I am a day late in recognizing Equal Pay Day.  Regretfully because it is an important day.

If you are not sure what Equal Pay Day is all about, here is a blog from the past to help you out.  Although it is now two years after this blog was written, the statistics have not changed much.  Women are still not being paid equally for equal work.

Equal Pay Day — Yes, It Still Is an Issue for Women Lawyers

I also want to make it clear that flexible hours — when you do the work — has nothing to do with whether you do the work.  So, the reader, who misinterpreted my statement in an earlier blog on equal pay, should stand assured that I am 100% behind the concepts of flexible schedules and telecommuting.  Work is work.  No matter where it is performed and when.  Unfortunately, however, not everyone sees it that way, and I always acknowledge the other side in preparation for the debate.

Hopefully I will be able to report more progress in future years.  The wheels of progress grind slowly.

Last week I attended the Georgetown University Women’s Forum, an expanded version  of the Georgetown Women’s Law Forum.  As a Georgetown Law grad, I am a big fan of this conference.  Keep your eye out for it next year!  You don’t have to be a Hoya to attend.

Here are some tips that I picked up on salary/benefits negotiations, and they apply to all young lawyers.  Think of it as your Ten Step Method to Greater Job Satisfaction.

1.  Set the stage.  In preparation for a meeting to discuss more salary or benefits, ask your supervisor for time to discuss your career development.  Thank him/her for taking the time for this important discussion and compliment past mentoring efforts if possible.

Then get prepared!

2.  Know your value.  Begin the conversation with your pitch so that you accomplish your goal for the meeting.  Focus on your accomplishments and the skills that you bring to the organization.  Include seminars and conferences you have attended, papers you have published, and initiatives you have helped launch.

Numbers matter, so create data.  Everything counts, but do not fall into the pattern of taking on responsibilities just for the reporting value.  Always be strategic and learn to say no to things that are not you.  Be authentic.

Practice, practice, practice your presentation — out loud or with partner.  Welcome comments and criticism to improve the product.

3.  Know your target salary.  Determine a salary range, both high and low, and know your walk away point.

Do your research.  Comparable firms and office locations are key.  Firms pay different salaries in different locations depending on the market and cost of living analyses.

Make the ask.  More money.  A new title.  A new responsibility to enhance your career.  All of these are important, but you HAVE TO ASK.

4. Know what benefits are important to you.  Understand that sometimes benefits can be more important than salary.  It is all about what improves your individual situation.  Examples of benefits to consider are:

• Flex time and commuting;
• Health insurance;
• Life and disability insurance;
• Retirement investment plans;
• Medical, personal and family leave;
• Tuition reimbursement;
• Vacation time; and
• Work-life balance.

5.  Have a strategy going into salary/benefits negotiations.  Be positive and flexible, and don’t got too personal.  Treat it like a business discussion.

Deflect some questions that you do not feel comfortable answering.  Salary history, for example, is against the law in five states.  If an application form asks for that information, put N/A if you do not think the answer benefits you.

If you are asked about salary expectation, answer with a salary range and follow up with your desire to learn more about the position and responsibilities.

Or turn the question around, as in, “What do you usually pay for this position?”

6.  Timing is critical.  The best times to ask for more salary or improved benefits is after a big win or a very successful event or when you know a new budget is being rolled out.

Do not wait until an annual review and lose the advantage of the moment.

Do not ask during a crunch time in your business or when your boss is under stress either at office or at home.

7.  Be patient.  Give time for a thoughtful response.  Be ready for the back and forth.  Be prepared for counteroffers.

8.  Anticipate possible responses.  You may hear:

• “We don’t have the budget.”  Your response could be, “How about increasing my salary by half that amount and talk again in six months.”  A classic negotiation technique.  Half a loaf often is better than none and might work for you.
• OR, “You would be the highest paid member of the team at the salary you are suggesting.”  You may want to respond by distinguishing your accomplishments from those of the rest of the team.
• OR, “Is there anything besides more money that would be important to you?”  If more money is out of the question, ask for a benefit that does not come out of your department budget—- like an educational benefit.  Try not to leave without gaining something to enhance your position.

9.  Get it in writing.  Don’t risk your conversation getting lost in the shuffle or not being communicated to others when your supervisor leaves.

10.  Become comfortable with the process.  You will be using it throughout your career.

I hope this is helpful.  I know that it would have been helpful to me so many years ago.

Good luck negotiating for yourself!

