rifkind, Wachtell, Baker Botts, Kirkland, Womble Carlyle, and McDermott. The question is: what are these firms going to do about it?

Ignoring the disparity won’t help. With so many firms that did not disproportionately lay off women and minority attorneys, clients, law students, and laterals who care about diversity can easily take their business and talents elsewhere. This would create a downward spiral for the firms that were called out; as they have fewer and fewer women and minority lawyers, they will recruit and retain fewer and fewer women and minority lawyers.

Providing explanations won’t help. Firms can look at individual terminations and justify them with reference to performance or potential, but the problem is that determinations of performance and potential are subjective and thus open to the influence of hidden race and gender bias. Of course, the effect of bias is most easily seen when looking at the overall attrition figures – and thanks to BBLP, the effect is now evident.

What will help is viewing the disparity as a wakeup call and getting to work to change it. Here are seven action steps for firms that terminated a disproportionate number of women and minority lawyers to take right now:

Communicate to the firm, clients, and the public that the disparity is not acceptable and is going to be changed.

Internally, engage the firm in a discussion of the moral, strategic, and business importance of diversity. Each person in the firm should be able to articulate how diversity will improve not only the firm, but also his or her own professional life.

Create a committee with a diverse membership that includes key players in the firm (executive committee members, rainmakers, influencers) to determine the cause of the disparity and map out a strategy for preventing it.

Educate each person in the firm about hidden race and gender bias, including not just how bias disadvantages some groups but also how bias advantages other groups.

Using the findings and influence of the committee, create policies and systems to act as a check on bias in decision making, and implement them carefully so they become part of the firms’ values and not just paperweights.

Repeatedly communicate the firm’s motivation, commitment, engagement, and expectations with respect to diversity. Communication and commitment from the top is essential, but must also reverberate at all levels of the firm. All decisions should be measured for impact on diversity. The aim is to change the firm’s norms and shared beliefs on such a deep level that the firm can honestly represent to clients, law students, and laterals that it is working to become more diverse.

Measure results. Celebrate successes and fine tune to achieve better results. Watch the firm rise on the BBLP charts.

Vivia's Challenge

2010-11-04T09:02:00.000-07:00

In “Business Case for Work/Life Balance –Really?”, Vivia Chen says thorny questions that challenge sacred cows about work/life issues aren’t being answered. She asks two such questions that she complains weren’t adequately answered at a recent Q&A session held by Deborah Epstein Henry, and asks if she is being too cynical. Alas, I have always been a sucker for bait, so I’ll bite.

Yes, Vivia, you’re being too cynical. And perhaps a bit myopic as well.

Your first sacred cow question concerns the need to change the legal profession. You say there are plenty of lawyers willing to work 80 hours a week to make partner, making work/life programs unnecessary. Let’s look at where the current law firm chew-them-up-and-spit-them-out system has gotten us:

A legal profession that is overwhelmingly white and male.

A legal profession that allows its partners and those who are looking to become partners only limited time for family, community, and leisure, leading to high rates of depression, alcoholism, divorce, and suicide.

A legal profession that barely registers the tens of millions of dollars firms lose annually from attrition that hovers around 70% in normal economic times – and clients that are damn mad those costs are being passed on to them.

A legal profession that will not be able to sustain itself for the long run as it remains inhospitable to half the law school graduates, blithely ignores clients’ desires for diversity, and is unable to access the benefits of a diverse pool of legal talent.

Fortunately, there are visionaries that understand that the legal profession has to change to remain viable, and a logical place to start the change is at the point that causes so many of the ills: work/life balance. These visionaries include Joan Williams and Project for Attorney Retention, and legal employers such as Walmart, DLA Piper, Sonnenschein, Dupont, Jones Day, Del Monte, Sidley & Austin, Howrey, Allstate, Orrick, Pfizer, Shook Hardy, KPMG, Morrison & Foerster, Accenture, Arnold & Porter, Hogan Lovells, Clorox, Fulbright & Jaworski, Kaye Scholer, Vinson & Elkins, Kirkland & Ellis, Schiff Hardin, Latham, Crowell & Moring, Dickstein Shapiro, Andrews Kurth, Fenwick & West, Beveridge & Diamond, Coupons. com, Dewey & Le Boeuf, Gibbons, Bowditch & Dewey, Munger Tolles, Faegre & Benson, LeClair Ryan, Foley & Lardner, McCarter & English, Finnegan Henderson, Farella Braun, Jackson Lewis, Lowenstein Sandler, Luce Forward, Outten & Golden, Manatt Phelps, Mayer Brown, McCarthy Tetrault, Smith Katzenstein, and Thorpe & Tyde. That’s a lot of heavy hitters that have analyzed the business case and come to the conclusion that flexible work programs make economic sense.

