Article Archive

The Complete Lawyer
Volume 4, Number 1
January 2008

I first met Lola at a women lawyers' leadership event. An African American Ivy League graduate, she had recently been recruited from the federal government to a large firm and accepted the offer in order to hone her expertise in international corporate transactions. As a newcomer to the firm, she arranged to meet with every partner in her area in order to learn about their practices and seek out good work assignments. Each time she asked a partner for work, however, she was referred back to the assigning partner, from whom she received assignments that primarily involved document management and administrative tasks. To several partners she explained that, as a senior associate, she needed more substantive projects in order to further develop her skills and advance in the firm. But each time she was told that the assignment system had been developed in order to ensure equitable work distribution and that she needed to work within that system.

The Complete Lawyer
Volume 3, Number 4
April 2007

When I first began doing presentations for Bar groups and law firms about 9 years ago, I encountered something unexpected. I was typically asked to address issues related to work-life conflict for women whose career-building years coincided with biological clock-determined times for child-bearing and rearing. As the demand for billable hours increased, so did the need for alternative work schedules as a means for firms to retain talent and women to progress in their legal careers while also managing the bulk of family responsibility. Each time I spoke I emphasized the need for flexible schedules to be offered as genuine alternatives, not stigmatized “mommy-tracks.”