Gender: Female
Industry: Law
Age: Unknown
Location: Undisclosed

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You have it all only when you realize that you can’t have it all

With the number of firms and litigation being disproportionately higher than the number of talented individuals in the market, what were previously seen as fringe benefits have started taking center stage in the battle to grab talent.  Other efforts, both on the federal, state, and private levels have helped the cause of working mothers and made life at least better than what it was before.

While Arnold & Porter was the first law firm in the Washington, DC, to provide a full time on-site day care center in 1995, law firms had been offering emergency back up care for attorneys and employees from 1988 with Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering opening the first back up center.  In fact, within 1991, most law firms of any status in the DC area set up emergency day care through contractual service providers like Lipton Corporate Child Care Centers Inc. and similar companies.  Firms like Drinker Biddle & Reath; Fried Frank, Harris Shriver & Jacobson; Jones Day; Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld; Arnold & Porter; Hogan & Hartson etc., to name a few, already have excellent day care facilities.  However, on site care facilities are still to gather momentum within the legal business arena.

At the end of March, Sara Lee Corporation named two law firms Sonnenschein Nath & Roselthal, LLP and Reed Smith, LLP, as preferred partners in the company’s diversity initiative.  Sara Lee’s diversity program focuses on women and minorities and is seen as a corporate model in the legal industry.  Now in its fifth year, the program monitors the efforts of law firms and awards the best with its Preferred Partner status.  Sara Lee analyzes every year, past data from its primary law firms focusing on the number of minorities and women in each firm, the firm’s attrition rates, its external recruiting and promoting of female and minority lawyers and the composition of its senior leadership.

While efforts like that of Sara Lee are commendable, the national scenery remains bleak for the working woman on most fronts.  While in UK from this month of April, the law allows up to 9 months paid maternity leave, things are still to get better on this side of the Atlantic.

The real problem, as stated by Nicole Buonocore Porter (in her work, “Re-defining superwoman: an essay on overcoming the “maternal wall” in the legal workplace” published in Duke Journal of Gender Law & Policy, March 22, 2006) is that working woman bounce off the “maternity wall” long before they reach the barrier of the “glass ceiling.”  As Porter says, and I concur, “the current definition of Superwoman no longer meets the needs of today’s working mother-attorneys.”  The continuous and daily shifting between the two social stereotypes: that of the highly intelligent, confident, ambitious, hardworking and dominant businesswoman, and that of the “submissive, dependent, selfless, nurturing, tidy, gentle, and unconfident housewife,” - takes its tolls.  Especially, in the types of businesses like law firms where “billable hours” make your life worthwhile, the long hours are inevitable and they work against the demands of maternity.

Nicole goes on to say, “I will address what I have learned from my years as a mother-attorney, as well as what I have learned from other mother-attorneys.”  What I am about to say may surprise some and anger others, but I believe it must be said.  The enemy is not the firm because the firm is simply acting in what it believes to be its best interests.  The enemy is our own guilt.  I am not sure why this is so, but it is apparent to me that women everywhere are taught to feel guilt much too easily.  Even when the stars align and everything is going well, we are apt to feel guilty about something.  I have no empirical support to back up this conclusion, but I suspect that many of the women reading this are nodding their heads in agreement….The problem, as I see it, is that women with children will always be torn between two conflicting roles: “mother of the year” and “superstar attorney.”

And Nicole’s solution is that you have it all when you redefine what “all” means to you.  You will end up burnt if you want to be “mother of the year” and “superstar attorney” at the same time.  But “If you are happy, your family is happy, and your firm is happy because you do great work (even if it is less work than other attorneys), then in my definition, you already are Superwoman.

04-17-2007

1 Comments

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New IP Blog

Now here is something new for all the IP lawyers out there.  The attorneys at McKee Voorhees & Sease law firm have commenced on a new blog, http://www.filewrapper.com/.  The focus of the blog is specific to legal issues pertaining to patents, trademarks, copyrights, trade secrets, and various litigation cases related to IP industry.

The purpose of the blog: “This blog is designed solely as an informational and educational resource about intellectual property law for our clients, other attorneys, and the public as a whole.  Our goal is to provide cutting-edge information about recent developments in intellectual property law, including relevant case law updates, proposed legislation, and intellectual property law in the news.”