So here is my answer to your question about why work/life balance is necessary if there are lawyers willing to work 80 hours per week: there aren’t as many of those as you suppose. Study after study shows that today’s associates want a life, and also that working 80 hours a week on a regular basis is not sustainable for most lawyers. You observe that law firms aren’t hurting for legal talent to fill their partnership ranks, but if you ask firms (and clients) why they don’t have more female and minority partners, one of the first reasons you’ll hear is that there just aren’t enough candidates. The problem is that the current way of practicing big law developed around a certain set of demographics and assumptions (lawyers were males who had someone at home full-time to take care of family matters, work should be one’s priority), and the demographics and assumptions have now changed (lawyers aren’t all male, 73% of American households have all adults in the paid workforce so most lawyers have some responsibility for family obligations, the younger generation has different priorities). New times call for new ways of doing business.

Your second sacred cow question is whether clients are really pushing firms to be more accommodating about work/life measures. Putting aside the issue of whether work/life programs are accommodations (they are not) or business initiatives designed to ensure the long-term health of the firms (they are), the answer to your question is: a growing number are, but not yet most. I say that based on the anecdotal evidence I hear from firms and on my work with the Project for Attorney Retention – particularly its Diversity and Flexibility Connection program that brings together general counsel and law firm chairs to develop ways they can support each other in improving balance and diversity. Importantly, clients understand that inflexible, high billable hours drive attrition, which in turn damages client service and increases client bills. Walmart, Dupont, Del Monte and others are asking firms to report periodically on the health of their flexible work programs and some are including flexible work programs in their RFPs. Walmart has been particularly vocal on this issue: in its guidelines for outside counsel, it says “We are asking all of our external firms to implement flex-time policies. . . . We believe flexible schedules make good business sense because they promote attorney retention, prevent the loss of institutional knowledge, and create a more balanced and inclusive work environment.” Other companies can be expected to follow their example as they seek to receive better service at a lower cost.

Vivia, thanks for raising the questions – and keep them coming. There shouldn’t be any sacred cow issues. Flexibility won’t be a reality until all the stakeholders understand the business reasons behind it.

New Report on Utah Women Lawyers Gets Attention

2010-11-02T17:55:00.000-07:00

The new report from the Women Lawyers of Utah is like a bucket of cold water to the face. It grabs your attention and makes you a little angry, then energizes you.

With impressive support from the Utah State Bar and a couple dozen leading law firms, the WLU surveyed lawyers on a wide variety of subjects: firm size, type of practice, assignments, hours worked, actual or desired movement between firms, flexible work, discrimination, equality, harassment, mentoring, professional development, compensation, promotion, business development, and more. Equally as impressive as the support from organizations is the support the WLU received from lawyers: it had a better than 50% response rate to its very lengthy survey. In the end, 2,668 lawyers, male and female, responded. (Disclosure: I participated as an expert in the Initiative.)

Attention grabbers: The resulting data exposes a picture of law firms that are male-dominated to a greater degree than firms in many other parts of the country. Almost 72% of law firm lawyers are male. In addition, only 11% of the partners in Salt Lake City law firms are female (as compared to 19% nationally). When asked if they believed they would leave their firms within the next five years, 75% of female lawyers said yes, compared to only 57% of men.

Anger inducers: The survey found that 23% of women in firms felt they had been treated unfairly, and 37% said they had experienced verbal or physical behavior that created an unpleasant or offensive work environment. Even more disturbingly, 10% said they had been sexually harassed. In addition, female respondents related situations where they had been discriminated against because they became pregnant or had children.

Energizers: The report’s authors have discussed the findings against a backdrop of research and expert opinion about women lawyers. It discusses hidden gender bias, including glass ceiling and maternal wall bias. It discusses the effects of generations, social interaction, and mentoring. The report identifies more than 12 factors that hold women lawyers back from full professional success and, very importantly, provides dozens of best practices to counteract each. Firms are given detailed practical advice about how to improve assignment, evaluation, compensation, and promotion systems, and much more. Additional advice for attorneys points them in the direction of proactively managing their careers. The path to fairness, collegiality, and professionalism – not to mention profitability – is made clear. In short, it is hard to sit still after reading this report.