"Opt Out" or Pushed Out: Are Women Choosing to Leave the Legal Profession? March 27 & 28, 2009

Conference Video Part VI

jrennie — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 02:30:00 GMT

We had a bit of a snafu and there no notes for the final panel of the day, Calling for Institutional Change. But who needs 'em? We have VIDEO: http://ylsqtss.law.yale.edu:8080/qtmedia/ylw/OptOutInstChange032809_s.mov

Conference Recap Part V and Video

jrennie — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 02:27:00 GMT

Many thanks to third-year student and conference volunteer Meagan Reed for the following recap:

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Parenthood and Gender Roles

This panel incorporated into the discussion the personal, as well as institutional, changes that need to occur within families to accommodate shared career and parenting responsibilities, noting that individuals' personal lifestyle changes in the aggregate can generate the necessary pressure on employers and institutions to produce larger workplace and social reforms.

Sociologist Kathleen Gerson described three prevailing trends in parenting relationships, the new traditionalism (female primary caregiver, male primary wage earner); shared parenting (interdependence); and self-reliance (financial independence), noting that men and women agree on the ideal (shared responsibilities) but not the "fall-back" position should that ideal fail to work out (men overwhelming prefer neo-traditionalism, whereas women opt for self-reliance by an equally impressive proportion). Women may prefer self-reliance over a caregiver role in theory due to fears of dependence and divorce, as well as concern that domesticity will not be fulfilling, but in practice, suggested panelist Amy Vachon, one of the biggest challenges for women is letting go of extra caregiving and household responsibilities because of insecurity about losing the "specialness" conveyed by traditional roles for wives and mothers; likewise, men who are committed to equal parenting in theory often find that they are unwilling to make required work/career compromises in practice, in part because of a social definition of masculinity that includes being the "provider" and achieving professional success.

Thus, for couples to actually live the equal parenting ideal, explained Marc Vachon, it is necessary to adopt a mindset of "conscious purposeful sharing" in the areas of child-raising, breadwinning, housework, and "self-time," consistently reinforcing women's responsibility in the workplace and men's active role in the home, and requiring compromises by both partners to benefit the family as a whole (although in this context, compromises don't necessarily mean sacrifices - Marc believes that these tradeoffs result in an overall optimization of life and maximization of happiness).

Psychologist Francine Deutsch emphasized the importance of rejecting biological essentialism, pointing out that parenting arrangements ("nurture") rather than biology ("nature") are responsible for lopsided mother-child attachments to the exclusion of the father as a primary caregiver; or as she put it, quoting a study participant, "There's no reason to think a mother has an instinctive ability to change a diaper."

Finally, all of the panelists considered a supportive "care network" or "chosen family" to be very important to the success of a non-traditional parenting model.

VIDEO LINK: http://ylsqtss.law.yale.edu:8080/qtmedia/ylw/OptOutParenthood032809_s.mov

Conference Recap Part IV and Video

jrennie — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 02:24:00 GMT

Many thanks to outgoing YLW Chair and YLS second-year student Lauren Gerber for notes on the following panel.

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Workplace Flexibility

Leslie Bennetts, author of The Feminine Mistake, and Michael Teter, of Workplace Flexibility 2010, debated whether or not the solution to women leaving the legal profession lies with individual women or with institutional structures.

Ms. Bennetts described her findings after researching what happens to women who do “opt out”: they sacrifice enormous amounts of income over their lifetime, they have extremely difficult times trying to return to the workforce, and they become depressed and unhealthy. Ms. Bennetts urged the audience to stick it out through the hard early child-rearing years, despite institutional roadblocks.

Mr. Teter, in turn, described the three areas of focus for Workplace Flexibility 2010: Flexible Work Arrangements that are the norm for EVERYBODY, not just women; Time-Off Policies that provide short-term, episodic time-off; and Career Reentry Policies for workers who leave and seek to reenter. Mr. Teter agreed with Ms. Bennetts that workers who “opt out” face enormous challenges reentering the work force, but he argued that institutions need to adapt to that type of interrupted career path, shifting the burden from the worker to the employer.

VIDEO LINK: http://ylsqtss.law.yale.edu:8080/qtmedia/ylw/OptOutWorkplaceFlex032809_s.mov

[UPDATE] Conference Recap Part III: Now with video!

jrennie — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 19:32:00 GMT

We are grateful to YLS third-year and conference volunteer Erin Phillips for the following recap:

Presentation: Cynthia Calvert & Robert Nelson

Cynthia Calvert, with the Project for Attorney Retention in DC, spoke about covert biases and negative underlying assumptions about women that often negatively effect women lawyers’ evaluations in law firms, and can lead to women feeling pushed out of the firm. Types of underlying bias can include maternal wall bias against women who are or may become mothers. Ms. Calvert also spoke about the importance of supervising attorneys in retaining junior lawyers, and especially junior women lawyers. The good news in Ms. Calvert’s presentation was that we can control underlying bias, and that law firms can take action to keep women lawyers by instituting non-stigmatized reduced hours work.

Robert Nelson presented data from the After the JD longitudinal study of the entering bar class of the year 2000. Some of the most important, or surprising, preliminary conclusions presented by Mr. Nelson are that there is a difference in the percentages of men and women lawyers who are having children during their careers, that men are much more likely than women to achieve equity partnership in law firms, and that, after 7 years of the study, women only make 91% of what men marking.

