Arbitration & Mediation

Peace in the Law Firm: What Do Women Lawyers Really Want?

By Victoria Pynchon

(collage by artist Tamar Factor)

I'm ridiculously excited to announce that the new issue of The Complete Lawyer is out and that it focuses on women's legal careers -- see The Complete Lawyer's What Do Women Lawyers Really Want here!

Publisher Don Hutcheson has added an ADR column to his brilliant work-life-balance journal -- The Human Factor -- written by my good blogger buddies Stephanie West Allen of idealawg and Brains on Purpose, Gini Nelson of Engaging Conflicts, and Diane Levin of the Mediation Channel.  You can meet these tremendous Renaissance women attorneys in the first column in which we introduce ourselves to The Complete Lawyer's readers.

In this issue, I also review a little book about networking called The Go Giver by Bob Burg and John David Mann -- a happy prescription for a successful career for those of us who have the education, training and experience to give freely and make use of the benefits that flow from our fortunate human tendency to reciprocate favors. 

Ending the Gauntlet -- Removing Barriers to Women's Success in the Law

The "Women's" issue comes at a time when I'm hungrily devouring Lauren Stiller Rikleen's tremendously readable, inspiring and fascinating Ending the Gauntlet -- Removing Barriers to Women's Success in the Law.  I'm not even through Chapter One yet and I can tell you that this is no ordinary book about women's challenges in the legal profession.  It's a book for men and women who can still recall -- and share with future generations -- a time when law firms were more like professional partnerships than the corporate behemoths so many have become.

As Ms. Rikleen promises, her book explores the "confluence of circumstances"  that marked my generation and shaped the following generations of women in the law -- the flood of female attorneys into firm practice in the 1980's coupled with the modern law firms' explosion in size, wealth and complexity.  

To give you a small taste of Ms. Rikleen's scholarship and vision, here's a thumb-nail of her diagnosis of the ills that have beset Mid-to-BigLaw practice:  

As [law firms] have grown . . . they have failed to develop an infrastructure which could channel the energies that have led to huge financial success into a coherent management framework.  The result is a series of internal, unstructured organizational units which often have more in common with life in the frontiers of the Old West than they do with sophisticated businesses.

Sound familiar?  Either buy the book now! or wait for my lengthier review in an upcoming issue of The Complete Lawyer.

Full post as published by Settle It Now Negotiation Blog on March 07, 2008 (boomark / email).