Best Friends at the Bar: What Women Need to Know about a Career in the Law
Why is Best Friends at the Bar: What Women Need to Know about a Career in the Law such a timely book?
Retention rates for women lawyers are low, and that creates problems for the legal profession where retaining talent is an important goal. The law is a demanding and male-dominated field posing many difficulties for women, especially during the childbearing years. Men and women in the law should be concerned.
How will we respond to changing professional realities and create new approaches to retaining top talent in law firms?
Start by purchasing the groundbreaking book Best Friends at the Bar: What Women Need to Know about a Career in the Law because it celebrates young women and combines a focus on improving their futures with a focus on the future of the legal profession.
The book includes insights, anecdotes, and career advice from more than 60 contributors with long and distinguished legal careers. It is filled with candid advice and addresses challenges facing women in the law by offering solutions tailored to the needs of pre-law and law school students as well as young legal professionals.
Readers will get the inside story from attorneys and judges, as well as insights from managing partners of large international firms, law school deans, and directors of law school career services.
What will keep women in their chosen field and benefit the legal profession?
Whether you are considering a career in law, are pre-law, in law school, or just getting started in your practice, career advice from the contributors will be invaluable. They will become your best friends at the bar.
Many people will benefit from the career advice in Best Friends at the Bar: What Women Need to Know about a Career in the Law, including:
- Young Lawyers
- Students in Law School
- Pre-law Students / Other Undergraduates
- Career Counselors
- Law School Educators
- Law Firm Managers
The book also serves as a valuable resource for men at the beginning of their legal careers. Men will benefit from historical information about the legal profession and from discussions about achieving work-life balance, and they will gain important insight into the issues facing their colleagues and women lawyers they will supervise in the future.
The chapter about economic effects on the legal profession is a “must read” for all young lawyers, men and women alike. More importantly, career advice, including how to make good choices and avoid the pitfalls of practice, will resonate with men as well.
Best Friends at the Bar: What Women Need to Know about a Career in the Law will:
- Help young lawyers plan satisfying and successful careers;
- Provide candid and valuable advice for young lawyers who want to change the future of women in law;
- Entertain with “Case in Point” true-life experiences of women in the law who represent different ages, races, and ethnicities;
- Address business, cultural, and personal conditions of women in the law; and
- Explain why it is vital to retain women in law for the future of the legal profession itself.
Join Forces in Facing Professional Challenges Together
Best Friends at the Bar: What Women Need to Know about a Career in the Law is all about problems and solutions, but Ms. Blakely does not point fingers. After learning about her book people often ask:
“Is the legal profession at fault because women have these life-altering challenges? Or does the fault lie with young women in the law?”
Ms. Blakely refuses to be distracted by thinking in terms of fault.
Instead, she emphasizes the power of defining challenges that come with a career in the law today and of working together to meet those challenges.
Although the flexibility needed to balance work-life responsibilities may seem to be on a collision course with the institutional demands of law firms, Ms. Blakely refuses to accept shortsighted solutions. She urges members of the profession to seek out solutions that will retain talented men and women and improve the profession.
Ms. Blakely leads readers towards solutions while reaching out to the best in her profession. Her mission is to enlist the cooperation of law firms, lawyers, law schools, and law school career counselors to create new options and environments where everybody wins.
