Miscellaneous

Diversity and Flexibility Connection Conference: 10/29

Posted on October 01, 2009
Now is the time to sign up for PAR's Diversity and Flexibility Conference on October 29, 2009 in Washington, D.C. Only 26 seats remain. Registration information is available on PAR's website.An all-star line up of general counsel and law firm chairs will discuss the results of their two days of meetings...

Thoughts on being a "Legal Rebel"

Posted on September 29, 2009
Many thanks to the ABA Journal for naming me a "Legal Rebel." I admit it is a little embarrassing (am I really a rebel? And surely the video did not have to freeze on that awful picture, and now everyone knows how messy my office gets when I'm writing!), but also a little pleasing (after ten years of working on the advancement of women lawyers and work/life issues, it is nice to know someone is listening)...

Part-Time Partners, Full Success: PAR Releases New Study

Posted on September 24, 2009
PAR has released its part-time partner report, "Reduced Hours, Full Success: Part-Time Partners in U.S. Law Firms. Here is the press release:Part-Time Law Partners Succeed for Clients, FirmsNew Study Shows Reduced Schedules No Bar to Financial SuccessThrow away those preconceived ideas about part-time partners in law firms...

Survey of Women Law Firm Partners

Posted on July 17, 2009
To All Women Law Firm Partners:The three undersigned organizations are working together to examine the experiences of women law firm partners regarding business development, related compensation and partner evaluation practices with the goal of developing recommendations and best practices...

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Women Managing Partners

Posted on July 10, 2009
As is being widely reported, Carroll, Burdick & McDonough LLP has named Vicki Frieman its second woman managing partner. This is remarkable, all the more so because Ms. Frieman was apparently groomed for the position by the firm's first female managing partner, Angela Bradstreet...

Highlights from the Report on NJ Women Lawyers

Posted on May 15, 2009
Joan and Cynthia of PAR co-authored Legal Talent at the Crossroads: Why New Jersey Women Lawyers Leave the Law Firms and Why They Choose to Stay. The report is noteworthy for a number of reasons. Here are a few:While other studies have documented that women leave firms that don't have good flexible work programs, this study goes a step further and documents that flexible work programs are a key factor in their search for their next position -- and that many find what they are looking for with their new employer...

Economic Analysis of Balanced Hours vs. Layoffs

Posted on March 19, 2009
Our economic analysis of balanced hours vs. layoffs is now posted on our website.In our research, we learned an interesting bit of information from Jim Sandman, former managing partner of Arnold & Porter, about the realities of layoffs: not all billable hours get shifted from departing lawyers to remaining lawyers...

2009 New Partner Classes Stagnant for Women Lawyers

Posted on February 24, 2009
Women make up 40% or more of the new partner classes at 23 major law firms,but 14 firms fail to make any female partnersSan Francisco (February 23, 2009) ?Law firms? 2009 new partner classes show little progress for women lawyers. The good news is that at 23 of the 100 firms surveyed by the Project for Attorney Retention, the new partner classes were at least 40% female...

PAR Conference: Advancing Women Lawyers in Turbulent Times

Posted on January 30, 2009
Registration is now open for PAR's second annual conference: Strategies for Advancing Women Lawyers in Turbulent Times on March 5, 2009 on the campus of George Washington University in Washington, D.C. As you can see from the agenda, it is going to be fabulous...

Article about part-time v. layoffs now available online

Posted on January 10, 2009
If you want to read the NLJ article that started this topic, it is now available online without a subscription: Layoff Alternative: Reducing Associate Hours.

Valid objection to the reduced hours in lieu of layoffs proposal?

Posted on January 08, 2009
We said we would discuss a possibly valid objection to PAR's suggestion that law firms consider reducing associates' hours in lieu of layoffs, so in the interest of robust debate, here goes. The slowed economy is giving law firms a reason to make cuts in the associate ranks that they should have already made, regardless of their financial position...

Looking more closely at the reduced hours v. layoffs proposal

Posted on January 07, 2009
Yesterday, we acknowledged that PAR's suggestion that law firms reduce the hours of their associates in lieu of lay offs has its imperfections. We're going to disclose those, but first we would like to look at the objections raised by others thus far...

