Book Launch Event a Big Success

Posted on October 1, 2012

We celebrated women lawyers in style—-oh, yes we did!

The Book Launch for my new book, Best Friends at the Bar: The New Balance for Today’s Woman Lawyer (Wolters Kluwer Law & Business, 2012) on September 27th at Georgetown Law was a huge success. Almost 100 guests filled the Atrium of the Edward Bennett Williams Law Library at Georgetown Law to celebrate the new book and to meet some of the lawyers who made the night possible. Lawyers from the sponsoring firms, Polsinelli Shughart and Lerch Early & Brewer, mixed with lawyers from honorary sponsors Cooley, Womble, and DLA, and they all were delighted to meet so many women lawyers who have contributed to the Best Friends at the Bar books.

Contributors like Kathy Tighe, Inspector General of the US Department of Education, and Mary Gately, partner at DLA Piper, clearly enjoyed discussing their participation in the books and encouraging the young lawyers to take advantage of the many mentors who have contributed to the books. The video chronically the project debuted at this event and met with rave reviews.

Matt Calise, Director of Alumni Affairs at Georgetown Law gave welcoming remarks on behalf of the law school, and Assistant Dean Markeisha Miner of the University of Detroit Mercy Law School delivered key notes. My remarks were focused on thanking the many people who worked so hard to make the evening a success. Special thanks are due to the event partner, GlobalWIN (Global Women’s Innovation Network) and to media partner, Ms. JD. I hope that many of the guests took my advice and hurried to sign up for the Ms. JD She Leads Annual Conference on October 5th at Washington College of Law, American University, in Washington, DC. I will be participating in that conference, and I know what an excellent learning experience it will be for young lawyers.

Most of the guests walked away with signed books and ready to spread the word further about the Best Friends at the Bar project. It was a great night, and I could not be prouder of what we have accomplished in raising awareness of the challenges to women lawyers and in providing the tools to help young women lawyers make realistic career choices and plans to fit their personal circumstances.

Bravo to all who supported the event and who accept the mission. We have demonstrated that we are making a difference!

Keep an eye out for pics from the evening on the Best Friends at the Bar Facebook page. Maybe you will see yourself there!

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Jump On Board the Book Launch Express!

Posted on September 19, 2012

As I might have mentioned—-at least a few times lately!—-the Book Launch Event for my new book, Best Friends at the Bar: The New Balance for Today’s Woman Lawyer (Wolters Kluwer Law & Business, July 2012) is coming up fast. The date is September 27th, and the venue is Georgetown Law from 6 to 8 PM. The celebration of the book and of women lawyers will be held in the Atrium of the Edward Bennett Williams Law Library. The guest list is filling up fast, but there is still room for YOU, so get on board. I encourage all of you in the DC area to come—for a bunch of reasons, and here are just a few.

First and foremost, you will be supporting women lawyers. One of my favorite quotes—and you have heard it from me before—is attributed to Madeleine Albright, former Secretary of State: “There is a special place in hell for women who don’t help other women.” Hear, hear. The more attention that we can create for the issues facing women lawyers today, the better the future for women lawyers will be. But, we have to stir things up a bit and get noticed. The Book Launch is a perfect time and place to do that, so come one, come all!

Second, you will have an opportunity to network with lawyers from law firms and practice settings not only in the DC area but in other areas of the country. New York, Massachusetts, Florida and Michigan are a few of the other practice areas that will be represented among the attendees. The employment market for lawyers is still challenged, and you will be able to talk to those lawyers about the opportunities in a variety of geographic areas. This kind of networking does not come your way often, so take advantage of it. Think OCIs with good food, good drink and nice people!

Some of those lawyers will be at the event representing the sponsoring law firms. These firms are AWESOME and have my complete admiration and heartfelt thanks for supporting the Best Friends at the Bar project now and in the past. Firms like DLA Piper, Womble, Venable, Cooley, Walsh Colucci, Polsinelli Shughart and Lerch Early have been there every step of the way. They provide financial support, and they are great cheerleaders for the project. Meet the lawyers from those firms and find out why they support women. Not all firms do, you know!

You also will be able to meet some of the fantastic women who are profiled in the new book. Women like: Sally Blackmun, former in-house counsel, who might even tell you some tales of her famous Supreme Court Justice father; Kathleen Tighe, Inspector General of the US Department of Education and President Obama’s appointee as Chair of the Recovery, Accountability and Transparency Board; Markeisha Miner, Dean of Career Services, University of Detroit Mercy School of Law; Laura Oberbroeckling, Harvard Law Grad, who left Big Law to hang out her own shingle in style; and Amy Yeung, an outstanding entrepreneurial young woman, who also experienced Big Law and is now in-house counsel in a fast emerging and exciting industry. These women will inspire you, and you need to meet them. You also will meet Contributors to Book One, who jumped in when the project was in its infant stages and are completely devoted to the cause. They are not to be missed!

AND, did I say that the food, the drink and the venue will be great! Yes, great, as in very tasty and plentiful food and drink and a killer venue. The Atrium of the Edward Bennett Williams Law Library at GT Law should be in Architectural Digest! Really! We are pulling out all the stops to celebrate five successful years of Best Friends at the Bar, and you need to get on the A-Train to join us.

