One of my closest friends is a senior litigation partner at one of the largest law firms in Australia. She has always worked part-time through an arrangement with her firm where she works more than full-time during hectic trial periods and then will take a few weeks or a month off during the various school holidays. I have always admired her tenacity in making this work despite some pushback from her partners when she first started this arrangement eighteen years ago.

Recently, she remarked to me that flexible work arrangements were now common at the large national and international firms in Sydney. I was very surprised as such arrangements are still uncommon in Canada. In fact many, if not most partners here believe that law (and especially litigation) is not at all suited to part-time work arrangements.

In a survey published in the Australian national newspaper The Australian on November 4, 2011, thirteen of the largest firms reported that 9.4% of their lawyers work some form of flexible work arrangements – either reduced hours or working from home on a regular basis. While this number is still small, the trend over the past five years shows a steady increase. Norton Rose (Australia) now has 40% of its female partners on some form of flexible work arrangement. Norton Rose has also been pursuing a strategy to increase their number of female partners. In 2005 only 9% of their partners were female. They set a target of 20% by 2011 and exceeded it by reaching 22% last year. They have now set a higher target.

The statistics out of Australia amongst senior female associates working part-time are even more remarkable. The firms average 28.6% (down from 31.5% in 2009) though Minter Ellison tops the list at 54.6% of their female senior associates working part-time. As these senior associates become partners, it is certain that they will not be giving up their part-time arrangements as a condition of becoming a partner. It is anticipated that the number of part-time partners will grow rapidly over the next few years.

So why has Australia – a country which some Canadians smugly think is more chauvinistic than here – moved so far ahead of us in adopting more flexible work arrangements? The answer is competition for the best and brightest law graduates. Law school graduating classes in Australia have been 70% female for the past many years. In Canada, our law school graduates are fairly evenly balanced between men and women with women sometimes graduating in slightly higher numbers.

The higher female graduates in Australia is a result of law being a first degree where you enter right out of high school. As anyone who has ever attended a high school graduation ceremony in Canada knows, it is overwhelming girls walking across the stage to pick up most of the academic prizes and scholarships. Fortunately, for Canadian boys, they have four years at university to improve their grades and enter law school now only slightly behind in numbers to the girls.

This dramatic “feminization” of the legal graduates in Australia has forced the firms to look for ways to attract and retain the best and the brightest grads who are now primarily female. Not surprisingly, more and more male lawyers want similar work arrangements as their female colleagues. While the great majority of part-time lawyers at the largest firms are female (87.4%) more male lawyers are also moving to part-time. Norton Rose has 15% of their male lawyers working part-time while Allens Arthur Robinson tops the list with 20% of their of their male lawyers choosing part-time work.

This is a trend that is not going away. With both parents in the workforce and working at equally demanding jobs such as law, medicine or accounting, more Canadian lawyers both male and female are looking for ways to manage their family responsibilities. The days of the at-home wife supporting the busy law firm partner are quickly fading if they haven’t already disappeared. The Australian study shows that it is not just lawyers with children who are looking for reduced hours or reduced stress from commuting. All lawyers are seeking ways to manage the stress of higher billing targets, higher housing costs, increased global competition, faster turn-around times and clients demanding lower fees.

Flexible work arrangements whether it is part-time work or simply less face-time in the office to reduce weekly commutes, is fast becoming the single most important recruitment and retention tool for law firms. If our Australian colleagues can make it work both financially and for their clients, then Canadian law firms can do the same. There’s a lot we can learn by looking Down Under.

A conversation I often have with partners (both male and female) goes like this. The partner tells me, “We bend over backwards to help our women associates by accommodating lengthy maternity leaves; putting on programs to help them develop business; holding events for potential female clients and allow some women to work reduced hours. But it makes no difference – the women lawyers still leave.”

These partners are correct. Despite these programs, the women lawyers still leave. They leave because these programs do not address the deeper reasons why women leave private practice either voluntarily or are dismissed by firms who do not see many women as potential partners. The deeper reasons require an understanding of the gender bias inherent both in law firm structures and in the often, unconscious attitudes of senior lawyers.

This bias can be held by women as well as by men. Since women have had to adapt to a largely male workplace in order to succeed, many women have unconsciously adopted similar attitudes as their male colleagues. Most partners feel no conscious discrimination against women. They abhor clearly biased practices such as sexual harassment or a reluctance to hire female articling students or associates.

However, bias against any group whether it is women or people from a different cultural background or sexual orientation is often unconscious and requires educating ourselves about our hidden beliefs and how this belief shows up in our actions. If you wish to test yourself for bias through implicit associations, try the fascinating tests for gender associations and other sorts of unconscious associations with various groups at https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/demo/

An excellent discussion of these systemic biases can be found in an article by the prolific writer Ida Abbott (www.idaabbott.com/publications/articles) titled “How Political Dynamics Undermine Gender Balance in Law Firm Leadership and What Your Firm Must Do About It.”

To cite but one example from Abbott’s article many people see the defining qualities of women leaders as “taking care” behaviors while male defining qualities are seen as “taking charge” behaviors. “Taking care” includes being friendly, sensitive and compassionate and having strong interpersonal skills. “Taking charge” characteristics include being ambitious, assertive, competitive and action-oriented. The “taking charge” male characteristics are usually associated with leadership. While men are perceived as “natural” leaders when women demonstrate these same “taking charge” characteristics they are not seen as natural leaders but as harsh, aggressive and uncaring. The women’s behavior contradicts people’s expectations of how women should behave.

Abbott goes on to identify how unconscious attitudes about how women should behave influences work assignments, compensation programs, business development practices, leadership opportunities and succession planning. Her solution is for partners to educate themselves about their unconscious associations, often negative in relation to women, and then put in place programs and systems that will eliminate these attitudes.

Getting law firms to implement such strategies is challenging. While law firms can hire business consultants knowledgeable about the elimination of negative gender associations, lawyers can be skeptical of outsiders imposing corporate practices that may limit partners’ control of the firm. However, consultants are only advisors not decision makers. They can help lawyers see that their assumptions about women lawyers may be entirely incorrect and are in fact, inhibiting the firm from moving forward.

There are many studies showing that the more gender diversity on boards, amongst managers and on work teams – the better the results are for the bottom line and for clients. As our clients are increasingly diverse and the world demands solutions to more complex problems, we need to capitalize on the different strengths that women bring to the table. When those strengths look like weaknesses to partners who are familiar with only one way of behaving and thinking, the firm loses this opportunity for growth. It also loses intelligent women who can help firms adapt to an increasingly complex world.

Unlike leaders at larger corporations, partners are rarely exposed to management training that includes organizational behavior and development or employee engagement. Lawyers are trained in the law not management practices. In order to retain more women, partners must first educate themselves about their own unconscious attitudes. Next, they must examine what successful corporations are doing to change their compensation programs, succession planning, business development practices, management structures and training and mentoring programs to learn how these business practices can be adapted to law firms.

Programs like those described at the beginning of this column will get women in the door and are valuable for that reason. But however well meaning these programs are, the women lawyers will still leave. Einstein said “We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them”. When we open our minds to a new way of thinking about how women can contribute to a firm’s success, we also open the door to stronger firms better positioned to address the future needs of clients. A host of positive programs and models exist. In a future column, I will examine programs that can help law firms address these issues.

The Law Society of Upper Canada has just announced a program that will provide up to six hours of coaching to assist women leaving and then returning from maternity or compassionate leave. The coaching will be available only to sole practitioners and to women working in law firms of five or fewer lawyers. It is estimated that 35 women will access this program in the first year.

This program is similar to one offered in Manitoba since 2008 where female or male lawyers and their spouses or life partners can receive six confidential sessions with the Law Society Equity Ombudsperson. These sessions focus on more than just returning to work but also include how to talk to your firm about the various leave options and how to transition your clients and files as you leave. All lawyers are eligible not just sole practitioners or lawyers working in small firms.

Each of these programs and others like them are attempting to assist women (and increasingly men) at one of the most challenging times in their legal careers – when they take a leave to have or adopt a child.

Not surprisingly, it is women lawyers who are sole practitioners or who work in smaller firms who have the most difficult time maintaining their practice. Unlike women in large firms where their EI benefits may be topped up close to their usual pay, a sole practitioner can see her income drop to zero while still having to pay rent, salaries and other office expenses in order to keep her practice open.

As a result of successful lobbying by the CBA, the legislation governing EI benefits was amended in 2010 to permit those people who are self-employed to access maternity and parental leave benefits that previously were available only to employed associates. A self-employed lawyer must pay the necessary premiums in advance to be eligible. This change is a tremendous help to lawyers working on their own and one of the many reasons all lawyers should support the CBA.

British Columbia has just completed a two-year pilot project offering a $2000 a month loan up to a maximum of four months or $8000 to self-employed women lawyers who have no access to any other maternity or parental leave programs. The loan must be paid back monthly over a four year period. This is not meant as income replacement but to cover the cost of overhead while the lawyer is on leave.

Each of these recent programs is an example of small but important steps taken to support women lawyers to remain in the practice of law.

Parental leave for fathers is also gaining ground. Many of the larger firms now offer a month’s leave with pay for their male lawyers to assist their wives or partners after a birth or an adoption. If the couple does not live in the same city as their families, this support is crucial to help mothers with newborns and care for other siblings. As more and more men are married to women who are also lawyers or who work in some equally demanding job, it may be the wife who has the greater earning potential. In this case the man may wish to take a longer parental leave (up to 37 weeks under the legislation) so his wife can return to work.

Maternity and parental leave may soon cease to be a gender issue affecting primarily women. It is increasingly becoming a generational issue as more couples determine who has the greater earning capacity and should stay home with a new baby. At the moment, the coaching about to be offered in Ontario is only available to women. However, the time will come when there is an equal demand from men who wish to take a leave from the practice of law after a birth or an adoption. While it is still only women who bear children, increasingly the support of those children is becoming a shared responsibility where fathers want and are expected to take a more active role.

Most Canadian law firms of any significant size have written parental leave policies. What many firms lack are written guidelines to assist women lawyers leaving and returning from maternity leave. As these leaves can be lengthy (up to 12 months) reintegrating back into law firm life and ramping work back up is a very daunting prospect for most women lawyers. There is often a feeling that you must figure this out on your own with no clear understanding of the firm’s expectations. This feeling of isolation can make returning from maternity leave one of the most difficult times in a woman lawyer’s career.

