Today I completed the final draft manuscript for my new Best Friends at the Bar book.  I am thrilled!  This book has been thrashing around in my head for the last few years, just waiting to get out.  I finally tackled it in 2014, and I hope it will get to all of you some time in 2015.

The book, the third in the Best Friends at the Bar book series, takes a look at the solution to low retention rates for women lawyers from a new perspective.  The first two books were written to advise young women how to plan their legal careers and how to exercise their options to keep their careers alive even through the difficult care taking years when responsibilities of home and family can be the most challenging.  Those books examined Personal Definitions of Success and a New Work-Life Balance, and put the responsibility on the young women lawyers to manage their personal and professional lives in a way that would allow them to meet the demands of both career and family.

This new book takes a different approach.  It is the missing piece in solving the puzzle to make career satisfaction and success possible for more young women lawyers.  It explores what makes effective leaders of young women lawyers and provides the messages that young women lawyers must receive to help them help themselves.  Because most of the law firm leadership today is made up of male lawyers, these things cannot be assumed.  It takes a book like this to engage leadership in the most effective way.

Plugging the talent drain for young women lawyers needs to be a shared responsibility.  It is time that the law firms started “leaning in” just like the young women, and this new book will give law firm leaders all the tools they need to lead and motivate young women lawyers effectively and with the goal of raising the retention rates.

It is the logical extension of the Best Friends of the Bar project., and I am so pleased that it will come your way soon.  Watch for it!!!!!!!!!

In a recent interview in Politico, Judith Salerno, president and CEO of breast cancer charity Susan G. Komen, talked about the challenges of reversing the fortune of the charity after the decision of the prior CEO to withhold funding from Planned Parenthood because of concerns about abortion funding.  You may remember the buzz and the fuss that followed that decision.  That is when Salerno was called in for the top job.

Judith Salerno knows a little about change and choice.  She had her three children while she was a medical intern, resident and fellow.  That meant that she always was on call during her pregnancies and while her children were very young.  When she was waddling around sleep deprived and very pregnant one morning, an attending physician said to her, “Well, nobody asked you to get knocked up.”  True story.  She does not name names any more than I do when I tell the story about the managing partner telling me that I had “shot myself in the foot” when I announced my pregnancy just before my election to the partnership became official.  Fortunately, that was a long time ago, and times have changed.

With that story, Judith Salerno transitions into a discussion of a constant theme in her life.  Do not tell her that anything is too much for a woman.  She will prove to you that she can do whatever you are telling her she cannot.  She also has a mission to help young women with the balance between their careers and their personal lives.  She describes taking her children on rounds with her in the hospital, and it reminds me of when my own kids were young.  I would take them to public meetings and public hearings where I was testifying and stick them in the corner of the auditorium with a coloring book.  It was a delicate balance, but it worked.

Another overlap in our experiences is empathy for the women who work for us.  Salerno describes her concern for the secretary, who supported her at the Department of Veterans Affairs, in much the same way as I write and speak about my concerns for my secretaries when I first began practicing law.  It was too early for easy public transit and convenient child care, and those women drove miles out of their way to and from the office to make certain that their children had quality daycare.  They were the real heroines, and I knew it.

Judith Salerno thinks that women need to be open to change.  I heartily agree.  In fact, you should embrace change and see where it leads you.  You may be surprised to find out what is out there that piques your interest and floats your boat!

Read the entire interview here.