Women Lawyers Could Use Golf “Fore” Business

Posted on June 26, 2019

This is where I tell you to do what I say and not what I do. I am not a good example of what I am about to tell you.

I was raised in a family of golfers. My grandfather was a par golfer plus and designed a few courses. He taught my mom to play golf when she was a teenager — long before there were many women on the links. My mom was a good golfer, better than my dad, if truth be told. She loved the game and played at least three days a week during the summer.

I learned to golf when I was in grade school, and I got pretty good at it during high school. I played a little after I went to college and then less after I got married (to someone who did not appreciate golf) and even less during law school and after I started to practice law. After all, golf takes time.

That was my rationale for belonging to a golf club but never playing the game. Stupid. Even more stupid was not playing in the annual law firm/client golf tournament because my game was a little rusty by then.

So, when I read the article by Vivia Chen in The American Lawyer about why women lawyers should play golf to improve business opportunities, all I could do was sigh. For all the bad golf decisions of my past.

In my defense, however, I do recall having at least one lucid moment on the subject of women and golf. In Best Friends at the Bar: What Women Need To Know about a Career in the Law, I included information about playing golf as a good business development tool in the chapter titled “Find a Comfort Zone for Promoting Work.”

However, I took heat from some of my readers for embracing a “male-oriented” makeover for women that does not capitalize on typical “women’s strengths.” That book was published in 2009, and it is now 2019. What I tolerated as justifiable criticism then, has little relevance now. I think we have moved on from “typical” gender stereotypes in the last decade.

So, consider golf. Or, better yet, take up the game. A lot of business is done on the golf course. And, presumably, you want a piece of that action.

And, according to the article, this is why you should:

Because so few golfers are women (24%), any woman who plays gets special attention;
Golfing is a great place to network for business;
Men don’t worry about how well they play so why should women; and
It is not about whether you enjoy it. It is all about doing what’s effective to enhance business opportunities.

So, as stated at the end of the article, “Are we dumb?” I was. But you can be smarter.

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Thought For The Week: If I take care of my character, my reputation will take care of itself. D. L. Moody

Posted on June 24, 2019

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What Happens When Women Rule?

Posted on June 20, 2019

I never have met Swanee Hunt or, more accurately and respectfully, Ambassador Swanee Hunt. She is the former US ambassador to Austria, the founder of the Women and Public Policy Program at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and the founder of Seismic Shift, an initiative dedicated to increasing the number of women in high political office.

We share a mutual very good friend, but I keep missing Ambassador Hunt at events. I hope that changes one day soon because we both are dedicated to advancing women in positions of leadership. And I would like to thank her for her work.

In a recent piece for CNN News, Ambassador Hunt discussed the advances that women are making in increasing their collective representations in Congress and state legislatures in this country and in national representations in countries across the globe — countries like Iceland and Rwanda and New Zealand, where the female Prime Minister is shaking things up Down Under.

The message is that female leadership matters and not just for issues affecting women. New organizations are springing up all over the US to encourage women candidates and to build on the momentum. Women demonstrate remarkably effective leadership skills, and they work hard and relentlessly for positive change. Women, especially those with children, are incredibly efficient and productive on the job. They have the assembly line down pat. They multitask with perfection, and they are unflappable under fire. You can’t show them emotions they have not addressed and overcome.

However, before we get too comfortable with the rise of women leaders, we need to understand that, according to research by Bright Horizons, more than forty percent of employed Americans (a combination of men and women) consider working moms to be less devoted to their work. And the unfortunate reality is that women fall behind in earned wages once they have children, and they never catch up. The Motherhood Penalty is still very much an impediment to the advancement of women in the workplace, and the law profession is no exception.

Many more of you than ever before will become law firm partners, but many of you will remain non-equity partners because of your family choices. You will watch your male colleagues overtake you in salary and opportunity — in many cases not because of your lack of skills but because of perceptions.

This is the way it is — but not the way it needs to be. Hopefully the trends in the leadership of women that Swanee Hunt writes about and has witnessed all over the world will make a difference.

Let’s hope so. And soon.