04-16-2007

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Losing weight to gain fame

Well, you thought only models and actors gained fame on lost weight, did you?  Then, here’s one for your learned consideration.  The guys in Indianapolis came up with a novel idea to have a 10-week wellness promotion, ending April 9, Monday.  The promo was in the form of a “Biggest Loser” contest with the law firm whose employees lost the most weight as the winner.  The contest had 10 local law firms pitted against each other in a battle to shed employee flab.  I have no doubt that the idea of shedding a few employees in the process would have haunted the minds of the firm partners more than once, but apparently, prudence made them refrain from such foul tactics.

Almost 300 people are reported to have joined the contest and Locke Reynolds, with 37 participants, bagged the first prize.  Barnes & Thornburg, with 46 participants, held the lead at first until Locke Reynolds proved that their employees had more fat to shed.  You can find a detailed report at: http://cms.ib j.com/ASPXPages/6iframes/FrontEndArticlesDetailPage.aspx?Art icleID=01214&NoFrame=1

04-13-2007

2 Comments

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They dare to dream: well, maybe daydream

On April 2, a group of more than 100 law students from law schools across the country and led by two from Stanford Law School sent an email to recruiters at the top 100 law firms listed by AmLaw.  Their email contained a request to the top law firms for a change in their policies towards building a better work-life for firm lawyers.  Having built a group called “Law Students Building a Better Legal Profession,” they have forwarded a proposition that the law firms accept and act towards:

1. Making concrete steps towards a transactional billing system
2. Reducing  maximum billable hour expectations for partnership
3. Implementing balanced hours policies that work

4. Making work expectations clear

The proposition requested the law firms to join in the group’s commitment to putting a stop to the escalation of associate salaries and billable hours.  It subtly warned that before the fall interviews take place, the group would notify students at the top law schools of “which law firms have and have not signed on.”  In a very sober tone their email stated, “We recognize that changes in work structures come with an economic cost, and we are willing to be paid less in exchange for a better working life.”  In a more sober tone, their website page on “Principles for a renewed legal profession” recognized “that law students have become part of the problem by focusing on paychecks and bonuses, while avoiding the tough questions about the conditions of working lives and associate satisfaction.”

I must comment that one rarely finds such greatness nowadays as shown by this group out to change the world.  Some people who do not appreciate greatness made nasty comments at Peter Lattman’s blog on the Wall Street Journal like calling them “morons” and trying to take the “lazy track.”  Some even went as far as calling them “resource sucking parasites.”  I do not wholly agree with those opinions.  Nor would I be so heartless like the blogger Kafka who posted “Dear students, if you want to work less, create your own firm with those work parameters, no one is stopping you.”  Rather, I wish them all luck while concurring with another post on the same blog that said, “These kids must be at Stanford on scholarship.  Thank you very much, but I’ll take my 2300 hours per year and keep my paycheck – I’ve got loans to payback.”

04-12-2007

3 Comments

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The climate is changing for climate change practice with law firms going green

More and more law firms are focusing on the practice area of issues, policies, and litigation linked with global climate change.  While environmental law and practice has become almost a traditional practice area, this latest offshoot related to global warming and greenhouse gases is now hogging the limelight.  Firms like Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman, Morrison & Foerster, Davis Wright Tremaine, etc., have already established climate change practice groups.  Other firms were quick to pick up the cue and some latecomers have successfully positioned themselves in the market.  This February, Holland & Hart joined the bandwagon by declaring themselves the only law firm in the Rocky Mountains region to devote a practice group entirely to global climate change.

Their efforts have borne fruit with the recent April 2nd U.S. Supreme Court decision making the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) responsible for enforcing the Clean Air Act in Massachusetts with suitable regulations to control emissions of greenhouse gases.  The strength of the ruling will be put to the test in a trial that was set begin last Tuesday in Vermont, in which, the issue of whether it’s the state or the federal authorities that create the applicable fuel economy standards will be decided.  However, the U.S. Supreme Court does not see the functioning of EPA and Department of Transportation (DOT) on the issue to be mutually exclusive.  The DOT is charged with promoting energy efficiency while the EPA’s duty is to protect public health, and nothing prevents them from working in tandem just because some functional areas overlap.

The latest firm to join the gallery on global climate change is Chicago based Levenfeld Pearlstein LLC.  They announced on April 3rd to have “become the first Chicago-based law firm to commit to the reduction of the emission of greenhouse gases, widely believed to contribute to global warming” on its website.  The firm has joined the Chicago Climate Exchange, reputedly North America’s only greenhouse gas emissions registry, reduction and trading system, in an effort to prove that they are consciously trying to curb their production of greenhouse gases.  Well, can’t blame them for being sure that law firms and warm gases have a connection.

04-11-2007

1 Comments

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