Planning is a Big Deal—Especially for Women

Posted on September 13, 2012

I have been a planner all my life. I make lists, cross out what I have accomplished, highlight in yellow what is really important, and rejoice when everything is crossed off the list—-until the next day when the list starts anew. I believe in planning ahead and being super organized, as anyone who has read the Best Friends at the Bar books knows.

Throughout the time that I practiced law, I made a list at the end of each day and put it prominently on my desk to greet me the next morning. Over coffee, I reviewed the list, made priorities for the day and adjusted the list as needed. It was a good plan, and it worked for me. I had a personal relationship with my list. No one came between me and my list.

But, recently, planning has taken on a whole new meaning for me. I now am planning my daughter’s wedding and a Book Launch Event at the same time. My fear—the thing that keeps me up at night and is not affected in the least by Ambien—is that I will end up with a book sales table at the wedding and a ring bearer at the book launch! You laugh… I am totally capable of that in my current state of mind. To boot, a man just came to my front door with a load of mulch that I know nothing about! A BIG load of mulch.

The wedding is a way off and nothing can be done about the mulch man, but the Book Launch Event is right around the corner and you should know about it. On September 27, 2012 from 6 to 8 PM, Georgetown Law will host an event to celebrate my new book, Best Friends at the Bar: The New Balance for Today’s Woman Lawyer (Wolters Kluwer Law & Business) that was released in July. The event partner is GlobalWIN (Global Women’s Innovation Network) and the event co-sponsors are Ms. JD and the following law firms to date: Polsinelli Shughart; Lerch Early; DLA Piper; Cooley; Womble Carlyle; and Walsh Colucci. As you might expect, I am both delighted and humbled by the enthusiasm for and participation in this event. I am particularly grateful to Georgetown Law for its generosity in hosting. We are expecting some special guests, and this is an event that you will not want to miss.

The Book Launch Event is filling up fast, so get on board soon. If you did not get an invitation, please e-mail my publicist at [email protected] to have an invitation sent to you, and do not forget to RSVP per the instructions at the bottom of the invitation.

If you have never been to the Atrium on the 5th Floor of the Edward Bennett Williams Library at Georgetown Law, you are in for a treat. It is a beautiful space, and I can tell you that there was nothing like it when I attended Georgetown Law. I remember a starkly simple single cube of a building that was know as Georgetown Law in my day. My class was one of the first with a high percentage of women, and finding a woman’s bathroom in those days was harder than passing Income Tax. The school could have raffled off “First In Line” passes to the women’s bathrooms and made a fortune!

Hope you will join us on September 27th. You will be in good company, and you will be supporting the mission of Best Friends at the Bar—-raising retention rates for women lawyers and increasing diversity in the profession.

See you there!

BTW, my plan for tomorrow is……………….oh, you really do not want to know!

BFAB Updates, Career Counselors, Hot Topics for Women Lawyers, Law Students, Practice Advice, Young Lawyer | Comment

Thought For The Day

Posted on September 12, 2012

Go to the people. Learn from them. Live with them. Start with what they know. Build with what they have. The best of leaders when the job is done, when the task is accomplished, the people will say we have done it ourselves.
Lao Tzu

Thought For The Day | Comment

9-11: Let Us Never Forget

Posted on September 11, 2012

9-11 has been a sad calendar day for all of us for the last eleven years. We always say, “We Shall Never Forget” or some rendition of that thought, but, as we all know, it is so easy to forget with all the demands of our daily lives. However, make a vow with yourself today not to let that happen. Keep those images of 9-11-01 fresh in your memory to give your life true perspective and to re-ignite the meaning of ultimate sacrifice.

All of our lives changed on that day. We will never be the same, whether we know it or not. We all have our own stories, and I hope that we will pass those stories on to the generations of young people, who will be tempted to only consider 9-11 another mundane calendar day.

For me, 9-11-01 changed my understanding of strength and bravery and resolve. I am married to a US Marine—now a lawyer, but always a Marine—and my definition of strength and bravery and resolve was highly influenced by the six years that I spent with him as an aviator’s wife during the Vietnam war era. I was surrounded by male pilots, like my husband, who epitomized those virtues and some of whom gave their lives for their country and their beliefs.