Here’s how you do that. E-mail my publicist at [email protected] and tell her that you want to come. It is that simple. She will take care of all the details.

Be smart. Be there. I look forward to seeing Women Supporting Women!

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Planning is a Big Deal—Especially for Women

Posted on September 13, 2012

I have been a planner all my life. I make lists, cross out what I have accomplished, highlight in yellow what is really important, and rejoice when everything is crossed off the list—-until the next day when the list starts anew. I believe in planning ahead and being super organized, as anyone who has read the Best Friends at the Bar books knows.

Throughout the time that I practiced law, I made a list at the end of each day and put it prominently on my desk to greet me the next morning. Over coffee, I reviewed the list, made priorities for the day and adjusted the list as needed. It was a good plan, and it worked for me. I had a personal relationship with my list. No one came between me and my list.

But, recently, planning has taken on a whole new meaning for me. I now am planning my daughter’s wedding and a Book Launch Event at the same time. My fear—the thing that keeps me up at night and is not affected in the least by Ambien—is that I will end up with a book sales table at the wedding and a ring bearer at the book launch! You laugh… I am totally capable of that in my current state of mind. To boot, a man just came to my front door with a load of mulch that I know nothing about! A BIG load of mulch.

The wedding is a way off and nothing can be done about the mulch man, but the Book Launch Event is right around the corner and you should know about it. On September 27, 2012 from 6 to 8 PM, Georgetown Law will host an event to celebrate my new book, Best Friends at the Bar: The New Balance for Today’s Woman Lawyer (Wolters Kluwer Law & Business) that was released in July. The event partner is GlobalWIN (Global Women’s Innovation Network) and the event co-sponsors are Ms. JD and the following law firms to date: Polsinelli Shughart; Lerch Early; DLA Piper; Cooley; Womble Carlyle; and Walsh Colucci. As you might expect, I am both delighted and humbled by the enthusiasm for and participation in this event. I am particularly grateful to Georgetown Law for its generosity in hosting. We are expecting some special guests, and this is an event that you will not want to miss.

The Book Launch Event is filling up fast, so get on board soon. If you did not get an invitation, please e-mail my publicist at [email protected] to have an invitation sent to you, and do not forget to RSVP per the instructions at the bottom of the invitation.

If you have never been to the Atrium on the 5th Floor of the Edward Bennett Williams Library at Georgetown Law, you are in for a treat. It is a beautiful space, and I can tell you that there was nothing like it when I attended Georgetown Law. I remember a starkly simple single cube of a building that was know as Georgetown Law in my day. My class was one of the first with a high percentage of women, and finding a woman’s bathroom in those days was harder than passing Income Tax. The school could have raffled off “First In Line” passes to the women’s bathrooms and made a fortune!

Hope you will join us on September 27th. You will be in good company, and you will be supporting the mission of Best Friends at the Bar—-raising retention rates for women lawyers and increasing diversity in the profession.

See you there!

BTW, my plan for tomorrow is……………….oh, you really do not want to know!

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Women Lawyers Must Take Advantage of the New Rules for Success

Posted on March 20, 2012

I read an interesting article in the National Law Journal recently. The March 16th on-line edition included an article entitled “Women’s Successes in School….Bleed Away in Their Paychecks”, which offered some insight from author Anya Kamenetz that lines up nicely with my own thoughts on what women need to succeed in the law profession.

The particular point that interested me most was that girls outperform boys in school from the time they enter kindergarten—-for some very good reasons. Girls learn to line up neatly, girls are less disruptive and listen better than boys, and girls follow the rules. As a result, girls succeed in pleasing their teachers, getting recognition and achieving good grades. That works very well—in fact, it works well all the way through law school—until the game changes. Suddenly the personal characteristics being valued are not the same. Suddenly the academic achievement does not translate into higher salaries for women than men—-or even equal salaries for that matter.

True, a lot of this has to do with the time that women take out for child-rearing, but there is more to this. And it is more that we can control and change.

Instead of compliance, the competitive worlds of business and law want assertiveness and boldness, and those behaviors are the most rewarded in the new models. So, as I have been saying in my books and speeches all along, women lawyers must step up to the plate and play the game that is popular at the moment and that leads to success, recognition and upward mobility.

Women lawyers must learn to be assertive, take credit for their accomplishments, and become comfortable with business promotion and networking. They must learn to insist on quality work and fight for it. Put those skills together with women’s natural and often superior communication and management skills, and it is a winning formula. Ignore it, and you do so at your risk.

But, that is not all. The NLJ article confirmed another of my major themes: This will not happen without a lot of mentoring from senior women lawyers and a lot of planning by young women lawyers. Structural changes in law firms—like the availability of flexible schedules and the advent of part-time career paths—-alone will not bring the results women attorneys want and need today. Yes, those things are necessary and valuable, but it is really up to the young women to plan their careers with these things in mind and the more seasoned women lawyers to provide the mentoring and the support that is critical to positive results. In fact, the NLJ article notes a survey by Catalyst that found that women with mentors saw their salaries rise 27 percent higher than women without mentors. That’s significant.