So what’s up with millennial males and gender bias?  For years, we have been hearing that millennial men (those born between approximately 1980 and 2000) are very attuned to equality between the sexes.  And, it makes sense if you know anything about the values of millennials.  (And if you do not, I recommend that you read my book, What Millennial Lawyers Want: A Bridge from the Past to the Future of Law Practice, Wolters Kluwer/Aspen Publishers, 2018.)

The value of respect is very high on the list of millennial generation values, and it also is at the heart of gender equality.  Gender researchers have contended for almost a half century that every generation has become more egalitarian — right up to the millennials.  And that would make sense, not only because of millennial values but also because comfort between the sexes in business seems to be on the rise.

So, I was surprised to read a recent article by Chris Haigh on the andieandal.com blog citing evidence from a variety of studies and polls to conclude that “discriminatory gender stereotypes and biases are just as pervasive and influential — if not more so — among Millennial men as they were among the men of earlier generations.”  Although the authorities cited were not as current as I would have liked, it was disturbing to read.

The author based his findings on research showing that, “Most people believe they are unbiased and egalitarian.  But when forced to confront specific situations and express their actual preferences, people’s implicit biases typically come out” and on a poll taken by Harris as early as 2014 showing that “young men are less comfortable than older men with women holding positions of power in traditional male fields.”  Accordingly, the author concluded that, “Expecting the pervasive biases against women to fade away as younger generations take control of our major organizations is foolish at best and counterproductive at worst.”

Whew!  That is not what I expected — after spending a considerable amount of time studying millennials and millennial lawyers and their values and behaviors — and I was hoping for more from the male lawyers of that generation.  I still am, in fact.

But, I also know from the young women lawyers I interface with on a regular basis, including the superstar variety who are on the fast track to partnership or have already arrived there, how implicit bias continues to play out in the workplace and interfere with their career advancement.  And I also know that it is not just about scheduling meetings early in the morning or late in the day, which disadvantages women lawyers with young children.  And it is not all about staging promotional and client events that are centered on testosterone-driven activities that give male lawyers a leg up in client development.

It is also about assigning detail-oriented projects to female lawyers because they are “so much better at details” than their male colleagues — while, at the same time, assigning strategic and conceptually-centered tasks to the male lawyers — disadvantages women and leaves them behind the power curve when it comes time to evaluate them for partnership.  And that is a really big problem.

It goes something like this:  “Oops.  Sorry.  She was so mired down in the details that she never got that highly-prized deposition and motions practice experience, and we just don’t think she is ready for prime time.”  Sorry indeed.  That’s a lot to be sorry for.

We must do better.  Implicit bias is insipid.  We need to begin by educating our sons — and our husbands and our fathers.  Research shows that most males do not think that implicit bias even exists.  Ask the men in your life.  See if they can even come close to being able to define it — or even if they care to try.

So, we have our work cut out for us.

Darn.  I thought those millennial males were going to save us the trouble.

Yes, we expect a lot of millennial lawyers.  And we should.  They are paid high salaries, and they need to accept that the early years of practice at law firms are taxing.  New job.  New specialization.  New culture.

But, millennial lawyers also should expect a lot of law firm leaders.  Career development.  Mentoring.  Inclusion as part of the team.  In other words, these young lawyers have a right to expect behavior with more than a touch of humanity.

My new book, What Millennial Lawyers Want:  A Bridge from the Past to the Future of Law Practice (Wolters Kluwer/Aspen, 2018)  is all about these concepts.  I explore questions that center around whether the law firm leadership or the millennials lawyers are responsible for the generation divide in law firms today.  So, after all the research I have done, I thought I had heard it all.

Until I read in this article that a law firm is suing an associate, who departed after one year, for breach of contract and damages that amount to at least $10,000.  Although it appears to be true that the associate had signed a three-year contract, this action by the law firm is still astounding.  I hope she has some strong defenses.

In the speeches I give about the millennial generation and millennial lawyers, I typically tell audiences of senior lawyers, “We are better than this,” in describing the way that law firms are failing young lawyers today.  So, I say here, “WE ARE BETTER THAN THIS.”

It is hard to imagine what lack of wisdom went into the decision to put an associate lawyer under contract in the first place and then to sue a departed associate for breach of that contract.   It is hard to imagine how the law firm could not understand that, no matter the outcome, the law firm will lose in the court of public opinion.  It is hard to imagine how the law firm thought this would end well.

This is not professional behavior.  This is not compassionate behavior.  This is not honorable behavior.  This is behavior that lends to the reputations of greed that abound in the profession. 

This is stupid.  Some times you just have to call it what it is.

Young lawyers beware.  There are predators lurking in the weeds.  I hope those predators have the good sense to put more money into the recruiting budget for future years.  Sounds like they’ll need it.