There are many ways a firm can support their returning female associates that have little to no financial cost but pay huge dividends in helping ease women associates back into practice. Here are four simple tips a law firm can adopt that give women lawyers a better chance at returning to the practice of law.

Offer a gradual return to work schedule. 

Just figuring out how to get out the door in the morning now that you have a toddler clinging to you knees can be enough to make some women want to give up on the whole endeavor. Offer returning associates the opportunity to work two days their first week back and then three days during the second week. While some firms offer a reduced workweek for longer periods of time, even a two week gradual re-entry can promote a more successful return. A gradual return to work can start either at the end of the maternity leave or the associate can return two weeks earlier.

Another important benefit is that the associate can reconnect with the partners and discuss what client work can start to be sent her way. She can also start familiarizing herself with client files so that when she returns full time she is up to speed more quickly and will already have work waiting.

Assign a buddy to keep in touch with the associate while she is away.

While most new mothers do not want to handle files while on maternity leave, they often want to keep in touch with what is happening at the firm and with clients. The transition back to work is much easier when there has been some regular contact with the firm. The amount of contact should be left to the woman to decide. But assigning a partner to be the associate’s official liaison with the firm sends a signal that the partners want to support the woman’s return.

While the buddy can be a male or a female partner, it must be someone who appreciates the challenges a woman faces and who already has a good relationship with the associate.

Mentoring Circles or Women’s Forums.

A third tip is to encourage women lawyers with children to offer on-going support to each other. Group mentoring is one of the best ways for women to share advice and feel that they are not alone in figuring out how to ramp up their practice. If the firm provides lunch or offers to bring in speakers on issues such as parenting or business development, this is even better.

Put it in writing.

The fourth and most important tip is to put any guidelines in writing. Written guidelines signal the partners’ support and commitment to the retention of those women who juggle the demands of parenting and a busy practice. It says, “We understand that this is challenging and we want you to succeed.”

Associates need more than training in the law and practice management in order to be good lawyers. Women – and increasingly men who are also parents – need on-going support to manage the many demands on a lawyer’s time. Simple suggestions put in writing can change a law firm’s culture to one that focuses on solutions to retaining its women lawyers. These small steps can lead to a continuing conversation that will benefit everyone in the firm.

The retention of women in private practice continues to be a challenge. Although women now form the majority of graduates from law school, they leave the profession at much higher rates than men. The BC Law Society reports that 36 per cent of women leave the profession in their first five years in practice compared to 22 per cent of men.

Over the years, many women lawyers have tried to convince law firms to adopt broader alternate work arrangements or entry requirements into partnership but have found law firms very difficult to change. When change has not happened as quickly or as broadly as women want or need, they have left private practice for in-house positions or left the profession entirely. The challenge for women is that partnerships are not corporations. The partnership structure, especially it's financial structure, makes accommodating different workplace arrangements very difficult to sell to partners who must see a personal financial benefit to the change.

The first hurdle is the decision-making structure of most partnerships. It is often necessary to obtain a consensus where either all partners or two-thirds of the partners agree to any changes in the workplace. In many firms, one powerful partner can block any change. When a partner sees any increase in employee benefits or costing of a workplace change as coming directly out of the partner's pocket, they can be resistant to contributing to any program that does not have a direct financial benefit to their individual practice regardless of the benefits to the firm.

Corporations typically do not require all of the management team or a majority of their employees to agree to workplace changes. They make their decisions on what will help the long-term competitiveness of the entire organization. Improvements to workplace policies that will help with recruitment, retention, morale or productivity and further increase corporate profits are an easier sell to management. Since individual compensation (with the exception of bonuses) is based on corporate performance and not simply on the revenues generated by one person, workplace improvements are more easily supported and financed.

In a partnership, it is typically the senior partners who control all decision-making. If a partner is heading towards retirement in a few years, he or she has little invested in the on-going profitability of the law firm once they leave. As long as they are paid out their partnership buy-in and their accounts receivable when they leave the firm, partners have no on-going financial interest in the firm's future. This can make it difficult to get the senior partners to vote for anything that will not benefit them in the short term prior to retirement.

In a corporation, retiring employees may draw a pension and health benefits or own shares in the company that all form part of their retirement income. It is in management's interests to have the corporation adopt policies that will keep it competitive and financially viable far into the future and long after those employees have left the organization. Those policies increasingly are focused on recruitment and retention strategies where flexible work arrangements play an important role.

The partnership model in larger firms is based on the continuous rotation of associates at junior levels of call. Some work must be performed by more junior lawyers at lower hourly rates in order to keep the cost to the client at reasonable levels. Since most larger law firms cannot absorb all associates into the partnership, the majority of associates will be let go so that they can be replaced with less expensive more junior lawyers. Corporations do not charge out on an individual hourly basis, so they do not need to replenish their junior staff. The retention of good junior employees who may never be promoted into management is necessary for corporations to survive.

Partners in the larger firms not only expect this constant turnover, they are dependent on it. This means they are less motivated to keep all their associates, including their female associates. Associates can always be replaced by other bright, capable law school grads. While there is a high cost to a firm when associates, especially senior associates, leave without becoming a partner, the law firms often view this cost as the price of doing business.

There are many other reasons that make law firms reluctant to embrace workplace policies to retain more women. However, the fundamental financial structure of partnerships where each partner is responsible for generating their own revenue makes accommodating women a more difficult challenge than in the corporate world.

One of the attractions for many lawyers of working for a corporation as an in-house counsel is not just the release from billing targets and business development but also the release from the pressures of the up or out partnership model. While corporations can have their own politics, heavy workloads, downsizings and poor workplace practices, they can also have the financial ability or competitive pressures to adopt more flexible workplace options that women and many younger male lawyers now crave.

The challenge for law firm partnerships is to find ways to attract and retain bright, capable lawyers who need flexible workplace arrangements in order to survive in today's demanding world. It can be done without sacrificing partnership incomes or profits but it requires convincing partners that there is something in it for them.

The Globe and Mail reported recently (November 12, 2011) that only 30% of judges appointed by the Conservative government since 2006 have been women. (So far in 2011 just under 20% of appointments have been women.) This is a significant decrease from the last year of the Liberal government when 40% of their judicial appointments were women. A spokesperson for the Justice Department stated that the number of appointments reflects the number of female applicants.

In the past, it has been argued that the number of female federally appointed judges (32% in total) has been similar to the percentage of women in the legal profession. However, with women now forming approximately 37% of the lawyers in Canada, the percentage of female judges is falling quickly behind not only the profession but also what many Canadians expect – a judiciary that reflects Canadian reality and not just the legal profession.

Some argue correctly, that the lower judicial percentage reflects the smaller number of women with sufficient seniority to be eligible for appointment to the bench. The majority of women lawyers are clustered closer to the junior end of their careers. However, the number of senior women lawyers in private practice is increasing so slowly that it will be a long time to wait for greater female judicial representation if appointments stay locked below the percentage of women in the practice of law.

The challenge with women reaching parity with men in the legal profession is that despite graduating slightly more women than men from law school since the mid-90’s, women leave the profession at twice the rate as men. This attrition starts around the fifth year of call. As most students graduate from law school in their late 20’s or even their early 30’s, women hit their prime child bearing years at the same time as their careers require longer hours in order to become a partner.

After five years of practice, lawyers start to move into the senior associate ranks and must seriously start to build their book of business to become eligible for partnership. This requires time spent in the evenings sitting on boards or entertaining prospective clients. Firms look more closely at whether the senior associate is consistently hitting their annual targets. This can require longer hours into the evening and on weekends to make sure that billings are high.

For many women, all of this extra work comes at precisely the wrong time in their family life. While partnership is often delayed to accommodate maternity leaves, many women do not want a life of such unrelenting demands both at work and at home. Many opt out of private practice and move in-house. With the exception of working for the Crown or the Justice Department, in-house lawyers are rarely appointed to the bench.

Another challenge is that federally appointed trial judges must travel around the province to sit in smaller communities for a week and sometimes longer at a time. If a woman has young children (not uncommon for women lawyers who often have their children later in life in order to establish their careers) travelling away from home for such extended periods is simply not an option. For this reason, many women prefer to apply to the provincial bench where travelling to different courthouses does not usually require an overnight stay.

In the recent annual report from the National Association of Women Lawyers in the US (Sixth Annual National Survey on Retention and Promotion of Women in Law Firms) comes the discouraging news that women for the first time in the six years of this survey are actually a decreasing percentage of lawyers in big firms.

In addition, women increasingly hold positions (staff attorneys, counsel or income partners) where they are not eligible to become equity partners and participate in firm leadership. In the US only 15% of equity partners are women. (In Canada, it is slightly higher.) Similarly, the number of women entering law schools in the US is starting to decline with only 46% of all law school grads being female. (Again, in Canada women form more than 50% of law school students and in Ontario it is as high as 60%.)

Prior to 1975, when women started to attend law school in greater numbers, women lawyers formed less that 5% of the legal profession. Some 36 years later in Canada, women now make up approximately 37% of the profession – a growth rate of less than 1% a year. If this growth rate continues – not a certainty if women continue to leave private practice at significant rates after five years call – then it will be at least another 15 years before the profession reaches parity between men and women. It will take much longer for women to advance beyond their current 26% of lawyers in private practice. If trends in the US of fewer women entering law school start to appear in Canada, this will also impact the long-term pool of women maturing into seasoned lawyers available for the bench.

The challenge for the government is that society is demanding a court that reflects the population both with respect to gender and other diversity criteria such as ethnic background. No one is suggesting that priority be given to these demographic criteria over competency. However, ways must be found to support women to stay in private practice longer so that sufficient senior women are eligible for judicial appointments. Equally important, the government must look seriously at the many highly competent women who are applying for judicial appointment and move towards a court that reflects the talents and experience of both genders.

For many lawyers, their workdays could best be described as chaotic, out of control or constant crisis management. They arrive at the office with no clear plan about how they are going to spend the day but just let the day unfold responding to each email or phone call as it appears. While their day may be productive and billable as this is all work needing attention, the feeling that all they are doing is putting out fires can be very frustrating.

Over the long term this type of crisis management means that matters requiring blocks of time do not get completed; “dog” files are continually avoided and remain barking on the desk; clients who are not as demanding get ignored and angry; and often work that could wait gets priority while more important work gets insufficient attention. A lawyer who allows her day to unfold without any strategy around what will be accomplished that day is headed for burnout. After all – who wants to feel they are at the mercy of whoever screams the loudest for attention.