PAR Announces the Diversity and Flexibility Connection

Posted on January 06, 2009
We've launched a new initiative here at PAR: the Diversity and Flexibility Connection. The Connection will bring together the best research of the diversity and flexibility fields, with the aim of creating real progress on both fronts. One of the most significant aspects of the Connection is that it will also bring together prominent general counsels and managing partners for frank and in depth face-to-face discussions about how law firms and law departments can work together to support each other to make the legal profession more inclusive for women and minority lawyers...

More on reduced hours as an alternative to layoffs

Posted on January 06, 2009
Yesterday, we summarized an article in the National Law Journal that examined PAR's recommendation that law firms consider having associates work part-time as an alternative to laying them off. (Cost-saving option for firms: reduced hours, by Karen Sloan, Jan...

Reduced Hours as an alternative to Layoffs?

Posted on January 05, 2009
In today's National Law Journal, Karen Sloan explores an idea advanced by PAR: law firms should consider offering nonstigmatized reduced hours schedules to associates as an alternative to layoffs. (Cost-saving option for firms: reduced hours, by Karen Sloan, Jan...

Number of Men Working Part-Time Is Rising

Posted on September 30, 2008
Denise Howell writes today for the American Lawyer that lawyer dads who work part-time are rare. (Part-Time Lawyer Dads Are Still a Rare Bird) She notes that men want work/life balance, but that men are not willing to sacrifice advancement for that balance...

PAR Begins Part-Time Partner Study

Posted on September 02, 2008
In response to many inquiries from part-time partners and from law firms about the best way to structure part-time partnerships in law firms, the Project for Attorney Retention is embarking on a new study designed to identify best practices that law firms can use to develop effective policies and practices for part-time partners...

Law Students are Thinking About Work/Life Balance

Posted on August 22, 2008
I had the honor of attending the first year orientation at my former law school this week. The students of the Class of 2011 are an extremely bright, energetic, and enthusiastic group. They were eager to talk with the alumni about our law school experiences and the practice of law...

Fair Evaluations as a Business Strategy

Posted on August 13, 2008
We're all familiar with the lawyer performance evaluation process -- that nerve-wracking annual rite that partners don't have time to do and that can make or break an associate's career. What we may not be familiar with is how performance evaluations -- which could be a strategic tool to improve the performance and profitability of lawyers and law firms -- often are based on hidden biases that disadvantage women and minority lawyers...

PAR Conference in DC on May 15th

Posted on April 21, 2008
The Project for Attorney Retention will host a conference next month designed to help law firms attract, retain, and advance women lawyers: Positioning Law Firms for Long-Term Success:New Strategies for Advancing Women Lawyers May 15, 2008Marvin Center, Third Floor BallroomGeorge Washington University800 21st Street, NW, Washington, D...

PAR and Ms. JD Announce Essay Contest Winners

Posted on April 01, 2008
PAR and Ms. JD held an essay contest, asking entrants to provide a response to lawyers who may view young lawyers today who want some time outside the office as lacking in ambition.The winning essays can be read on Ms. JD's website.Here's an excerpt from the press release about the winners:New York, NY ? Fifty-four passionate and well-written entries were received by work/life balance advocates Ms...

Law Firms' New Partners Are Mostly Male

Posted on March 14, 2008
PAR is issuing today its new report on the number of women in various law firms' new partner classes. For the first time, PAR has compiled statistics for the prior three years to provide a more complete picture of the progress -- or lack thereof -- of women lawyers in law firms...

Up Next: PAR's almost annual round up of new partners

Posted on January 24, 2008
We're working away on our annual look at the new partners at large law firms: how many are women? how many worked a reduced hours schedule?We were unable to publish our round up last year, so we're including last year's numbers as well, where we have them...

Usage of Part-Time Programs Growing -- Slowly

Posted on December 11, 2007
NALP has released its 2007 part-time usage statistics. In a 12/5/07 press release, NALP reports that 5.4% of attorneys at its member firms work part-time. While this percentage remains low relative to other professional occupations (the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that for the same time period, 14% of professionals worked part-time), it has steadily climbed in recent years...

Law Firm Rankings Released Today

Posted on October 10, 2007
Want to know which law firms have the highest percentage of women partners, the most pro bono participation, or the highest number of Hispanic attorneys? A new report issued today will tell you all that and more.Law Students Building a Better Legal Profession, a group of law students from across the country "dedicated to helping law firms and lawyers recommit to a legal profession devoted to effective and efficient client service, to lawyers as people, and to the roots of our profession in service," tabulated information from NALP about the largest law firms in six markets...

PAR Launches Membership Program

Posted on September 04, 2007
Today, PAR began a membership program for law firms. Twenty-three firms have signed up as Founding Members, and more have expressed interest in joining in the coming months. Membership in PAR gives the firms a number of benefits: the ability to support PAR's research; a complimentary review of their part-time policies by PAR's expert staff; a teleconference for their attorneys who are working reduced hours about how to advance professionally; tickets to PAR's upcoming conference; and a copy of Joan and Cynthia's book, Solving the Part-Time Puzzle: The Law Firm's Guide to Balanced Hours (NALP 2004)...

New Information at The Scoop: What it is Really Like to Work Part-Time in Firms

Posted on August 22, 2007
We've had a busy summer at PAR. Joan and Cynthia have been writing and making speeches, we're in the midst of planning the first of what we hope will be annual PAR conferences for next May in DC, we've been consulting with lawyers and law firms about retention issues, and we're updating the gossip section of the PAR website: The Scoop...

UC Hastings "Opting Back In" program: Success Stories and Lessons Learned

Posted on April 06, 2007
PAR has now completed two 8-week "Opting Back In and Forging Ahead" sessions at UC Hastings College of the Law for attorneys who left law for a year or more and want to return to the legal workplace. Program Director Linda Marks reports "The program exceeded our expectations...

PAR launches the PAR Law School Project

Posted on April 02, 2007
To kick off PAR?s Law School Project, PAR co-director Joan Williams spoke at two events last week: a law student event for the Women?s Bar Association of the District of Columbia, and the Ms. J.D. conference at Yale Law School. PAR?s Law School project is designed to help legal employers respond effectively to the desire of many law students for legal jobs that offer both the opportunity to practice law at the highest level and the opportunity for work/life balance...

PAR Names Work/Life Role Models to Advisory Council

Posted on March 01, 2007
PAR is very pleased to announce that it has named to its Advisory Council the following outstanding individuals and organizations that are role models for best practices in the work/life area: Amy Bess, Partner, Sonnenshein, Nath, & Rosenthal LLP Doug Coblens, Executive Vice-President, Discovery Communications Erik Corwin, Partner, Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP Mary Cranston, Partner, Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP J...

An Ill-Advised Article

Posted on February 23, 2007
This article left me scratching my head ... over just who was clueless enough to think up the idea for writing it. I hesitate to even discuss it here for fear of giving the article more publicity than it deserves, but here goes anyway.The article is about women leaving the law and their reasons for doing so -- mostly because they decided that they weren't cut out for the law...

Part-Time Partners

Posted on February 05, 2007
Gregory Gallopoulos, managing partner of Jenner and Block, has written a terrific article about part-time partners ("How to be a Full Partner on a Part-Time Schedule", available on law.com). A main point of the article is that partners who work reduced hours need to contribute to the firm economically and in other ways, such as mentoring and firm support...

Associates v. Partners v. Clients

Posted on February 02, 2007
Stephanie Ward of the ABA Journal has a new piece out that is sure to stir some conversation -- if not a hornet's nest. The article, "The Ultimate Time-Money Trade-Off," appears in the February issue of the ABA Journal and is available for a limited time online at the ABA Journal eReport...

Flextime for the Rest of Us

Posted on January 08, 2007
A recent article in the NY TImes, "Flextime for the Rest of Us," features P.J. Himmelfarb, one of the two Weil Gotshal flex-time partners. Ms. Himmelfarb joined Weil 4 years ago after one of her twin daughters was diagnosed with autism. From the beginning, she worked a flexible schedule which included moving around the country to seek new therapies for her daughter...

More on Fenwick & West

Posted on January 05, 2007
Thanks to Ralph Pais for a quick response regarding Fenwick & West's work/life policies. He confirms that the firm has a terrific reduced hours policy, and has put together several programs to support its successful implementation. The firm is also planning to feature work/life issues at its upcoming all-attorney firm retreat...

Fenwick & West Implements Innovative Diversity Program

Posted on January 05, 2007
Jesse Seyfer of The Recorder reports on a laudable new program at Fenwick & West that ties partner compensation to how well the partners support the firm's diversity goals ("Fenwick Redefines Color of Money with Diversity Goals"). Partners are given a list of suggested activities to improve minority recruiting and retention, among other things, and then associates are allowed to evaluate the partners on how well they performed...

Where Are Women in Law Firms?

Posted on October 29, 2006
A new report from NAWL provides a good snapshot of where women are now in the legal profession. The report is available here, and the press relase here.NAWL sent a survey to the 200 largest law firms in the U.S., and 103 responded. Based on those survey responses, NAWL reports that about half of associates are women, and women make up 28% of "of counsel," 26% of non-equity partners, 16% of equity partners, and 5% of managing partners...

New Report: "Opt Out" or Pushed Out?

Posted on October 17, 2006
Many women doubt there is an "opt out revolution", and a new report posted on PAR's website proves their doubt is well-founded. The report, "Opt Out" or Pushed Out?: How the Press Covers Work/Family Conflict" shows that press reports of women choosing to stay home have made sweeping generalizations about female workers from very limited examples of women who are not representative of female workers as a whole...

Job Satisfaction Blog for Lawyers

Posted on September 14, 2006
The headline caught my eye: "55% of Men Would Take Less Pay for a Satisfying Job." The article is one of many work/life articles on a terrific blog for attorneys called JD Bliss. I've been reading the blog for a while now and have been remiss in waiting so long to talk about it...

Excellent Report on Retention and Advancement of Women

Posted on August 30, 2006
The Women's Bar Association of the District of Columbia had an Initiative on the Advancement and Retention of Women this past spring (see the Up To PAR blog archive for details about the Initiative).The report of the Initiative is now available for free online at the WBA's website...

What Is It Really Like to Work Part-Time at a Firm?

Posted on August 22, 2006
PAR is frequently asked by law students and attorneys looking to change firms which firms are best for attorneys who want to have a life outside the office and still be able to have a rewarding professional life inside the office. Fortunately, we can often give some insider information, thanks to all the terrific attorneys who share their experiences with us...

Firms Still on the Recruiting/Attrition Treadmill

Posted on August 15, 2006
Natalie's post last week was so good that it is worth repeating. Consider this a p.s. to her 8/8/06 blog below. An article on today?s law.com says that firms are having a harder time recruiting (?Law Firms Rework Campus Recruiting? by Leigh Jones, The National Law Journal, Aug...

Money Isn't Everything: Bigger Salaries Are Not the Solution to Law Firm Attrition

Posted on August 08, 2006
As noted in BigLaw Associate Pay Surges in 2006 in today's New York Lawyer, the big firms have got it all wrong. While PAR is not opposed to raising salaries for junior associates who toil long hours at big law firms across the United States, throwing money at junior associates may get them in the law firm door, but it ultimately will not help firms keep them...

D.A. Rice?s Many Errors

Posted on July 27, 2006
Part-Time ADAs Are Forced to Choose ? Full-Time or No-Time (But D.A. Hopes to Create Second Class Track for Part-Timers in Future) Nassau County District Attorney Kathleen Rice had a choice, and she made a poor one. She chose to force the Office?s dozen part-time Assistant District Attorneys?all women, almost all mothers?to ?choose? between their part-time schedules and their jobs...

Blogging World Abuzz as Attorney Mom is Fired

Posted on July 17, 2006
Denise Howell, a very experienced intellectual property attorney who was one of the first legal bloggers (she is credited with coining the word "blawg"), has been fired from her firm, Reed Smith. You can read her blawg post about her firing here.She says she can't talk publicly about her firing, but she makes it clear that workplace inflexibility (she has a young child) played a part...

Got Kids? Savvy Clients Care

Posted on April 28, 2006
Some female clients are all business ? apparently, this is considered news because of their gender. In ?Got Kids? These Clients Don?t Care,? (Kellie Schmitt, The Recorder, April 26, 2006), two female in-house attorneys were quoted as saying that they want their female outside counsel to give them 100% of their attention and to refrain from discussing their kids...

New Partner Classes: Good News and Bad News

Posted on March 31, 2006
It is time once again to look at the new partner classes at law firms (U.S. offices only) and see how the women are doing. The good news is that an increasing number of firms have new partner classes that are 25 - 33% female...