Today is International Women’s Day.  I hope you are celebrating being a woman or having a wonderful woman at your side.

Today we remember that we have come a long way, but there is still a long way to go in terms of equal opportunity, equal pay, implicit bias, and respect.  Even equal protection comes to mind as we are reminded of the recent disclosures by Senator Martha McSally — women are not protected adequately within the military ranks any more than they are protected in society at large.  Sexism is still baked in the cake of our culture, and we must keep our eyes on the prize of eliminating it.

Equal Pay is an important part of the goals for advancement of women.  It is key to women taking their places in the top levels of leadership and management.  Women at the top of organizations have a lot more opportunity than women at lower echelons to have significant influence on improving policies for women at law firms and in the public sector, as well.

And women must prove to be supportive of each other and push for the changes that are necessary.  Women cannot afford to be competitive and envious of each other.  We all must join together for the changes that are needed to take our profession forward and to bring about the equality that women deserve — no matter what our individual experiences have been.  Women supporting women is the only way it will happen.

We also must be careful not to make our male colleagues the enemies.  We must understand that it gets us nowhere.  We cannot do to them what they did to us, and we cannot assume that they did it intentionally.  But we will know that, if we discriminate against them today, we will be doing it intentionally — because we have benefited from years of education about discrimination and bias that many of them did not have.  I have written about this recently in the ABA Journal, and I recommend that article to you.

And, we need to be practical.  As the leaders at the top of most law firms and law organizations, our male colleagues are still in control of our opportunities and upward mobility.  We will gain nothing by playing into our desires to win the battle without caring about winning the war.

As we hope for greater advancement for women lawyers, we also must have perspective.  We must understand that we are part of a historical narrative that goes back a long way.  Those of us who entered the law profession as long ago as 40 and 50 years past, have needed to keep perspective to survive.  We are happy that women lawyers today are not forced to forfeit opportunities because male lawyers do not want to travel with them.  We are happy that women lawyers today do not forfeit partnership because they want to take time off to spend with a newborn, and we are happy that women lawyers today are not called “little girls” by judges at all levels of the judiciary.  That happen to many of us.  We do not forget it, but we also know that it was part of a historical narrative.

So, I hope you will celebrate women today and remember that we have come a long way, but we have a long way to go.  Keep your eyes on the prize.

The legal field is very dynamic these days and has been that way for awhile.   Most lawyers change practice venues multiple times in their careers, and research shows that millennials will change jobs four times in their first decade out of college.

Up until the 1990’s, lawyers often stayed with one — or possibly two — firms most of their careers.  Sounds hard to believe now, but it’s true.  However, the boom economic days of the 90’s saw law firms grow in size and spheres of influence exponentially, and lawyers started moving around like bees in a hive to follow the money and the power.

So, you should not be afraid to change law firms or practice settings if you are not satisfied with what you are experiencing.  Sure, it is a big pain to research job openings and alternative settings, revise your resume, contact a headhunter, and to be “on” for one interview after another.  Exhausting, really.

But it is far better than staying at a job that makes you miserable.  And, I think more of you are miserable than want to admit it.

I heard a law firm partner quoted recently saying, “I would not want to be an associate lawyer today.”  There is a reason for that.  The practice has become so specialized that entry level law jobs too often consist of being tethered to a computer reviewing complex regulations and documents and little else — until eyes begin to bleed.  It bares little resemblance to what recent law school graduates thought “acting like a lawyer” was going to be like.  It can be a huge disappointment after paying a fortune to become one.

Law firms should not let this happen to their employees, but they do.  Somebody has to do that work, and most law firms do not care enough to add variety and interest to those boring and tedious tasks.  Too often they treat entry level lawyers as fungible goods.  The result it that lawyers leave for what they hope are greener pastures.  Sometimes it works out, and sometimes it does not.

And sometimes it is absolutely necessary.  If a job starts changing who you are, get out.  No job is worth changing your personality and using coping mechanism that are not good for you.  Move on.  Save yourself.

If you fall into any of these categories, get busy.  Research shows that February to April are the best hiring months for law firms.  So, if you are thinking of making a change, it might be time to dust off that resume and get started.

Once you transition to that new job, you will need some help in adjusting to new leadership and a new culture.  This article will help you get through the first critical weeks.  Some highlights are:

• Be Friendly/Make the Effort;
• Be Open to New Procedures;
• Ask Questions and Get Advice;
• Don’t Be Afraid to Give Your Opinion; and
• Be Confident.

And, most important, understand that transitions take time.  Don’t judge the job by the first few weeks.

The aging process works great for wine and cheese.  It may be the same for new jobs.