There are dozens of time management tips and strategies but here are four “take back your life” tips to create a more satisfying day.

• Distinguish between what is important and what is urgent. This is one of the main themes in Stephen Covey’s well-known book on time management “First Things First”. Our clients may think that each of their issues is urgent but if we let the client dictate what is urgent, we end up with too many bosses and competing demands. Determine what can wait and what needs immediate attention. Make sure you attend to the important not the urgent matters. More significantly, determine what is important for you to lead a healthy, more fulfilling life. Often, it is getting to the gym or making sure you get out the door by 6 pm that is important to schedule into your day, despite all the urgent matters on your desk.
• One of my favourite time management books is titled “Never Check Email In The Morning.” The author, Julie Morgenstern doesn’t mean this literally. She means avoid the black hole of email that can suck you in so that you never get to the important work you need to accomplish today. Email can be a great time-waster as not all of it requires immediate attention. If you can’t stop yourself from replying to every email that instantly pops up, consider checking for important emails only on your blackberry or IPhone. You may be less tempted to reply if you don’t want to send a cryptic short answer on your phone. Most email can wait until later in the day to answer. Don’t be an email slave.
• Determine when you are at your highest and lowest energy points during the day. Are you a morning, afternoon or evening person? There is a myth that the most productive people are morning people who get into the office at 6 am and have three solid, billable hours of productive work done before anyone else has even got their coffee. These morning people are productive. But so are afternoon people who pick up speed as the day progresses. When the early risers are peaking at 3 pm, afternoon people are hitting their stride and their most productive time of the day may be from 3 to 6 pm.

  The trick is to recognize when you are at your most productive and focused and schedule work that requires your greatest concentration during that time. Save non-billable work or work that requires less concentration for first thing in the morning, if you are a slow starter or later in the day, if you are an early riser. Of course, the afternoon person has to turn off the phone in order to get that quiet time that an early riser gains. But if afternoons are your most productive time, guard it by shutting off interruptions as much as you can.

• Take a short break every 90 to 120 minutes. There is a lot of research that shows we can only maintain our peak focus and concentration without a break for a maximum of one and half to two hours at a time. After that, our attention wanders and we are not as productive as we were before. The break need only be for 10 minutes but it should involve getting up out of the chair, stretching and moving around. Taking a break by surfing the Internet, while a pleasant diversion, is not giving our brains or eyes a rest. A walk outside around the building breathing outside air will make you more productive when you return. Lawyers are so programmed to record every 6 minutes like an assembly line worker that we are reluctant to take even a 10-minute break in our day. Taking regular short breaks will increase your focus and you will feel less tired at the end of the day.

Managing time is within our control. We cannot determine what client demands will appear each day but we can decide how we are going to react to them. Taking control over how you are going to spend your ten hours in the office not only makes your day more productive and satisfying but it puts you in charge of your life instead of allowing others to dictate how your day unfolds.

The newspaper reported on the Labour Day weekend that September is one of the busiest months for family lawyers. Tense spouses see the kids back to school and finally call their lawyer to initiate legal proceedings that were put on hold over the summer.

Most of us are conditioned to think of the Tuesday after Labour Day as the start of the New Year. For years, the return to school meant new teachers, friends, courses, crayons and even new clothes. January 1^st, stuck in darkest winter seems to be the wrong time of year to think about fresh starts. The promise of longer days with more light is still many months away. I prefer the Jewish calendar that places Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish New Year) in September and emphasizes new beginnings.

Women lawyers with children see September and June as two of the most hectic months of the year. Their calendars are jammed with school start-up or wind-down events to organize and attend. TS Elliot may have said that “April is the cruelest month” but most parents would name September as the most challenging to navigate.

So what resolution can we adopt as we start this New Year to reduce the feeling of being over-whelmed? First, notice I said resolution singular not plural. People can usually only change one thing at a time. And who needs more things to do? While it’s fine to have more than one goal, it’s best if we work through that list – one goal at a time. Also, never underestimate the power of taking a very small step. Small steps can have a bigger impact than we realize.

Here are some of my favourite small steps for women lawyers with school age children as we start the New Year.

If you work in a law firm and not from home, make this the year you connect with your children’s school. Talk to the teacher or parent rep now about attending at least one school field trip or class event per child. Tell them you need lots of advance notice to schedule this into your busy work calendar. It’s only 1 or 2 days a year per child.

I can’t remember most of the legal files I worked on 10 years ago but I remember vividly the day I spent at the Mining Museum. My son remembers it vividly, too and he turns 21 tomorrow.

Work from home (if you can) one morning every 2 or 3 weeks so that on one day in the month, you connect with the other kids and mothers on the school ground. Mornings are often easier to work from home as you can go back after lunch and put out any fires that need your face-to-face attention. It’s also harder to leave the office at noon once you’re up to your neck in alligators. They pull you back under. My sons and I remember those few walking–to-school together mornings, vividly too.

If you never get time alone with your husband or partner – finally hire a sitter for a regular date night or for 3 hours on a Saturday afternoon so that you can go for a run or have breakfast or whatever lets you have adult conversation that is not about homework, who is picking up who from soccer practice or what should we have for dinner. You will both remember those times more vividly than the car pool schedule. (And, hopefully, you will not be one of those clients calling a family lawyer in September.)

Keep a binder with all the school notices, soccer field maps, birthday invitations, pizza menus – whatever – so you don’t have to scramble at 8 AM to find out how much money you need to send to school for pizza day. Or maybe all this now comes home electronically and it’s beautifully organized on your computer in one place and binders show that my kids went to school in the ancient paper age.

Book a weekly massage or yoga class or hire a coach at the gym – whatever helps you manage your stress on a daily basis. Take short breaks at work every 90 minutes – walk at lunch or home from work – meditate in your car at noon if that is the only place you can get 15 minutes of uninterrupted time.

Manage transitions from the hectic office to the full-onslaught of kids when you walk in the door at 6 PM. If you can walk for 15 minutes before getting home to unwind even a little before arriving at the front door, your kids will love you for it. Studies show that kids’ first choice isn’t more time with their parents. Their first choice is less grumpy, stressed out parents for whatever time they get.

Without a daily stress release, it just builds up and women lawyers often walk away from their law practice, as they can’t manage two hectic lives. If I have one (only one?) regret about practicing law 50 hours a week while getting up three times a night with a toddler who didn’t sleep through till morning until he was 3 – it’s that I didn’t do enough self-care – especially exercise and stress management.

We need to follow the airplane rule – put on your own oxygen mask before assisting your child. Your clients as well as your family and you will survive September and beyond. And more women will stay in the practice of law.

A newly minted partner that I know, was hit with the realization that while she has a robust group of clients, she can no longer look to her firm to send her work as they did when she was an associate. Lisa knows that developing new business is now completely up to her. She also now has a responsibility to make sure that associates in her medium-sized firm are given sufficient work that they too are profitable.

When Lisa looks at her marketing plan, it includes all the right activities. She regularly contacts existing and old clients. She gives client seminars and sends out legal up-dates. She takes clients – current and prospective – out for lunch. She sits on a board. She speaks at conferences and writes articles. However, all this good business development activity is not growing her practice as much as she would like. She wonders if there is anything else she can do.

The one area that Lisa has over-looked is her own firm. I asked her whether her firm does much cross-selling. While she says that it is encouraged, she rarely hears of lawyers in her firm introducing new clients to other partners. If it happens at all, it is because the client has specifically asked for help on a new matter and has been referred to another lawyer for assistance. She is not aware of a partner initiating a conversation with a client that would lead to work for another partner. 

Lisa believes that all her colleagues are so busy that they simply don’t have time to be proactive in helping other partners gain new clients. While the partners are always encouraging their associates to look for new clients for the firm, she doesn’t think that the partners model this behavior with respect to helping the firm – and not just their individual practice – attract new clients. Nor is there any monetary incentive by way of originating credits for partners who bring in new clients for other partners. This is a firm where partners work independently missing the benefit of a team or firm approach to marketing their joint practices.

Lisa also wonders if the partners are somewhat protective of their clients and almost afraid that if another partner forms a relationship with the client, the client may prefer the new lawyer. I said that while that might happen within the same practice group, there should be little concern if the second partner works in an entirely different area of law. 

When I suggested that Lisa could start cross-selling within her firm even if no one else were doing so — she was uncertain even where to begin. As her firm’s most junior partner, she didn’t yet feel comfortable bringing this up at a partners’ meeting and asking her colleagues for support. If she did raise the issue, she wasn’t certain what to suggest to make cross-selling happen.

She could begin, I offered, by educating her partners about the legal services she could provide to their clients. She needs to get on her partners’ radar about how she can help them better serve their clients. In this way, she wasn’t asking them to send her work as much as she was offering to help them be better lawyers. Lisa could take a colleague to lunch, visit other practice group meetings or offer to put on a luncheon seminar about her area of expertise. 

Secondly, I suggested that she begin with keeping her colleagues up-to-date with changes in her area of law that may impact their clients. Brief “alerts” about changes in legislation and recent cases that may impact another partner’s clients may lead to conversations with the client about how Lisa could assist the client. 

Thirdly, she can invite another partner or associate to lunch with one of her own clients to discuss a topic that may be of interest to the client. Hopefully, the client will contact Lisa’s firm if they have a new problem outside Lisa’s practice area. 

Similarly, Lisa can work with the younger associates to help them with their business development skills by offering to go to lunch with an associate’s prospective client. Not only will this support a junior lawyer who may feel timid about asking a possible new client to lunch but it may lead to the client coming to the firm.

While the partners in Lisa’s firm are not yet proactive in cross-selling each other’s services, one person can lead the way to show others how easy it is for everyone to benefit. A nineteenth century clergyman once said, “Charity begins at home but it doesn’t end there.” The same could be said for cross-selling. 

The magic words that every associate wants to hear from a partner is that the associate is now “thinking like an owner”. These words mean that the junior lawyer realizes the difference between being an employee and becoming a partner in a professional services firm. It means that the associate has grasped the difference between a partnership structure and a corporation. 

Many young lawyers starting out believe that being smart, skilled and working hard will naturally lead to partnership. While this may lead to promotions within a corporate structure, in a professional services firm such as law, accounting or consulting, every partner is an owner not an employee. This means business development and revenue generation is the necessary key to partnership. However, the opportunity to become a partner has many other variables outside the control of both the associate and the firm. 

The economy may impact business, a partner may leave and take clients with her or a major client may suddenly switch firms – all events that may not be within the firm’s control. The associate may now be in a practice area where there is not sufficient work to admit an additional partner or even retain a senior associate.

When the senior associate is let go, they are sometimes bewildered when they see a less experienced associate brought in to replace them. The answer is, of course, that the partners must keep the work affordable to the client and need an associate at a lower hourly rate. The more senior associate’s hard won experience has worked against her when the work dries up and keeping costs down becomes a priority.

Younger associates then ask me why the firm doesn’t simply move them to another practice area where they see there is so much work that the partners and associates are working very long hours. Again, the answer may lie in the higher hourly rate that the more senior associate carries. It costs the firm money to train a more senior associate in the new area of law when the junior work could be done at a lower hourly rate.

In addition to the economics of running a practice, there is also the more subjective assessment of “fit”. Any aspiring partner is assessed not just on skill, business development capability and revenue generation but also on whether they will work well with the others in their practice group and the firm as a whole.

So what can young associates do to improve their chances of becoming a partner when there are so many variables over which they may have little control? Additionally, if partnership is not offered, how can an associate ensure that she will find another job? Associates should focus on four things. 

1. Marketability

   It is important to maintain your marketability both within the firm and outside in the event that you are not made an offer of partnership. This means acquiring as many skills as you can through professional development courses and work experience.

   Professional development should not be limited to technical legal skills. Training in finance, public speaking, negotiation or business skills make you more employable with a law firm or in the corporate world. Similarly, experience gained by sitting on boards or volunteering on CBA sections or committees broadens your technical and leadership skills and enhances your partnership prospects as well as your marketability.

   You must get to know partners outside your practice group and gain more diverse experience. Many associates work in a narrow area of law that limits their marketability. The firm may, understandably, be reluctant to let a badly needed associate work with other practice areas in the firm. The associate should lobby as hard as they can to ensure they acquire broader legal skills.

   The other obvious advantage in getting to know partners outside your practice area is that it increases the number of partners who can speak positively to your application for partnership. It is better to have many champions over just a few.

2. Feedback

   If the firm does a poor job in giving feedback at your annual performance review or as is common, you do not receive a performance review, you need to ask for frank feedback from as many partners as possible.

   Law firms, unlike many corporations, often neglect good management practices to develop their associates through performance reviews and career development sessions. Few lawyers are trained in management and even where the firm has performance reviews in place, often the feedback can be minimal to none.

   In addition, a partner uncomfortable with giving critical feedback may tell the unwitting associate that everything is fine and she is on partnership track with nothing to worry about. The associate can then learn, mere months later, that there are serious concerns with her work. It may now be too late to address the concerns as a decision has already been made to let her go.

3. Networking 

   In order to remain marketable, you must stay connected with other lawyers outside your firm through the CBA or other bar associations. You should not stay isolated within your firm. This will make you a better lawyer and enhance your partnership chances as well as give you a list of contacts should you need to look elsewhere for work some day.

4. Business development

   There is no better guarantee of job security or becoming a partner than having your own clients. Ultimately, it is your clients who keep you employed not the firm. While some partners are fed work from other partners in the firm where there is a large corporate client, this still does not replace having your own clients whose loyalty is to you and not the firm. 

Associates must take charge of their own careers right from the beginning. Leaving your career prospects to your law firm exposes you to too many variables outside your control. Paying attention to the practices mentioned above will not guarantee you a partnership but it will increase your marketability both within and outside your law firm. Thinking like an owner is the key to success in the private practice of law.

A lot has been written about the positive impact to the bottom line when corporations include more women on their boards. At it’s most simplistic, corporations recognize the value of a woman’s different life experiences in corporate decision making, along with a greater understanding of what types of services or products would interest female clients. However, the research goes much further than this to include the different and complimentary ways that women process information and make decisions. A recent Harvard Business Review article “ Defend Your Research: What Makes a Team Smarter? More Women” examines the impact that including more women has on teams.

The research found that “teams are more than just a collection of the best talent”. We know from watching and playing on sports teams that it takes more than just the team with the best athletic talent to win the tournament. Team dynamics, cohesiveness and strategy also come into play.

The business school researchers found that highly successful teams working on intellectual tasks were not the teams that had simply the smartest people on them. Like sports teams there is a team dynamic at play. While studying team process is not new – looking at teams from a gender perspective is a relatively new area of research.

In order to be high functioning, teams working on intellectual problems must also “listen to each other, share criticism constructively, have open minds and not be autocratic”. Since many studies have shown that women tend to score higher than men on tests of social sensitivity (EQ or Emotional Intelligence) – people with these skills (whether they be women or men) will usually produce better results than a team whose strength is primarily higher IQ’s. 

All types of teams benefit from having a gender balanced membership – litigation and negotiation teams, management teams, partnership teams, corporate teams, teams making presentations to clients – any group that wants to enhance it’s performance is stronger when it calls on the skills of both genders.

Recent research by neurobiologists has shown that men and women’s brains process information and make decisions in different but complimentary ways. When we have a better understanding of these differences, we can capitalize on these strengths and create a stronger team. When this understanding is lacking, assumptions can be made that the decision making process of the opposite gender is somehow flawed or less valid and their opinion can be discounted.

One example of dismissing the other gender’s decision-making process occurs when women ask more questions around an issue than their male colleagues. Men may deliberately restrain themselves from asking too many questions so as not to appear uncertain or slow to grasp an issue. Men may then judge a woman’s questions the same way and discount her opinion or make assumptions about her competence. Neurobiologists have shown that the female brain multi-focuses more naturally than the male brain. As a result, women will typically gather more information prior to making a decision. This is not indecisiveness or uncertainty but simply a different way that women process information and make decisions. When the group can call on the decision-making processes of both genders, the outcome can be better. 

In a recent Forbes article titled “The ‘Terrible Truth’ About Women on Corporate Boards” the author states that:

The “terrible truth” is the growing knowledge that women tend to exhibit different leadership attributes than men, not better or worse, merely different. They tend to be holistic rather than linear thinkers, they tend to negotiate in a win/win rather than a win/lose manner, they tend to be sensitive to subliminal cues, and comfortable with ambiguity.

Creating teams of balanced genders as well as other diverse viewpoints (such as different cultural or professional viewpoints) is increasingly being taught in business schools as providing better results. Increasingly, General Counsel are looking for more gender balanced or diverse teams of lawyers when considering which law firm to hire.

When women leave the workplace especially law firms, it is not always due to work life balance issues as it is sometimes assumed. Often, it is because they do not feel valued or because they feel that their contributions are being discounted. Understanding the contributions that women bring to law can be an important step in keeping women in the practice while strengthening the overall results of the legal team or firm. 

Research on the high degree of lawyer burnout, depression, substance abuse, divorce and suicide make for discouraging reading. Lawyers consistently score much higher than either the general population or other professions when it comes to managing the impact of stress on our lives. (Susan Daicoff “Lawyer Know Thyself: A Psychological Analysis of Personal Strengths and Weaknesses”.) It is one of the reasons that so many younger lawyers entering the profession are pushing back against what they experience as a highly stressful work environment that is dangerous to their health. It is not just the long hours that are crushing so many lawyers today but the increasing speed of business, the relentless demands of technology and the lack of a home based spouse to provide needed support for family and other responsibilities.

In my last two columns I wrote that there are three essential qualities to becoming a successful lawyer – strong legal skills, client service and business development. Law is not, however, a three legged stool. The fourth – and equally important leg – is resiliency – the ability to manage complex legal concepts, multiple demanding clients, and voluminous email all while meeting increasingly higher billable targets in a competitive world.

However, like business development skills, resiliency is not often taught at law school or in articling programs. Nor do many law firms see it as an issue that they should address with their partners or associates. The ability to remain healthy – physically, mentally or emotionally – is often viewed as a private matter and not something that the firm sees as a firm responsibility.

This organizational resistance is in stark contrast to what many corporate employers view as both their responsibility and crucial to maintaining a healthy financial bottom line. Corporations know they must put their people first – both their employees’ health and their morale – in order to maintain profitability. Employee wellness programs, whether they are flexible work arrangements to reduce stress, telecommuting, recognition programs, memberships in fitness centres – have all been shown to reduce absenteeism and turnover, lower sick leave costs and improve profitablilty.

The partnership model, however, is more individualistic. Partners are self-employed owners responsible for their own financial results and are often reluctant to spend money supporting what can be seen as their colleagues’ personal needs. Even some of the Top Employer Awards that some law firms receive recognize programs primarily put in place for support staff and not for the lawyers. 

Catalyst Canada in their 2005 report: Beyond a Reasonable Doubt: Building the Business Case for Flexibility found that 50% of lawyers switching firms cite the search for better work life balance as their top reason for moving.

While women lawyers have higher demands on their time due to their family responsibilities, it is increasingly younger lawyers both male and female who are looking for ways to practice law without paying a price in burnout, marriage breakdown or illness. Law firm recognition and support for improved work life integration (a better term than “balance”) is quickly becoming a significant recruitment advantage.

The challenge for law firms is how to meet increasing client demands without burning out partners and associates. Many younger lawyers say that they would take less money for fewer hours. Others would telecommute more and share office space if it meant they could reduce commute times and have one day a week working in a less stressful environment. What many younger lawyers are saying is that they value flexibility around where (flex-place) and when (flex-time) they work as a way to manage long hours and meet their billable targets.

Employers are facing a demographic sea change in the next few years as the boomers retire and fewer younger workers enter the labour force. These younger workers want the workplace to be structured differently. Having grown up communicating through Facebook, Twitter, text messages, blogs and YouTube – the generation entering the workplace views office face time and standardized hours as anachronistic.

Increasing resiliency and work life integration is as crucial to becoming a successful lawyer as honing one’s legal skills and finding clients. Just as law firms offer professional development and marketing support, firms need to focus on supporting their lawyers to manage stress and burnout in order to better serve their clients. Increasingly, the answer will lie with law firms adapting to the new social and demographic realities by finding innovative ways to structure the firm that supports lawyer wellness, resiliency and better work life integration.

The only job security any lawyer has whether as a partner or as a sole practitioner is the ability to generate clients. Leadership and power in a law firm of any size attaches to the lawyer who brings in the most business and keeps herself and other more junior lawyers supplied with work. Yet typically, the major rainmakers in law firms are primarily men. 

The National Association of Women Lawyers in the US in their 2009 annual National Survey on the Retention and Promotion of Women in Law Firms (www. nawl.org) found that half of the larger law firms in the US had no women amongst their top ten rainmakers. The statistics for smaller firms were not much more encouraging.

The challenge of finding new clients and developing a practice is especially difficult for women lawyers. There are many reasons for this. The business world – despite the many gains made by women – is still largely a man’s world. This is especially true at the senior management and executive ranks where the decisions are made about which law firm or lawyer to hire. If the male senior business leader has networked with a male lawyer at a hockey game, on the golf course or over drinks – it may be that lawyer who springs to mind. 

This presents a second challenge for women: how to ask a male client to a hockey game or for a drink without the awkwardness of feeling like it could be a date. The same holds true in the reverse. It can be equally awkward for a male lawyer to ask a female client to an evening event. One solution is to ask others along and attend the event as a group. This resolves the “date” dilemma. A novel solution I experienced once when I was the in-house lawyer client invited to a hockey game by a consultant was the inclusion of both our sons to attend the game with us. 

Another challenge for women lawyers is the time crunch. Many women lawyers need to be out of the office at a regular time in order to get home and start their second job as a parent. It is difficult to give up evening time devoted to preparing dinner, homework, driving kids to soccer and dance practice and all the other activities of a busy family. Most women with children work as efficiently as possible while at the office. This includes working through lunch because they cannot usually stay late or work in the evenings to make up for any lost time during the day. This makes even client lunches a challenge for a woman balancing the many demands on both her professional and personal life. 

A trap that some women partners fall into is working diligently for another rainmaking partner who needs support for his clients but then failing to develop clients of her own. This can start when the bright, hard working younger woman joins a law firm and sees herself more in a support role than a leadership role. I see many young women lacking the confidence of their male peers to go after clients and become a leader in the firm early in their careers.

So if these are the hurdles – what are some solutions for women lawyers?

• Take female clients to women friendly events – whether it is the theatre or something you can do with your kids. 
• Network with male clients in groups or with another colleague to remove the date awkwardness.
• Work with a business development coach to learn how to be more effective at client development.
• Learn the business of your client so you can talk to them about how you can help.
• If you have no free evening time for networking, then find other ways to reach potential new clients – pick up the phone, send articles, put on a client event during the day.
• Promote yourself within your current circles – at school events or on the soccer field. One successful women lawyer I know advertised in our school phone directory with a picture of her and her daughter so that parents would connect the names and realize that there was a lawyer they knew in our community. 
• Join the ABA Women Rainmakers (open to non-ABA members) or purchase their book Women Rainmakers’ Best Marketing Tips. The third edition just came out and it includes 150 marketing tips for women. 
• Their top tip is to ask for work. It sounds simple but women are often much more reluctant than men to ask people in their own network for work. My favourite tip amongst the 150 is never buy clothes that lack a pocket for your business cards! Too many women fail to pass out their cards because the cards are buried in their purse and take too long to locate.

Becoming a rainmaker is an essential skill that women must learn in order to become partners and leaders in law firms. It is this lack of business development and consequent lack of power in a law firm that more than anything else holds women back from becoming partners. As they say in the rainmaking books – “Law firms follow the Golden Rule. He (or she) who holds the gold makes the rules!”

Most lawyers would agree that there are three qualities needed to run a successful practice: excellent legal skills, great client service and the ability to find and retain clients. In other words: ability, hard work and an entrepreneurial mind-set. It is the latter that can be the most challenging for younger lawyers as they receive little or no training in business development.

Most law schools and bar admission programs provide no business training as this is seen as outside the scope of educating students about the law. Nor is it typically part of the articling experience at law firms. Once called, young lawyers are expected to find clients often with minimal assistance from the firm or more senior lawyers. While some law firms offer business development training, translating these concepts into action can be an almost impossible task for a lawyer who is naturally quiet or introverted or who sees himself as being too junior to attract a client.

As one senior associate at a national firm said to me recently “When I went to law school, it never occurred to me that learning the law and working hard would not be enough to become a partner. After 8 years, I’m a good lawyer and I work very hard. However, without my own clients, I have no chance of becoming a partner here.”

I hear this concern over and over again from young lawyers – all talented and hard working – but unless they have also developed as entrepreneurs and figured out how to attract and retain clients – their future is compromised in private practice. After all – law firms are businesses and each lawyer in it must contribute to finding and keeping clients. This is especially true in larger urban centers where it is more competitive. It can be much easier in smaller communities where there is a growing shortage of lawyers and an increasing number of clients.

The challenge of business development is the primary reason many talented lawyers want to move to in-house positions. They want to be an employee not an owner.

This need to find clients is of course, no surprise to the majority of young lawyers who work outside the medium or larger firm environment where they are not fed work as a junior. Nor is law any different than other professions such as accounting, engineering or dentistry where unless you join an established practice, you will need to cultivate your own clients in order to pay the rent.

The challenge for so many younger lawyers is that the type of person attracted to study law often lacks the characteristics needed to be a successful in business. Lawyers are typically very academically oriented. They can read copious amounts of material, analyze it and do well on exams. Unlike the stereotype found on TV shows where all lawyers are extroverted litigators, many lawyers are introverts. Joining community groups, working a room at a social event, speaking at a pubic gathering, making cold calls and marketing – can be a daunting task. So how can young professionals over-come this hurdle and develop a client base?

First and most importantly, young lawyers need to understand the business side of practicing law. They need to understand the economics of over-head, the cost of accounts receivables, payroll expenses and a host of other business decisions. As one senior partner at a large firm said to me, “We don’t make money off our associates until about September of each year. Many of our associates do not understand how expensive it is to run a practice and how their target billings are calculated.”

Firms should be as transparent as possible about what it costs to run the firm. Associates need to see how their hourly rates, prompt billing, control over non-billable time – all impact the financial viability of the firm. In other words, the earlier they start to think like owners and less like employees, the sooner they will start to act like entrepreneurs.

Secondly, associates need to start thinking about building their own practice as soon as they are called. Many larger firms tell their associates not to worry about business development for the first 3 years as associates need to work on honing their legal skills first. While newly called associates in larger firms are unlikely to attract clients significant enough to afford large firm rates, they need to get in the habit of networking so they develop their business skills early. All associates, in any size of firm, can benefit from an annual written business plan provided it is developed with the assistance of a more experienced lawyer.

One of my favourite coaching tips, is one I heard from an associate who told me about his “Marketing Tuesday’s”. Once a week, on Tuesday’s, he reaches out to at least one client. He may make a phone call to a client he hasn’t heard from in a while, send off an email or an article he has saved or set up a lunch meeting. At the end of the year, he will have reached out 48 times (he gives himself a break during his 4 weeks of vacation) to clients instead of the ad hoc method of fitting it in when he finds the time. Any day of the week works, it’s just the weekly routine that is important. This type of business development is also easier for those who are less extroverted and find public speaking or community events difficult to attend.

Most young lawyers starting out often do not even know where to begin the process of finding clients. The obvious place for them to learn is from more senior lawyers who can take them along to client meetings; advise how the partner’s practice developed and act as a mentor to help the younger lawyer get started. My experience however, is that this rarely happens.

Most senior lawyers are too busy to do more than answer file questions. They see mentoring as taking away precious billable time from their own practice. Established practitioners often guard their hard won clients closely and do not want the client to develop an independent relationship with the junior in case future work starts flowing to the junior.

As a result, junior lawyers often must look elsewhere for training in business development. Some firms put on excellent training programs but this must still be translated into action. If a lawyer is introverted or very quiet, all the training in the world may not move them out of their comfort zone to pick up the phone or attend a networking event. For these lawyers one–on-one coaching can be very helpful. Or, they can buddy up with another associate to attend events. They can find a mentor – perhaps outside their firm – who is willing to offer ideas and support. An associate can offer to take the mentor to lunch in return for the mentor’s support.

Younger lawyers can form peer support groups either inside or outside the firm where they can meet regularly to support each other and exchange ideas. These groups need not be all lawyers. Business circles made up of a real estate agent, an accountant, a business owner, a consultant, a lawyer – who all meet regularly and support each other with client referrals can be a powerful networking group. The key is not struggling with this on your own if your personality or your workload gets in the way of reaching out to potential clients.

There are particular challenges for women lawyers who must find clients in what is still a largely male business world. In a future column, I will write about what women can do to develop business.

Being a skilled lawyer, working hard and giving excellent client service may not be enough to create a sustainable practice if you practice within a competitive business community. The key for many young lawyers is to work with others who can give advice or support. We aren’t all born with an entrepreneurial gene but we can develop it, if we seek out help along the way.

Many of us have a book living inside just waiting to get out if only we could find the time, energy and courage to write it. Recently, I discovered that someone else has written my book. The book is titled “Women on Top – The Woman’s Guide to Leadership and Power in Law Firms” by Ida O. Abbott. (Available on the National Association of Law Placement website for $80.00.) 

The American author is a well-known writer on many law practice management issues including “The Lawyer’s Guide to Mentoring”. She is also a co-founder and director of the Hastings Leadership Academy for Women at the University of California Hastings College of Law. 

I have at least 3 shelves full of books on the topic of women and the law and law practice management. I could safely dump all of them and replace them with this one book. The book is divided into three sections: the unique challenges facing women leaders (barriers, gender bias, leadership styles, traps for women to avoid); leadership in law firms (law firm structure and politics, challenges leading partners, defining leadership in the law firm context); and finally, becoming the leader you aspire to be (ambition, strategy, personal power, resilience and empowerment).

While the book is aimed at women and not at firms, men who lead law firms should read this book to understand why women leave and what could be done to retain capable women lawyers. Men as well as women can also learn about the unique challenges of leadership in a law firm and what is needed to become a partner and a leader. 

The book opens with a reference to a notable American study “The White House Project” report put out by the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. (http://benchmarks.thewhitehouseproject.org) The report notes “Law firms are harsh work environments. For women in particular, they are amongst the most difficult professional settings in which to achieve success.” The White House Project examined ten different professions and found that law was by far the most challenging profession for women to advance into partnership and leadership roles in private law firms.

While men and women lawyers start out with similar talents and commitment, men’s interest in partnership grows the longer they stay in private practice while many women lose interest in partnership the longer they practice. This lack of women in leadership positions means that firms continue to promote institutional environments that do not adjust to the reality that women make up a third of the profession. Many women, frustrated at the slow rate of change in law firms, choose to leave and take positions in business or government or start their own firms where there are not the same barriers to advancement.

Abbott lists the many reasons why women do not advance to partnership in law firms: biased assumptions about women’s competence and commitment to practice; fewer mentors and developmental work assignments; inadequate support for practice and business development and inflexible career expectations that penalize women for having responsibilities and priorities outside of work. 

She recognizes that many firms are addressing the exodus of women through training in business development, opportunities for leadership development, reduced hour policies and improved re-entry options for women taking maternity leaves. However, these measures are programmatic not transformational. They are designed to help women operate better in a man’s world. They do not recognize that the world is changing as more and more women enter the workplace and younger men increasingly want what women have been requesting for many decades.

All workplaces – not just law firms – are changing their work cultures and power structures to value the complimentary skills that women bring to business and the professions. Abbott cites the need for education to eliminate bias; better work and talent management; acceptance of new leadership styles; and a different economic model that rewards more than billable hours but also other contributions to the health, stature and profitability of the firm. 

Much of this book is an argument to convince reluctant women why they should become partners and law firm leaders. Abbott argues that many women view power negatively because they associate it with an autocratic model of leadership that exerts power over others. Women often see power as inherently unprofessional and “unfeminine”. They view some of the women who have become partners as “men in skirts” who have had to play the game by the men’s rules in order to be accepted and advance. Many younger female associates say they do not want to be like some of the women partners they see especially those who chose not to have children so they could devote their lives to their practice.

Abbott’s book shows how both men and women can become partners in law firms and achieve leadership success. It explains law firm politics and the unique challenges of leading professionals who do not want to be led. The book outlines the strengths, alliances and strategy needed to become a partner and a leader whatever your gender.

There is a particularly good chapter on resiliency – something that women especially need to learn in order to handle the many demands on their time and energy outside the office. Topics such as optimism, self-confidence, risk-taking, emotional support and physical stamina are worth learning just to stay in the game as lawyers even where there is no desire to become a partner.

Becoming a partner in a law firm is completely different than taking a management position in a corporation. Abbott has done an excellent job of explaining this leadership challenge in a comprehensive and accessible way. This is a book that both women and men in the law can benefit from reading.

Many years ago I took an excellent time management course for lawyers that was put on by our local Continuing Legal Education Society. The instructor had many good tips on how to manage a busy lawyer’s day. I went back to my office filled with enthusiasm that finally I was going to feel a sense of control over my life. I diligently experimented with many of the suggestions from the course. However, despite my best efforts, I did not manage to successfully implement a single one of the instructor’s recommendations.

My assistant was less than pleased when I tried to delegate more work to her already busy desk. Whenever I blocked off time in my calendar to focus on larger projects, someone more senior always wanted me in a meeting. My attempt to control interruptions seemed like trying to hold back the tide.

After a month of struggling to implement my list of time management suggestions, I gave up and felt like a failure – doomed to a life of unending overwhelm. 

I think this experience is not uncommon when we want to make a significant change in our life. We start out with the best of intentions – we make valiant attempts to change – we meet resistance or our experiment is not successful – and we give up.

My observation when people want to make a change is that we often take on too much change at once. Most people can only manage one new routine or focus on one goal at a time. The goal itself often has to be broken down into many discreet steps so that it can successfully completed. When we have successfully mastered one step – which can take a number of different attempts to find the best solution – then we can move onto another step towards our bigger goal.

It’s like learning to improve one’s golf game. It’s challenging enough to adjust to the new grip without also having to remember to keep our head up, lengthen the arc of our carry-through swing and change the position of our feet. Until we are comfortable with one change in how we hold our body, it’s difficult to institute all four new changes at once. 

I have also observed that there is great power in making a single improvement even if that change is very small. This is especially true when we want to make a very big change in our life – such as feeling less overwhelmed at work. As the Chinese philosopher Lao T’se said, “ The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”

We simply have to begin the longer journey by starting somewhere and succeeding with one small step. The small step might be identifying one thing in your day that causes you stress and experimenting with ways to eliminate it.

When I was working as a young in-house counsel, I asked a more senior lawyer how I could feel more in control of my day. He observed that I often arrived for meetings on time but rushed and harried, as I was almost late. I hated arriving early, as this seemed a waste of valuable time waiting for the meeting to start. I realized, however, that giving myself 10 extra minutes was not only a huge reduction in stress but I appeared less flustered to my colleagues. This one change had a big impact on reducing stress throughout my day. 

Eliminating small stressful moments in our day can add up to a feeling of being more in control of our life. 

Taking just one 10-minute break a day to walk around the block and clear our minds and move our bodies has been shown to greatly improve focus and productivity.

Drinking one glass of water instead of a third cup of coffee gives us more energy. 

Designating one day a week to leave the office by 6pm if your regular exit time is 8 o’clock. Proving that you can get out of the office early one day a week is practice for leaving at a reasonable time more days a week.

Booking one day each spring to attend your child’s school fieldtrip if you find you are never connecting with the school (or your daughter) enough. You will remember those single school days long after you have forgotten the files you were working on that week.

The power of taking a single step shows us how much easier change can be and often leads to taking more steps that results in bigger and better change. One small step is like practicing for a bigger change. We dip our toe into the water and find that taking the plunge is easier than we thought.

My small time management step of arriving early for meetings instead of just in time was not (and is still not) always successful. However, the reduction in feeling rushed and harried most of the time continues to have a hugely positive impact on my day. 

When we take one small step, it encourages us to take all the steps that will lead us on that thousand-mile journey. If we could only remember how thrilled we were as toddlers when we took that first step in learning to walk. This year make a new year’s resolution to take a small step.

Jane was a family law associate in a large firm where she hoped to be made partner within 2 years. While she had a good client base including clients whom she had brought to the firm and excellent billings, she felt that she was invisible to most of the partners.

She didn’t work in a large practice group and had no apparent champion who might speak for her at the partnership table. She often felt that the partners saw her family practice as a sideline service they were happy to provide their corporate clients provided they didn’t have to touch it. Family law lacked the cache of the big corporate deals or the high profile litigation.

She watched other associates – usually male – come back from court or after closing a large transaction – do the victory lap around the floor to make sure everyone knew about their success. This was not Jane’s style. Like many women, she found it very difficult to boast about her success. It felt false and embarrassing. While young boys grow up competing with one another as to who is the strongest, fastest or bravest, girls are taught to be cooperative and collaborate and be modest about their accomplishments.

But Jane knew she had to raise her profile within the firm if she were to have a shot at partnership. Observing her male colleagues she realized that she wasn’t having lunch or playing golf or even regularly having a drink in the boardroom on Friday’s with any of the partners. It wasn’t just her practice that was invisible – Jane was invisible to most of the partners. They didn’t relate to her as a friend or serious colleague but more as a helpful assistant to their clients’ occasional needs.

Jane needed to market herself within the firm just as she did outside the firm to gain clients. Jane was making a mistake common amongst women by expecting that her hard work and long hours would speak for themselves and she would be duly recognized for this without having to do anything more. Her modesty was actually erecting an invisible wall around her. What she saw as boasting, I suggested was actually building relationships with people where they could know her better. This put talking about herself into an entirely new context.

I asked Jane if there were situations where she was comfortable talking about herself. She said she was comfortable speaking to people one-on-one even if she didn’t know them well. We decided that she should start asking individual partners for lunch especially those whom she didn’t know. She decided to schedule two lunches a month and make sure that she talked about her recent new clients and successes; her interest in becoming a partner and why her practice was good for the firm and what she did outside the office. She also asked questions about the partner’s practice and his or her life. Jane was doing what she was good at – building relationships.

Next she tackled the Friday afternoon boardroom drinking sessions. Jane had usually avoided these as she didn’t drink and felt awkward when pressed to do so. She also found it challenging to compete with the many war stories. We decided that she should take a bottle of Perrier with her to the boardroom to deflect the pressure to have a beer. Next, she planned ahead of time, some interesting stories about her week that she could share one-on-one with people. Again, she was building relationships one partner at a time.

Jane also learned to accept praise for a successful result without diminishing it as if it were nothing or deflecting it out of embarrassment. Instead, she simply said “thank you” and used the opportunity to expand on why the file was challenging or how the client benefited from the success.

She also quietly advised a partner who always called her “Janey” that she preferred to be called “Jane”. She told me that the use of this nickname always made her feel like a child around him and not his equal. She noticed that he never called David “Davey” or Michael “Mikey” – and the shortened “Dave” and “Mike” didn’t have the same childish sound to her as “Janey”. In this way as well, Jane was announcing that she wanted to be taken seriously. 

All of these changes were part of Jane’s marketing plan to be seen as a player in the firm ready for partnership. Her plan also included presentations on family law issues; volunteering to sit on firm committees and circulating articles. Her biggest and boldest idea was asking a colleague in the firm to nominate her for a community award. She felt audacious and embarrassed asking but had she not asked, it would not have occurred to any of her busy colleagues to nominate her. Jane didn’t win the award but the publicity that she garnered in the press as one of the nominees brought her significant credibility both within and outside the firm. All of this translated into Jane being offered partnership 18 months after she drew up her internal marketing plan.

There are many corporate studies that have shown that men are often promoted on their potential while women have to prove themselves first before senior management will take a chance on promoting them. 

Jane didn’t wait until she was made a partner to start behaving or looking like a partner. The leadership she demonstrated in the firm and in the community, the relationships she built with key partners and the over-all confident manner in which she refused to be invisible any longer earned her the partnership. While both male and female associates can learn from this – women especially need to examine what unconscious attitudes hold them back and then promote themselves in ways that feel authentic and comfortable. No one else is going to do it for you.

Recently a male partner said to me that while practicing law in a firm has always been more challenging for women, he believes that today it is almost impossible. This bold statement surprised me – not because I am unaware of the many challenges that women lawyers face but because I look at how far we have come over the past 30 years and cling to the hopeful belief that progress is being made.

When I remember how challenging it was for women to obtain articles or be kept on as associates with the assumption that women would leave as soon as they became pregnant; or the almost complete lack of female role models on the bench or at the partnership table; or the reluctance of some clients to accept that a woman could represent them as competently as a man; or the struggle to return from a short 2 week maternity leave – if you were allowed to return at all; or the overt harassment in the office – there are so many examples of how society and the legal profession have changed to remove many of the barriers that prevented women from becoming partners, general counsels and judges.

I asked this male partner why he thought the challenges for women are greater now than 30 years ago. He said it was simply the dramatic increase in required billable hours. When he started in practice 16 yeas ago, his annual target was 1200 hours. Today it is 1500 in his smaller law firm and 1700 plus at the larger firms. This represents a minimum 25% increase in hours. Targets that were considered full time 20 years ago would today be considered part-time work in many firms. 

My colleague went on to say that of the 70 women who graduated from his law school class 16 years ago, he could find only 6 women who are still in private practice. While many are still practicing law, they are working in government or in-house jobs where the hours may be long but they are more defined and there is not the added burden of client development or billing targets to meet.

Current targets make it challenging for any lawyer – male or female to have much time or energy left for family, friends or other personal interests. But with women more likely to be the ones forgoing sleep when their child is sick or putting in longer hours supervising homework, doing laundry, planning birthday parties, cleaning up the kitchen or being the person primarily responsible for taking their elderly mother or mother-in-law to their doctor’s appointments – it is challenging to see how women can fit all of this on top of a 1500 to 1700 hour billable legal practice. And this doesn’t include evening client development events or preparing a paper to give at a conference. 

Of course, it is not just women lawyers feeling the increased pressure to record higher hours. Male and female partners feel it too and resent it when associates push back and refuse to work long hours leaving the partner to do the work. However, more and more associates are walking away from law firms rather than sacrifice their health – both mental and physical – to a job that seems to demand all of their time.

The solution to these higher and higher targets has to lie in more flexible work arrangements. This includes everything from tele-commuting to shared or reduced work arrangements. 

More and more lawyers – especially women – are looking to reduce their over-heads and commute times and spend more time with their families by setting up virtual offices from their homes. I believe this will become one of the major trends in legal practice for both men and women over the coming years. While blackberries and other technology are a double-edged sword – allowing work to push into personal time – they also give us the flexibility to work away from an office without sacrificing a professional response to client needs.

Many lawyers – both women and men – would happily trade money for more time. However, this requires a greater team approach to support the client where work can be shared – a model which law firms are reluctant to adopt. It also requires a reduction in over-head expenses through sharing office space. The most important component in making reduced hours work is a commitment from the firm leaders to make it work. Part–time work must be supported so that there is no stigma for those who choose reduced hours. Equally important is to guard against schedule creep such that the job becomes part-time in name only.

The National Association for Law Placement (www.nalp.org) in Washington, DC in their book “Solving the Part-Time Puzzle: The Law Firm’s Guide to Balanced Hours” presents a detailed plan showing how firms can remain profitable while allowing lawyers to work reduced hours.

It is not just women lawyers crying out for relief from higher and higher billable targets and increased pressure to work longer in the office. All lawyers and their firms face this challenge. We must look for creative ways to make workloads more manageable for everyone or face a continuous exodus of male and female lawyers leaving law firms and the law in search of a healthier life. It is, I believe, the number one challenge facing the legal profession today.

There is a commonly held myth that the gender gap in partner compensation is due to women billing fewer hours and spending less time on client development due to their greater responsibilities at home. This myth has been exploded in a recent study [PDF] published by The Project For Attorney Retention and sponsored by the ABA Commission for Women in the Profession.

Amongst other findings, the report states that factors that work against women partners include the lack of women on compensation committees where bonuses and compensation criteria are set; the lack of transparency around compensation criteria; the lack of credit for contributing to the firm’s success through mentoring, associate recruitment or training and finally, intimidation around disputes over originating credit. All of these issues are exacerbated by the lack of any appeal mechanism in firms where the decisions of the compensation committee could be questioned or clarified.

A woman partner I know, once told me that when she moved from one national firm to another, she was amazed that the partner brought in to replace her was hired at a compensation level $200,000 higher than the firm had been paying her. When she asked one of her former partners how the firm could justify this when the new partner was the same level of call, brought few clients with him and had almost identical experience in this area of law, she was told this was what he had demanded in order to accept the offer. It was a painful lesson as she had changed law firms to gain an increase in compensation that turned out to be less than her replacement negotiated for her old position.

This story demonstrates another common reason that women (and not just women lawyers) are paid less than men – they fail to negotiate a high enough salary when they start out in practice or when they switch firms. This gap widens in the US from an annual average gap of $2000 between male and female associates to a gender gap of $66,000 at the equity partnership level. When a woman’s starting salary is lower than the equivalent man, she is operating from a lower base and may never catch up.

While women lawyers are as aggressive as their male counterparts when negotiating on behalf of their clients, they are often reluctant to take a firm negotiation stance when acting on their own behalf. In “Women Don’t Ask” by Linda Babcock and Sara Laschever, the authors cite many reasons for this including a reluctance to jeopardize personal relationships. Instead, women ask indirectly or ask for less than what they want in order to foster greater harmony. Women also often assume that by working harder they will be appropriately rewarded without having to ask. Few men make this mistake.

There is also a gender bias working against women who negotiate aggressively on their own behalf. Women may be seen as pushy, overly ambitious or too competitive. This reaction can work against them causing women to look for indirect and less effective ways to achieve compensation parity that will not harm their relationships with their peers.

It is not just in compensation negotiations where women can be reluctant to ask for what they want. Women will protect personal relationships at home by not asking for more help with domestic tasks or at work by not asking for any accommodation that may open them to criticism.

Some years ago when I was practicing in-house as a senior legal executive, I needed greater flexibility around my work arrangements in order to manage both my young children and my increased job responsibilities. I agonized for months about asking the CEO whether I could work from home one day a week as I assumed the answer would be “no” and I would be seen as less committed than my colleagues. He surprised me by immediately saying that if it worked for me, it worked for him. He also said that I should have asked for this sooner. He thought by the tension in my appearance prior to the meeting that I was going to quit and was relieved that I was just seeking greater flexibility around my job.

The lesson in all of this is that women have to ask for what they want and not assume that they will not get it. Law firms need to recognize that one of the reasons for higher female attrition is frustration around the widening compensation gap.

The ultimate power in any organization sits with those who control the purse strings and hand out the rewards. Law firms must include women on the powerful compensation committee (and need more than one token women who may lack sufficient power to change the committee’s decisions.) Similarly, management committees must hear from both their male and female partners about what criteria should be used to determine a partner’s value to the firm. It is only when both female and male partners feel equally valued and rewarded that law firms will keep their best talent regardless of gender.

A concern that I hear frequently from women lawyers is the lack of recognition and compensation for those partners – often women – who devote time to building up the human capital in their law firms. This includes time spent mentoring younger lawyers or working on the firm’s education, articling or associate development committees. When it comes to dividing up the partnership profits at the end of the year, it is typically only billable hours and collected revenue that counts and not time spent ensuring a stronger future for the firm. 

For many women lawyers, this is frustrating because mentoring is one of the activities they most enjoy about working at their firm. Not only is assisting junior lawyers personally rewarding but mentoring also creates a more welcoming and collegial community within the firm – the kind of work environment these women want to foster. Many women also know that mentoring is the best way to ensure that young women lawyers stay in the profession and advance to partnership. 

While some firms foster mentoring through formal programs, most mentoring happens informally. Typically, women have less access to the kind of informal mentoring that will occur naturally between male lawyers who will spend time chatting in the hallways, are together on the golf course or at a hockey game or have lunch or drinks after work. If there is no formal mentoring program in place, some women may receive no mentoring at all.

One young female associate at a small firm told me that her male colleagues were regularly asked (often in front of her) to have lunch with the partners while she was excluded from these invitations. She believed that the male partners simply were more comfortable socializing with the younger men in the firm. When she left the firm, the partners were surprised. They said she was a fine lawyer whom they had expected would stay. She was frustrated at her lack of informal mentoring around both legal issues and career development. More importantly, she did not want to become a partner at a firm where she felt excluded and invisible. A good mentor would have ensured that she was fully accepted in the firm and had the same opportunities as her male associates.

Even where law firms have good mentoring programs in place, these programs often do not address the issues that drive women away. Returning from maternity leave and ramping your practice back up; developing business in a male dominated industry; harassment by a client; staying awake during the day when you have been up all night with a sick child or elderly parent – these may be issues that a male partner has never encountered. Women associates are often reluctant to raise these challenges in case it signals that they are not coping. 

On the flip side – I hear partners say that they have mentoring programs in place but the women still leave. This is because the mentoring is not addressing the issues that are causing the women to leave. The women do not want to burn any bridges or criticize the firm by asking for better mentoring. 

Too often mentoring is seen as social conversations over lunch about what happened on the weekend or vacation plans. While building a relationship between a partner and an associate is important, if the conversation never moves beyond social chitchat, it is not mentoring. Similarly, answering a question on a file is important but neither is this mentoring. In a mentoring relationship, the partner actively supports and takes an interest in the broader professional and career development of the associate. This requires a bigger conversation where the associate feels that the partner is on her side and will support the associate on an on-going basis rather than just the occasional lunch. 

So how does a law firm know what their associates need to become better lawyers and future partners? How will they know if their female associates (or associates from different cultural backgrounds, for that matter) have different concerns than their male associates?

The firm must start with an anonymous survey (preferably of both partners and associates) about what they believe the current mentoring situation to be. Is it working? Unless the survey is seen to be anonymous, no associate will provide honest feedback about the partner mentors. Women associates are particularly reluctant to raise any issues that may single them out as not coping as well as the men. 

Responding to the issues raised in the survey should lead to written guidelines setting out expectations for both partners and associates; training for both partners and associates on what constitutes good mentoring and follow-up to see if the changes are working. While none of this need be complicated or bureaucratic, it does need buy-in from the top and visible partner leadership. It also requires recognition and some type of reward for those partners who take mentoring seriously and devote time to it. Mentoring does not need to be part of the always-contentious compensation criteria, however it does need to be a reward that is sufficiently motivating.

As there are fewer women at the partnership level in Canada, there are fewer good female mentors available to mentor younger women. While female role models are important, not all female partners (or male partners, for that matter) make good mentors. A female partner for example, may have chosen not to have children so that she could devote more time to building her practice. She may be unsympathetic to a female associate returning from maternity leave and feel that no special accommodation should be given to a woman who has chosen to become a mother.

Male partners can be excellent mentors especially when they can assist a young female associate better navigate the male business world or understand law firm politics. 

One solution to the lack of sufficient female partners is to use mentoring or peer circles. There is a different dynamic when only women are in the room. Women (like men) do not need to be as guarded or concerned that they will be misunderstood. This can lead to a freer discussion where associates can learn from shared experiences and support each other. Mentoring or peer circles can be organized around specific topics like returning from maternity leave or business development.

Male associates should have access to a formal mentoring program as well. Even though men typically receive more informal mentoring than women, it is important that all associates feel that they are being treated fairly. Also, most female associates will be uncomfortable if they feel singled out or if they face resentment from their male colleagues who feel that the women are getting an unfair advantage on the road to partnership.

While mentoring is good for the bottom line in all law firms, it is crucial in assisting women to stay in the practice of law. However, it must focus on the issues that drive women away. To determine what those issues are and to encourage open and frank dialogue to solve them requires a commitment on the part of partners to be the best mentors they can be. Mentoring is not difficult. We owe it to our clients, our younger lawyers and ourselves to do this well. 

One of the biggest "aha" moments of my life happened in a self-development course in my mid-30's when I realized that I didn't have to practice law like a man in order to be successful. I could be feminine and still be taken seriously. This realization was enormously liberating, as I was able to relax in my own skin and stop trying to be someone I wasn't. I discovered that a more collaborative and "softer" approach in negotiations or when dealing with opposing counsel was more successful for me than the aggressive male style I had been trying to emulate. A friend once told me about a similar experience after "coming out" as a gay man. When he was able to stop pretending to be "straight" he had so much more energy to be successful in his career.

Recently I had another "aha" moment almost as significant as the first one. I was attending an executive coaching conference in Santa Barbara and heard Barbara Annis, one of the co-authors of "Leadership and the Sexes" (www.baainc.com) speak about the differences in the male and female brains. Recent neurological studies of brain scans have shown how differently men and women process information, make decisions, negotiate, handle emotion, and communicate – in fact everything the brain does. The genders are equally intelligent – just intelligent in different ways.

Annis' book gives many examples of how differently men and women interpret the world around them. For example:

• Women tend to use more words during the day especially when reading and writing are included. Men often process fewer words than women and may zone out if discussions become too lengthy or wordy. This may seem like the man is not interested or doesn't care. He may also be frustrated that the woman is not getting to the point fast enough.
• Women's brains are wired to cross-connect information from both hemispheres and are more likely to move from what appears to be one topic to another that seems unrelated. They are actually "connecting the dots" that may need to be connected during a project and seeing opportunities or pitfalls that should be noticed.
• The links between the emotional centres of the brain are linked differently for women to their thought processing and communication centres. Thus a man might need many hours to process a major emotion-laden experience, whereas a woman may be able to process it quite quickly. This often creates a lot of tension between women and men. 

These examples show that the more we understand how differently men and women process information and emotions, the better we can create law firms where the strengths of each gender are appreciated and not discounted.

Annis point out that many of us have what she calls "bridge brains" – brains that have the characteristics of both genders. I recommend trying the BBC on-line survey ("What sex is your brain?) at www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/sex/add_user.shtml).

I often hear from women lawyers who work in firms where there are more male lawyers than female, that they find the work environment to be uncomfortably male. Since many law firms and corporations were started by men and are largely populated by male lawyers this is not surprising. This male environment is often taken to be the norm and thought to be gender neutral.

Just as I did as a young lawyer starting out, many women feel they must adapt their personalities to fit this male environment in order to succeed. Until I read "Leadership and the Sexes" I had difficulty understanding what made a work environment male as opposed to gender neutral. I now see that if our brains process our experiences very differently we will have different expectations of each other. The strengths that women lawyers bring can easily be discounted by male (and sometimes female) partners who think there is only one way of approaching or solving a problem.

Similarly, men and women socialize differently. I often hear women lawyers complain about the lack of collegiality in their offices – that their male colleagues will arrive in the morning, go straight to their offices, close the door with barely a "good morning" or any attempt to make personal contact with their colleagues. The women find this to be cold and unfriendly while the men see morning chatter as unnecessary and even distracting. Reading how differently our brains are wired around social interaction, the differences in behavior are now more understandable.

Recently I was chairing a meeting of the BC Women Lawyers Forum where there were about 60 women lawyers in the room and only one man. I was thinking about the many times when I started out in the law where I was the only woman at large legal gatherings of men but how unusual this was for this sole male lawyer.

When you are in that situation, you know instantly that you are in a gathering where the behavior and the rules are different. You watch carefully to make sure that you are not offending anyone by what you say and you adapt your behavior so that the people in the room take you seriously. While we know through experiences like this that the genders behave differently, the assumption has been that it is because our family and society has socialized us differently. The new research on brain science shows that we are actually hard-wired differently and bring different and complimentary skills to each situation.

A lot has been written about how differently men and women communicate but "Leadership and the Sexes" shows how much deeper these differences go. If we can build more gender intelligent workplaces where we understand and appreciate what both men and women bring to the practice of law, we will not only serve our clients better but also create working environments where women, especially feel comfortable in being who they really are. 

One of the most common complaints I hear from partners – especially those in the boomer generation – is that younger associates today are not willing to work as hard as partners. This leaves many partners frustrated at not getting the support they need and working even longer hours to ensure that the client’s work is completed on time.

When I talk to younger lawyers about this, they are equally frustrated by what they see as unreasonable demands from senior lawyers and a lack of acknowledgement about how hard they are working. So what is contributing to this generation gap?

I believe that many younger associates are willing and do work hard but often it doesn’t look that way to older lawyers. Here are some of the challenges that younger lawyers face that the boomer partners did not when they started practicing. 

Women lawyers: Now that women make up one third of the profession, they bring different challenges from maternity leave to greater domestic responsibilities while still meeting client demands. With parents living longer, elder care often means that family responsibilities extend well beyond the children leaving home.

Married men: Many younger male lawyers are married to women in equally demanding jobs such as law, medicine or business. The days of the at-home wife handling all the domestic and childcare responsibilities so her lawyer husband can work 60 hours a week, are fast disappearing. Most men must take a much larger role in picking up children from daycare, helping with homework, taking on more domestic responsibilities etc. Both parents are working late into the night even when there is a nanny or other help in the home.

More hands-on fathers: Many younger men want to have a much bigger role in their children’s lives than the fathers of the boomer generation did. Young fathers today want to coach the soccer team after work; attend the afternoon parent teacher meetings and read to their children at night – all things that my father left to my mother to handle so that he could relax in the evening after a hard day at work. I applaud this change as it means we are raising healthier children and both families and society will benefit. However, it is a challenge for law firms who need associates available at times when family responsibilities clash. 

Less extended family support: It is more common today for younger lawyers to move to where the jobs are. This often means living far from the support of grandparents and other family members who can help with childcare. Parental leave for fathers is often a necessity if there are no grandmothers nearby to help a new mother get settled at home.

Business at the speed of light: Technology as we know, has speeded up business and the practice of law. We draft on line with little thinking time, as the contract must be completed immediately. If you are a senior lawyer, you can do this with much less stress. Junior lawyers now practice at a speed that was unthinkable even 10 years ago. This puts enormous stress on younger associates who must make decisions often without the benefit of research, consultation or experience. Is it any wonder that burnout is high amongst younger lawyers?

Less mentoring: Most senior partners received much more informal mentoring when they were starting out in law. They were taken to court more frequently; partners debriefed a big transaction upon completion; colleagues had more time to teach younger lawyers because business moved at a slower pace. Younger lawyers receive much less mentoring today. This means more stress and longer hours as they struggle to teach themselves the law without the benefit of senior lawyer guidance.

Higher billable targets: A partner recently told me that the minimum hours in her law firm have increased by 200 hours a year since she started working there as a newly called lawyer. That is an extra 4 to 6 weeks of work that must be squeezed into the year by partners and associates alike. While this increase has come gradually over the years for some partners, younger lawyers start out with this increased expectation and pressure. 

Global competition: With global law firms and clients; contracts being drafted in India overnight; clients in different time zones wanting to speak on the phone during the night – all this puts younger, less experienced lawyers under more stress. 

Client expectations: Many associates tell me that partners will promise work to a client in a very short time frame when the client doesn’t need it done that quickly. Partners argue that the faster they can turn around the work, the better chance they have of keeping that client from taking their work elsewhere. Associates say that the cost of unreasonable turn-around times is burned out associates who leave rather than be under such extreme stress.

No more weekends: We must now be available to our clients 24 / 7. There is no longer a distinction between weekdays and weekends, workdays and vacations. Clients (and partners) expect us to be available every day of the year and it is difficult to feel that we are ever away from the office. 

While senior lawyers will argue that they have always worked weekends even in pre-blackberry days – the difference is that a lawyer could choose to go on vacation or spend Sunday with his family without the client expectation that the lawyer be available. Most lawyers did not list their home phones in the directory so clients could not reach them outside business hours. Today, this continuous availability is an added stress that all lawyers must handle.

Face time: Many law firms still believe that all lawyers must be in their offices from 8am to 8pm (or at least 6pm) 5 days a week and some part of Saturday. Younger lawyers see this as the advantage of technology – they can be working hard from home or a coffee shop getting more accomplished and saving time on commuting while looking after a sick child or working in a less stressful environment. The client cannot tell where the lawyer is working and doesn’t care.

Partners insist that they need to be able to speak to the associate face to face to hand out work or give instructions. Associates say this can be accomplished just as easily over the phone or email. Obviously some time must be spent in the office meeting with clients and partners. But the virtual law office is becoming more and more common where lawyers meet only by phone or over the Internet and rarely come together in person.

Associates seen leaving at 5pm: Many associates are seen “waltzing out the door” at 5 o’clock often to pick up a child from daycare or because the associate would rather work from home. Partners are appalled. However, those same associates may be working at home from 9 to midnight. Flexible work times are the only way that working parents especially and all lawyers can juggle the many demands on their time.

Commuting: Housing prices in most Canadian cities have forced many younger associates (and partners) to move further away from downtown offices. This plus increased traffic means associates are likely spending much more time commuting than we did 20 years ago. This is another reason that younger lawyers want to work from home so that they can get more done. They are working hard – it’s just not in the office.

Boomer parents: Many younger lawyers grew up watching their boomer parents – both their mothers and their fathers – knock themselves out at work and come home too exhausted to have much energy left over for the kids or themselves. Not surprisingly, today’s 25 year olds are saying – is this the life I want?

I believe that younger lawyers are working hard – it’s simply that they are working in a much faster, more competitive world with higher targets and much greater personal demands. For many of these lawyers, they are giving all that they have to give. 

Associates know that client work is urgent and must get done. But they need support by way of flexible work times, working from home, part time or shared work and offices, more innovative use of technology, better mentoring – whatever it takes to support all lawyers in this fast paced world.

Law firms who want to keep their best talent – both male and female – associates and partners – will need to figure out how to support all their lawyers who work in a world with increasing personal, social and business pressures. The world has changed. We need to find ways to change with it.