Mary Ann Mason, a University of California (Berkeley) law professor is quoted in the article with this to say about mentoring and planning: “I’d like to see Life Planning 101 as a college course. Young women are unaware of how difficult it becomes fitting childbirth into your career plans. But…if you think in advance, it becomes easier.”

If you have heard me speak or have read my book and prior blogs, this is not the first time you have heard this. But, it is very much worth repeating.

For the full text of the National Law Journal article, see,www.nationaljournal.com/njonline/no_20100508_1960

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How Does She Do It?

Posted on January 31, 2012

Some times I am sure that you think I am a broken record. Work-life struggle, work-life challenge, work-life issues………….. Well, I agree about the repetition, but the subject of work-life does happen to be the biggest impediment to women in the law, and you need to know as much about it as possible.

Last week I attended a program sponsored by the DC Women’s Bar Association at Jenner & Block in its Washington, DC office. Hat’s off to the DCWBA—where I have been a proud member for 30 years—and to Jenner & Block for the wonderful programs and dedicated folks that bring these programs to us. This particular program was titled—you guessed it—“How Does She Do It?” and was part of the Working Parents Forum. CONTINUE READING >

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Looking Forward in 2012

Posted on January 5, 2012

Yes, I am going to play this “New Year” theme out as long as I can!

Looking forward in 2012, what are the changes that we can expect in law practice and law education? Much of this hinges on an improved economy, so I am boldly going to assume that for the moment. Although there was a rally in the stock market earlier in the week, it was followed by a flattening—probably the result of continuing concern about what is happening in the European economies. I think that you will agree that it is time all countries got their acts together and we became more prosperous together.

For the purposes of discussion, let’s recognize that it is a long year, and let’s assume that the economy stabilizes and generates more business growth. What would that mean for you and for the law profession?

For starters, it should mean a return to more law firm hiring. Perhaps we will get back to not only more associate hiring but also a return of the summer associate programs. As fluffy as some of those have been in the past, they do provide a window into the law firm for prospective hires. If those programs are handled right and actually provide some quality legal experience and leadership training, they can be good things. Let’s applaud a return to good things!

It also should mean more women applying to law school. Although the numbers tend to hover around 48% for most schools and that is not shabby, the percentage of women attending law school has fallen off since 2002, and we need to see those numbers come back up. Yes, there are some scary things going on in the law profession these days, but it is still an honorable profession with interesting and stimulating work. The challenges, especially for women, are very real, but they are just that, challenges. They can be met and the obstacles can be overcome. It is all in the way the challenges are addressed and the level of expectation. You cannot expect to win every point and to have an easy path. Very little in life that is worth having is easy to get. The law profession has lots to offer for men and for women alike, and the economy—there’s that word again!—is making two incomes more valuable than ever for most young couples and their families. More women in law school means more women lawyers, and that is good for the women, the employers and the profession. Just saying…..in case you did not hear it the first 1000 times I said it.

As for the law firms, I hope that 2012 brings some significant changes there as well—or, at least, the beginnings of some significant changes. Law firms are slow to change, so we have to cut them some slack. Law firms need to be rethinking the billable hour as the only way to charge clients for services, and they need to become creative about alternative billing models. That does not mean that alternative billing will become the rule rather than the exception—-after all, we are still in the Real World, right?—but it does mean that there should be negotiated fee arrangements for certain kinds of cases and that there will be other criteria for lawyer review and advancement in addition to the number of billable hours. This is not just a woman thing. It is a gender-neutral thing in many respects. Male attorneys are also interested in quality of life and flexible time, and we women should embrace them as allies in this cause. Together, we might be able to make a difference.

Law schools also will have to start rethinking—or continue rethinking—their curricula and how it relates to the real practice of law. There needs to be more emphasis on practice-ready skills, and much of the pressure for those changes will be coming from law firms with clients that refuse to pay for first and second year associates— who take four hours to research the wording for a service of process certificate, for example. The relationship between law firms and law schools is very synergistic, and this can be a good thing in bringing about positive change.

So, hat’s off to 2012 and all of the possibilities. These are only a few. Hopefully we will discover many more as the year progresses. As you address these challenges and changes, make it your job to be a part of the solutions instead of the problems. That will be a great way to start out the New Year.

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Do Women Lawyers Today Have It Harder Than Past Generations?

Posted on November 15, 2011

I encourage you to read the article in the on-line Huffington Post titled “Why Today’s Mother’s Can’t Follow in Pelosi’s Footsteps”. It is interesting to note that during the discussion with reporters recently while Nancy Pelosi was responding to questions about how she had five children and went on to be the Speaker of the House of Representatives, it was her daughter who interrupted to point out that Ms. Pelosi was a stay-at-home mom for most of the years when her children were young. In fact, as pointed out by her daughter, Ms. Pelosi did not run for public office until her youngest child was out of high school.

Ms. Pelosi’s response was very telling, “I don’t have any ideal of how people have kids and jobs,” she stated, making it clear that she did not face that challenge and dilemma. So what does that mean for the current generation of women lawyers? CONTINUE READING >

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