For a woman like me, born during the post WW II years of peace and plenty, that was my vision of strength, bravery and resolve. I had not experienced a lot of sacrifice personally, and the faces of those virtues were mostly male. UNTIL 9-11 that is.

On and after 9-11, I saw strength, bravery and resolve in men, women and children alike, all of whom were so personally touched by that tragedy. Women, the wives of the fallen and the mothers of the children who would grow up without fathers, became my new heroes. Women, who carried on in the name of their dearly departed and in the name of creating a better world for their children and for all of the children of America. These are the images that I have in my head from that fateful day, and I hope that I will never forget them and the vivid way that they were etched on my experiences.

Women also were among the victims that day—women in the Twin Towers, women in the planes that impacted the Twin Towers, women in the planes that crashed in a field in Pennsylvania and at the Pentagon, women in the Pentagon, and women on the streets of NYC as the rubble fell. Women first responders, as well. Three times as many men as women gave their lives on 9-11, but the women should not be forgotten. All victims are the truest of heroes, and many other heroes were created that day by their sacrifice.

Let us remember all of them, and let those memories make us stronger and shape our lives in positive ways. These brave men and women gave their lives so that we could live better and be safer, and we all need to take up the cross and emulate that example in our daily lives.

Here’s to remembering and making life better for our fellow men, women and children every day and at every opportunity.

God Bless America

Career Counselors | 1 Comment

Thought For The Day

Posted on September 10, 2012

I have spread my dreams beneath your feet. Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

W.B. Yeats

Thought For The Day | Comment

Women’s Shoes Make Legal News

Posted on September 6, 2012

I am back! From my August R&R, that is. Well, sort of. I will come back with more content next week, but today I am trying to nail down some details of my daughter’s recent engagement and future wedding festivities. Fun, fun, fun, but makes blogging a little more of a challenge. However, be of good faith. You, my trusted blogger crowd, will not get lost in the shuffle. I will just have to shuffle a little faster this year!

Today, however, I must give you an update on a recent decision in the legal action brought by luxury shoe brand Christian Louboutin against design house Yves Saint Laurent for trademark protection for the Louboutin famed lacquered red bottoms. The “bottom line”—sorry, but I could not resist—is that the Louboutin soles are protected on all of its footwear except for the shoes with red uppers as well as lowers—“monochromatic” according to the decision. Who knew that judges on the US Appeals Court in Manhattan could get so into shoes to be that precise! Specifically, the Court found that the contrasting red bottom is “an identifying mark firmly associated with” the Louboutin brand. So, both design houses are declaring victory because YSL can continue to produce shoes with red uppers and red soles.

You may recall—-sure you do ‘cuz we women live for this stuff!—that last year a lower court in NY dismissed Louboutin’s request for a temporary injunction to prevent YSL from selling red-soled shoes that resembled those in the Louboutin product line. The recent decision sent the case back to the lower court without issuing the injunction.

All of you who are proud owners of Louboutins can heave a sigh of relief. Your good taste and shoes—-as long as they are not red all over—are protected from confusion with the lower-priced spread. Is that true? Are the YSL shoes lower priced? I think so, but clearly I do not get out enough. I will have to rely on my lawyer-daughter and her crowd to straighten me out on that.

After you heave that sigh of relief, please take a minute to explain to me how you can afford either of those shoe brands on a starting lawyer’s salary and repayment of school loans. I am all ears! E-Bay I presume—and that is a good thing!

Maybe the latter issue—the school loans—is something that the courts and the ABA and anyone else who can be enlisted should address with dispatch. In the long run, it is a lot more important to all of you than shoes. Really!

But…………I do love shoes!

For more on Louboutin vs. YSL, see http://ms-jd.org/san-francisco-cocktail-benefit-gl.

Career Counselors, Law Students, Lifestyle, Pre-law, Young Lawyer | Comment