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Thought For The Week: It’s what you learn after you know it all that counts. John R. Wooden

Posted on June 17, 2019

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The Dangers of Leaking Young Lawyer Talent

Posted on June 12, 2019

For more than a decade I have been urging law firms to retain and advance the talent of women lawyers. The three-book Best Friends at the Bar series has been my effort to spread those messages, and most recently I have expanded my work to include cautionary messages about ignoring and losing the talent of all young lawyers — men and women alike — in What Millennial Lawyers Want: A Bridge from the Past to the Future of Law Practice (Wolters Kluwer/Aspen Publishers 2018).

Those books and the hundreds of blogs and articles I have written and speeches I have given include discussions of the many reasons why our institutions must change to become more inclusive of young people, starting with “the right thing to do” (which is almost always overlooked as a compelling reason) and ending with the sacrifice of future leadership (which should raise huge red flags). Simply speaking, even if equity and fairness do not win out as arguments for change, the future of the profession should be cause for concern. You would think that would get some attention, but you may have to think again.

I admit to getting discouraged every time I see yet another article on these subjects. The most recent one appeared in Financial Times earlier this week, and you can read it here. It is a good article on the problem of leaking law firm talent in the UK, and it echoes what is going on this side of “The Pond.” But … you have heard it all before.

The article includes arguments like:

Law firms need to reshape their cultures, moving away from “rigid” traditions and “excessive” hours so they can retain more women and attract millennial lawyers;
The current shortage of talent needs to be addressed as increasing numbers of young lawyers abandon private practice; and
More than one in five young lawyers have transitioned out of private practice to in-house positions.

The conclusion from what appears to be the continuing need for this article and so many like it is that current law firm leadership is tone deaf on the subjects. Current leadership is not willing to tackle law firm reform with the kinds of changes that address retention — like workplace values, work-life balance, and billable hour requirements — because doing that might impact client retention. In other words, current law firm leadership too often cares more about money and power than anything else. And there is no question what comes out on top when development of future law firm leaders is in competition with the high demands of clients. Someone has to pay those big salaries at the top. The careers of young lawyers and succession plans be damned. Current leadership won’t be around to care.

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Thought For The Week: Be humble in your confidence yet courageous in your character.” Melanie Koulouris

Posted on June 10, 2019

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More on the Negative Effect of Greed on Women Lawyers — And Men

Posted on June 5, 2019

The New York Times article that I discussed in last week’s blog is worthy of your attention. The examples used are of husband and wife lawyers, who are struggling to raise young children. The upshot is that one parent — typically the female — has to make sacrifices such as cutting back to part-time status, giving up promotion opportunities, and making far less in salary to make these situations work. This is the current reality despite the fact that American women of working age are the most educated than ever before.

The statistics are all there to make you feel really depressed — and they will have that effect. In the past, we have focused on causes like discrimination and lack of family-friendly policies in examining the effect on the careers of women lawyers, but this article cites evidence that we should not be looking at gender alone. The culprit, according to the author, has nothing to do with who has a Y chromosome.

The culprit is corporate greed. Greed that manifests in long, inflexible hours and winner-take-all attitudes that more often than not “flatline” the careers of one member of a couple — more often than not the women. Add to that the fact that working 50% more hours often results in 100% more salary. As the article points out, it is not a linear comparison, and the extra money is very important to a young family.

Although it is not just the law profession that is guilty of short-circuiting talent in this way, it becomes clear that the law profession is a leader in the shift from a reasonably-oriented service industry mentality to a culture of money, power and greed. The important question is not who is to blame but, rather, what can be done about it. As you will see in the article, the answer lies in worker demand and significant challenges to management. More predictable hours and flexibility in when and where the work gets done are good places to start.

But, the goal is not to create ways to allow women to work the same long, inflexible hours as men. As expressed by one on-line comment to the article, “No one should be doing this. A father working constantly is not a good father or partner. Or person, for that matter. Probably not healthy either. . . No wonder this country is a mess. We’re working ourselves to a literal and existential death.”

Hear, hear. It is a “systems problem” and, as I have written in What Millennial Lawyers Want: A Bridge from the Past to the Future of Law Practice, law employers have great incentive to change the workaholic cultures they have created. It is a total sea change that is called for not a temporary fix. And it needs to come as soon as possible before we lose more talent than our profession can afford.

Here is my favorite quote from the article: