Women Lawyers and Building Business Differently

Posted on May 15, 2024

At this time of the year when we celebrate Mother’s Day, women lawyers and the challenges they face are particularly on my mind. As you may be aware, I started the Best Friends at the Bar project fifteen years ago to address those challenges and help young women lawyers advance in the profession. Although the project has grown to address all young lawyers, regardless of gender, women lawyers and their challenges remain a great emphasis for me.

One of those challenges is still and always has been developing business. This article from Bloomberg Law sheds some important light on that subject by suggesting that women lawyers must build business differently. Rather than trying to take on the subject all at one time, the suggestion is akin to running a marathon, one mile at a time and adopting a long-game strategy. Although the long game may be the ultimate objective, the short game of making business development front and center each day is recommended, with the focus on creating collaborative client teams that include trust among partners.

This may be challenging because the path to law firm partnership and law firm leadership is often dependent on business development. For women lawyers, especially mother lawyers, there are a lot of other daily responsibilities in competition with business development. And only so many hours in every day.

The author, a business growth strategist, recommends building a book of business by focusing on strong networks (rather than large networks) and adopting a new “networking paradigm” dependent on a strong network of colleagues, clients and referral partners who are familiar with your experience and the unique way you serve clients.

Also key is emphasis on common interests you may have with prospective clients and supporting the growth of colleague practices. Daily interactions and meaningful conversations are the building blocks of those kinds of collaborations. As always, paying attention to what is going on in the worlds of others forms the basis of building trusted relationships.

Although business development may seem like a daunting task, the good news is that women are particularly good at this kind of relationship building. Most women lawyers start on first base in the process — one step closer to bringing it home!

Check out the article for more specifics.

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Thought For The Week: “Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.” Albert Einstein

Posted on May 13, 2024

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Happy Mother’s Day, Mother/Lawyers!

Posted on May 8, 2024

Mother’s Day is right around the corner. It is the day set aside to celebrate the importance of motherhood, and it is an important day for all families. For mother/lawyers, it also underscores the challenges of being the mother of young children and ALSO a lawyer.

Work-life balance for mother/lawyers is critical. That does not make it easy, and it also is not conducive to cookie cutter solutions. It is a very personal thing and, in part, depends on the type of law those mother/lawyers practice and the degree of child care help available to them. It means deciding what works best for the woman and her family and for the woman and her career. It means protecting objectives on both the personal and the professional sides.

I made these arguments in an ABA Journal article several years ago, and the y0ung women lawyers on Twitter were offended to hear my advice about paying attention to both personal and professional lives. They said that I had no right telling them what to do because they already were doing it and they were very successful. That made me wonder why they were offended because clearly what I was suggesting was working for them. But it was the mere fact of being told what to do that offended them.

Those young women lawyers also wrote in their tweets that I must not have children if I was emphasizing being a reliable team player at the office. They even opined that I had sold out to male management and that I was telling women lawyers not to have children. Because I do not engage with cancel culture, I did not engage in a dialogue with unidentified Tweeters. If I had responded, my response would have looked something like what is included in this current Forbes article.

Considerations like setting boundaries, prioritizing tasks, delegating responsibilities, and seeking flexibility are addressed well in the article. Pay attention to them. They are critical to your success and how you look back on your performance as a lawyer and as a mother of small children.

I know a little about this. I, indeed, do have children. Two of them, both of them successful lawyers. And I am very happy with the images in my rear view mirror.

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Thought For The Week: “Pursue the things you love doing, and then do them so well that people can’t take their eyes off you.” Maya Angelou

Posted on May 6, 2024

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Young Lawyers Need to Understand the Limitations of AI

Posted on May 2, 2024

I am a member of the District of Columbia Bar, and I, therefore, receive a copy of Washington Lawyer magazine six times a year. I enjoy the stories, and, on occasion, I have an article published there.

The May/June 2024 magazine includes an article titled “The Client Needs You, Not AI” that I wish all of you could read. There are many applications of AI in the practice of law, some good and some not so good. For young lawyers, this can be very confusing — and very dangerous.

Not all of you will have access to this article. For those of you who do, I hope you will read it. For the rest of you, I have quoted below from the article to highlight some of the things to be wary of when relying on AI.

From the article by Josephine, M. Bahn, associate at Cozen O’Connor, immediate past chair of the ABA Young Lawyers Division:

AI can be a tool for young and new lawyers to strengthen their repertoire, but it should be used with caution. We’ve heard the horror stories of lawyers using ChatGPT and nonexistent case law, or of attorneys utilizing AI to produce discovery requests without checking local rules requirements. It behooves young lawyers to familiarize themselves with the technology they want to use — how it works, what others in the field might use it for, and, most importantly, what its potential pitfalls might be.

Adoption of new technology should not replace the human elements of law practice. Knowing an individual client’s goals and preferences is not something you can readily feed into an AI platform if, for example, the client hates passive voice or will strike any in-line citations. Without knowing the “people” part of the profession, new technology tools may actually hinder young lawyers’ growth. Remember that you are the reason the client hired you in the first place, not your ability to use AI.

Lawyering is a technical profession where words matter and delivery may [matter more than] all else. Our clients can see through discovery requests formulated using AI that fails to consider prior pleadings, specific facts, and the nuances of the case. Young lawyers must remember that they are the human element needed to bring a case toward a desirable outcome for the client. …. If you remain the clients’ trusted advisor, then you remain indispensable to them. (emphasis added)

It is not often that I quote so extensively from an article. In this case, it is important to me that you get this information straight from another associate lawyer, who is confronted with these issues in the same way you are.

It is very good advice. Heed the warnings.