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BEYOND THE BILLABLE HOUR ™ - Making the Hours of Your
Life Worth More ™
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Issue # 8 - The Pain and the Promise of Part-Time Work
In Law Firms
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ARTICLE SUMMARY: This issue contains excerpts from "The
Pain and the Promise of Part-Time Work
in Law Firms," a speech Ellen delivered
on September 27, 2000 at an event entitled
"Part-Time Work at D.C. Law Firms: The
Promise and the Pain." The presentation
was sponsored by the Project for Attorney
Retention, an initiative of the Gender,
Work and Family Project of American
University Washington School of Law,
the Women's Bar Association of the
District of Columbia, and The Law Practice
Management Section o the District of
Columbia Bar Association.
You can learn more about the Project for
Attorney Retention by visiting their
web site at http://www.pardc.org
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Ellen Ostrow, Ph.D., Editor
Ellen is the founder of LawyersLifeCoach.com ™
Personal and Career Coaching for Lawyers Determined
to Achieve Professional Success AND
a Fulfilling Life
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OUR PERSPECTIVE
Most attorneys -- especially women -- live impossibly busy lives.
Finding a balance between work and life without sacrificing
professional success, deciding on the best practice area or work
setting, and making career transitions can be a daunting task,
even for the most gifted and accomplished lawyer.
Just as every person deserves the best possible legal
counsel, every attorney deserves professional, dedicated
support in accomplishing her most important goals.
You know how hard you've worked to get where you are --
you serve others, both personally and professionally.
You've earned the right to both career success and
a fulfilling life.
This newsletter is intended to help you create a
satisfying life -- within, or outside of -- legal practice.
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The Pain and the Promise of Part-Time Work
In Law Firms
Trying to be a successful attorney AND to have a life
is a formidable task. In fact, I've recently heard
that the International Olympic Committee is planning
on including a new event in the upcoming Winter Olympics:
The Billable Hours Event.
We all know that the demographics of the work force in
general, and of law firms in particular, have changed
dramatically. Many of the most talented associates in
today's big firms are young women who are either already
parents or plan to become parents during the years they
are working toward making partner. These attorneys face
challenges that are different from those faced by their
firms' predominantly male senior partners. Many of these
partners were able to give their heart and soul to their
work because they had wives at home tending to their
families. As a working mother, I certainly wish I had
a "wife" to do this.
These days, it's not only women lawyers who must manage
this balancing act. Increasing numbers of young male
attorneys have wives with careers, and so these men
must find ways of integrating active child-care
responsibilities into their professional lives. Some
younger men who are attorneys are not just responding to
external pressures - they simply want to be more involved
in the day-to-day of their children's lives. And with
current billable hour requirements, working 80-hour work
weeks simply does not allow for this.
The managing partners of many law firms have tried to be
responsive to the needs of these young attorneys. A host
of firms now have part-time policies and are doing their
best to make these policies effective. As you know,
attorney attrition is a significant problem for many
firms and the Project for Attorney Retention is dedicated
to helping firms develop effective reduced-hour policies
so that D.C. firms can retain the gifted attorneys
they've invested in so heavily.
Often, when we discuss attorney retention and part-time
policies, we talk about them abstractly. We cite
statistics or talk about issues of business bottom
lines or of gender and politics. But, at least to my
way of thinking, the most powerful way to see the
inextricable link between time and attorney retention
is to examine the lives of attorneys working part time.
In other words, in order to retain the best and the
brightest, the legal profession needs to focus on the
issue of how lawyers - faced with today's billable hour
requirements - manage their time.
I am a business coach and a psychologist, not an attorney.
I spend the bulk of my hours on the phone coaching
women attorneys, and sometimes men, who probably won't
make the Olympic team. Instead, they are trying to be
excellent lawyers, good parents, and to have a personal
life, and seeking my help as a coach to accomplish this.
Almost every attorney with whom I speak is calling because
of the impact of current billable-hour demands on their
lives. And many of them are talking about leaving their
firms; some even talk about leaving law altogether.
Today I'm going to share some of the stories I hear
as a professional coach. Though you won't be able
to recognize their identities, I hope you will hear
some of your own stories in theirs.
A number of months ago I spoke with a fourth-year associate
from a west-coast city, working in a firm of about 80
attorneys. She was the mother of a nine-month old baby
and the wife of an accountant who's recently been made
partner in his firm. Since both she and her husband
agreed he had a very heavy workload, there was no question
as to which of them would assume primary childcare
responsibility.
The problem was that since she'd returned to work after her
maternity leave, she was feeling increased pressure from
the partners in her firm to take on more work. In an
effort to be helpful, one of the partners had asked her
if she'd like to reduce her hours. But the firm had no
explicit partnership track for part-time lawyers. This
young woman was no less committed to her career as a
lawyer than was her husband to his as an accountant.
She was afraid that reducing her hours would permanently
eliminate any chance she had of becoming partner.
How could I tell her that she had nothing to worry about?
After all, although her firm was willing to grant her
permission to reduce her time, there was no precedent
for this. She felt absolutely trapped - for even when
she worked full time, she was not able to meet the
firm's expectations. But reducing her hours - so she
could spend more time with her baby - meant venturing
out onto a slippery slope - one she was unsure her
career would survive.
This feeling - that no matter what you do you lose-
is one I hear expressed over and over again. Even when
women work in firms with explicit part-time tracks,
the women who choose them often suffer.
Recently I spoke with a seventh-year associate in a
firm of around 800 lawyers located in a large metropolitan
area in the Northeast. The mother of two young children,
she'd made a valiant attempt to be successful in her
career while struggling to be involved in their lives.
There seemed to be little doubt that she would make
partner. But she had reached the end of her rope just
as she was about to grasp the golden ring. She'd been
working a reduced-hour schedule for several years.
Reduced hours meant she could leave in time to meet
her children when they came home from school.
But in order to get her work done, she had to go back
to work after the children went to sleep. So for months
she'd been working from 9:00 PM until 1:00 or 2:00 in the
morning, and then trying to be emotionally available
to her children as she got them off to school. Often
even after going to bed, she lay awake worrying about
all the unfinished work.
But her exhaustion was far less a problem for her than
her isolation at her firm. She felt like a pariah or
a disabled person. Although her firm allowed part-time
schedules, she felt they were regarded as a special
accommodation to the family-challenged; for people
ostensibly not tough enough to do everything. She
felt completely marginalized.
"I can't talk to anyone," she confided to me. "How
can I go into work on Monday morning and say to the
people in my practice group who bill 3000 hours and
worked straight through the weekend, that I spent my
weekend taking my children to an amusement park?"
My experience has taught me that this woman is not
alone. Those of you facing these kinds of challenges
may not realize that you are in excellent company.
From my perspective, this isolation stems from the
norms of law firm culture. In general, lawyers
learn that they are expected to appear confident,
strong and unemotional. Many women lawyers are perennially
concerned about revealing any vulnerability, for fear
of being criticized as "over-emotional" or "not tough
enough."
So, women lawyers trying to make part-time schedules
work in large firms tend to be quite circumspect about
any difficulties they experience. But this silence allows
you to feel like the painful parts of your part-time
experience are a personal problem - YOUR problem.
"I don't see anyone else getting as upset as I feel,"
is a comment I've heard from many women attorneys. If
only you were tough enough, you tell yourselves, then
you could make it work.
Again and again I hear women lawyers blame themselves
for not being tough enough and worried about being
judged this way at their firms.
See if this sounds familiar: You're working part time
but you already have more work than you can handle.
It's the end of the day and you're trying to figure out
how you're going to make tomorrow's deadline while
attending back-to-school night tonight. That's when
a partner knocks on your door and asks if you can do
just one more thing before you leave. And of course,
you say "yes."
For many women lawyers, reducing their hours or saying
"no" to just one more project constitutes a confession
of personal inadequacy.
When you blame yourself, it's an easy next step to
feeling guilty. I speak to a lot of women attorneys who
are plagued by guilt about the work left for their
colleagues and who wait for expressions of resentment
and criticism. Many part-time policies are intended
to accommodate the needs of lawyers with families, but
inadvertently seem to create divisions.
Have you ever tried to walk out of a meeting of your
practice group because according to the clock it was
time for you to leave? The looks of shock or disapproval
or disappointment are heard to bear. Who wants to feel
like it's her fault that her full-time colleagues are
left with even more work because she's going home to
care for her family?
If this is your experience, I want to urge you to do
something new today. Tell just one other person how
you are feeling. Tell her about the pressure you're
under, or the challenges you're facing, or about a
colleague you know who is leaving your firm because
she wants to have a life and isn't interested in getting
on the Billable Hours Olympic team. Right now you have
the power to reduce isolation.
There's one more thing you can do that will make a huge
difference in your life, and that is to not wait before
doing everything possible to try to negotiate a flexible
schedule that will really work for you.
When I'm not coaching lawyers to do just this, I'm
counseling couples seeking marital therapy. If you look
at the research on marriage and marriage therapy, you'll
find that most couples don't come in for help until about
six years after the problems begin.
Over the course of six years, commitment erodes. People
move from disappointment to anger to detachment, and
by the time they come for help, they're really looking
for a way out.
I have noticed a similar time course among attorneys
in their relationships with their firms. The begin
with enthusiasm and commitment. Talk to a young
woman associate and you'll hear how thrilled she is to
have been hired by her firm, how proud she is to be
associated with such brilliant lawyers, how determined
she is to do her absolute best.
And when the firm responds by communicating that they
value her, this union flourishes.
But many women lawyers feel that their firms do not
respect or support the reality of their dual commitments
to firm and family. If I coach such a lawyer early
in her career, we usually can develop strategies that
work, at least well enough. But the attorneys who
contact me after a few years of part-time work without
institutional support are no longer interested in my
suggestions about how they can make this relationship
work. They want out.
I've tried to put a face on the pain of being a part-
time lawyer. Now I'd like to talk about the promise.
In my practice as a professional coach to lawyers, I'm
always asking people to tell me about their successes,
about the strategies that have worked for them.
The women lawyers who have had positive experiences
working part time all have some things in common:
- Their firms view part-time policies as beneficial
to the organization as well as the lawyer and not
just as a concession to the personal needs of one
or two attorneys.
- They have a part-time coordinator or a supervisor
or an alliance with a partner who champions their
cause and supports their efforts to set boundaries
around their hours and their workload.
- They feel valued and not stigmatized.
- These women also understand the bottom-line concerns
of their managing partners and communicate their
investment in finding win-win solutions.
- They are good at promoting themselves within their
firms so that the value of retaining them is always
obvious.
- They have worked out arrangements with their firms so
that some of the hours they work are not billable hours.
Instead, they can continue to attend meetings or
participate in committees or in some way remain
integrated in the life of the firm.
- In addition, these women work for firms that are
willing to be flexible: if a shortened work day
doesn't work, then they try an abbreviated work
week. What counts is that the firm and the lawyer
work together to find what works for both.
- These lawyers use electronic communication to its
maximum effectiveness.
- Finally, they have sufficient quality child
care to allow them to be flexible and responsive
to client needs.
Recently, a woman attorney I've known for many years
was made partner in her firm after eight years as an
associate. As the mother of three, she'd always worked
three days a week. When I called to congratulate her,
she sounded giddy. She'd never expected to be made
partner. She'd assumed that reducing to part-time
automatically excluded her and was stunned and delighted
when the partners presented her with the good news.
I'd had the privilege of working on a case with one of
the partners, so I called to congratulate him as well.
He said, "She's an excellent attorney and she works
very hard. She deserves this and our firm wants lawyers
like her."
This is the promise of part time. Unfortunately, right
now it's usually up to each lawyer to make it work on
her own. Institutional changes would certainly help
smooth the way, ease the struggle, and allow women
attorneys to find more time to do the work they came
to their firms to do. The Project for Attorney
Retention will offer these institutional solutions.*+
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*+ The PAR Project seeks to improve recruiting and
retention of talented attorneys though the use of work
schedules that allow attorneys to better balance the
competing demands of their work and their lives outside
the office. The Project aims to develop recommendations
for reduced-hours schedules that are professionally
rewarding and are not punitive "mommy tracks."
PAR advocates the development of schedules that
allow proportional pay for proportional work with
proportional opportunities for advancement.
The Project for Attorney Retention (PAR)
is directed by Joan Williams and Cynthia
Thomas Calvert. Joan Williams is the
Director of the Gender, Work and Family
Project at the American University Law
School, where she is Professor of Law.
She is the author of "Unbending Gender:
Why Work and Family Conflict and What To
Do About It" (Oxford University Press,
1999). Cynthia Thomas Calvert has worked
full-time, part-time and flex time for
a D.C. law firm and recently opened her
own practice concentrating in employment
law counseling.
Both PAR and Lawyers Life Coach would like to hear
about your experiences working part-time in a law firm.
You can fill out PAR's survey at their web site:
http://pardc.org and send email to me at
Ellen@lawyerslifecoach.com.
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BEYOND THE BILLABLE HOUR ™ is published monthly by
Ellen Ostrow, Ph.D., founder of LawyersLifeCoach.com.
She brings 20 years of experience assisting women
attorneys to her work in Lawyers Life Coach ™.
LawyersLifeCoach.com is a professional and personal
coaching firm specializing in working virtually (by
phone with email and fax backup) with women attorneys
interested in developing strategies to find greater
satisfaction in their careers within the law or
in exploring career alternatives for lawyers.
Ellen Ostrow, Ph.D. established Lawyerslifecoach.com
to coach busy lawyers who might benefit from the
insights gained from 20 years as a psychologist
combined with her experience and familiarity with
the legal profession.
Ellen holds a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology
from the University of Rochester and is a managing
member of Metropolitan Behavioral Health Care, LLC.,
a multispecialty, multidisciplinary psychotherapy
practice in Washington, D.C. and suburban Maryland.
She is a member of the International Coach Federation
and a graduate of the Mentor Coach Program ™.
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NOTE: BEYOND THE BILLABLE HOUR ™ is intended
for informational and educational purposes only.
It is not a substitute for a personal consultation
with a mental health professional and should not
be construed as a form of, or substitute for,
counseling, psychotherapy, or other psychological
service.
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CONTACT INFORMATION
Ellen Ostrow, Ph.D.
LawyersLifeCoach.com
Phone: (301) 578-8686
email: Ellen@LawyersLifeCoach.com
Web: http://LawyersLifeCoach.com
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(c)Copyright 2000 Ellen Ostrow. All rights reserved.
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