Well, not all the ills affecting women lawyers, but certainly some of them, may be reduced by availability of flexible and alternative work schedules.  This fairly fundamental position was recently addressed by The Grindstone on line, and I think it is a starting point.  As The Grindstone recognized, it can also be related to the issue of retaining women lawyers, always a subject first and foremost in my mind.

However, we should not get too carried away to think that the availability of flexible schedules is all that it will take.  It will take more.  It will take full-time practitioners, both male and female, “buying into” the flexible hours programs and supporting them.  It will take firms and other employers understanding that women lawyers do not become less in terms of their talent and their long-range value to the firm simply because they are pregnant and have children.  Their brains did not change—just their hormones!

These women continue to want quality work and to be treated as valuable professionals.  They do not want to be mommy tracked and sit in offices before computers reviewing boring documents because some old-school partner thinks that pregnant women and mommies cannot handle the important work.  They can, and they will—-but less of it for less pay.  That is fair, after all.

It will take law firms to think of women who need temporary flexibility as valuable resources, who will come back to work full-time at some point when the really challenging work-life years are less challenging or behind them.  Of course, it will also take honesty and trustworthy behavior on the part of those women to keep to their word so that the firms have a realistic right to rely on the representations of women who seek these flexible arrangements.  After all, if you want your firm to be up front and fair with you, you must be up front and fair with them.

The Grindstone reports that the cost estimate for replacing a second year associate is $200,000, and my own research on the subject puts that number at $500,000 for more senior associates.  Firms invest huge resources in the development of junior lawyers, and those firms should want to protect their investment.

But, even if firms and their members do take this enlightened view, it will not solve all the ills of women lawyers—like other gender issues and Old Boys Network ills—but it will go a long way.  My hope, of course, as always, is that only some women will want these workplace accommodations of flexible hours and reduced workload.  My hope is that many women will find the perfect mate, the perfect nanny and the perfect firm so that they can stay on partnership track and achieve positions of leadership and management en masse and positively affect the policies and perceptions of all women lawyers.

That is my hope, and I am sticking to it!