One particularly interesting question from the audience was related to the current economic crisis and how it might effect women lawyers. The question was: With the current economic crisis, are underlying assumptions and biases, which can lead to negative evaluations for women lawyers, going to lead to disproportionate numbers of women lawyers being laid off from law firms? Cynthia Calvert noted that no one has really looked at the data on that yet, but anecdotal evidence suggests that we should be very concerned about this possibility.

VIDEO LINK: http://ylsqtss.law.yale.edu:8080/qtmedia/ylw/OptOutMorningPanel032809_s.mov

[UPDATE] Conference Recap Part II: Now with video!

jrennie — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 19:31:00 GMT

Many thanks to YLS third-year and conference volunteer Mytili Bala for the following summary of Judge Nancy Gertner's keynote address.

Judge Gertner’s Keynote Address, March 27, 2009

The first wave of feminism sought to treat women the same as men, insofar as women are like men: they asserted that women would be willing to work as hard as men, put in the same number of hours as men, and to some extent resist having children like men. In contrast, the second wave of feminism sought to recognize that women and men are different, but that these differences should not call into question women’s professional lives. This second wave of feminism has clearly failed in reaching this ideal; we now realize that work is not family-friendly, and family is not work-friendly. Workplace flextime opportunities have only reinforced traditional roles in the workplace: after children, women work less while men work more.

Amidst this backdrop, Lisa Belkin’s free choice theory (that women opt out because of the pull of motherhood) and the “mommy myth” (articles artificially heightening the complexity of motherhood) obscure the problem of inequality rather than address it. Dialogue of women leaving the workforce should be discussed using the rhetoric of public obligation rather than private choice.

VIDEO LINK: http://ylsqtss.law.yale.edu:8080/qtmedia/ylw/OptOutKeynote032709_s.mov

[UPDATE] Conference Recap Part I: Now with video!

jrennie — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 19:23:00 GMT

We are grateful to YLS third-year student and conference volunteer Meagan Reed for the following recap of the introduction and first panel that took place on Friday, May 27.

Introduction & Panel I: Defining the "Opt Out" Problem

As Yale Law Women President Jennifer Broxmeyer and Conference Co-Chairs Jill Habig and Diana Rusk explained in their introduction, statistics help to explain why we can't seem to talk about women in the legal profession without talking about women leaving the legal profession: Despite comprising 50% of graduating law school classes, women hold only 20% of the top-level jobs (judge, general counsel at major corporations, equity partner at law firms, etc.). The first panel of the conference focused on responses to Lisa Belkin's infamous New York Times article, "The Opt Out Revolution," which posited that this gender gap was due to highly-educated, professional women voluntarily choosing family life over careers.

The panel, comprised of panelists E.J. Graff (a journalist), Pam Stone (a sociologist), Paulette Brown (in private practice), and Audrey Bracey Deegan (a director at Deloitte Consulting) and moderator Vicki Schultz (a Yale Law professor), resoundingly challenged the notion that women are in fact choosing to leave their careers, pointing out that:

despite consistent media coverage about "women returning to the home" since the 1950s, trends in the proportion of mothers who work have actually steadily increased, not decreased;
there is a disconnect between ex-career women's rhetoric (i.e. they express staying home as a "choice") and their reasons for leaving their professions (i.e. inflexibility in the workplace, being passed over for meaningful assignments, etc.);
so-called "opting out" is a distinct racial and socieconomic phenomenon that does not describe the situation faced by the vast majority of working women;
the "opt out" myth is based in the idea that women's true role is in the family, whereas work is a choice that only fits around family life, and thus ignores the structural roots of the clash between gender, parenting, and work expectations; and
former working mothers frequently express dissatisfaction with domestic life (Betty Friedan-style), direct their career skills/needs into potentially imbalanced forms of parenting ("intensive mothering"), and have more trouble re-integrating into the work force than they anticipate.

Ms. Brown discussed the marginalization of women of color within firms and applied the "pushed out" phenomenon to them as well, noting that 81% of women of color employed by law firms left their jobs within five years, while Ms. Deegan responded with the belief that law firms could be persuaded to modify policies that are driving associates away upon learning of the "costs of attrition" of particular groups (such as women of color and working mothers), defining "opting out" as a "business problem" and not a "women's problem."

All of the panelists expressed hope for a "paradigm shift" in work/family social structures, such that flexible employment hours and non-linear advancement tracks (such as those adopted in Deloitte's trademarked Mass Career Customization system) would become the norm rather than the currently stigmatized path for a "second class" of employees with multiple responsibilities to family and career, which panelists viewed as contributing to some professional women's departure from the workforce.

VIDEO LINKS:

Introductory remarks: http://ylsqtss.law.yale.edu:8080/qtmedia/ylw/OptOutIntro032709_s.mov

Defining the Problem: http://ylsqtss.law.yale.edu:8080/qtmedia/ylw/OptOutPanel032709_s.mov

Conference Recap Info

jrennie — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 19:19:00 GMT

Thank you to everyone-- guests, speakers, and volunteers-- for making the conference such a resounding success! In the coming days, we will be posting a series of "recap" articles that describe the panels from Friday and Saturday. We will also be posting links to videos of each of the panels as they become available, so please check back often (not exactly sure whether those will be embedded in posts or on a side bar yet).

Guest Blogger: Deborah Epstein Henry

jrennie — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 20:29:00 GMT

We are joined today by Deborah Epstein Henry, founder and president of Flex-Time Lawyers LLC, a national networking and consulting firm advising law students, lawyers, and legal employers on work/life balance and the retention and promotion of women attorneys.

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Face the FACTS: Implement a Multiple Target Billable Hours Approach to Address the Economic Downturn

Every day, hoping to keep afloat, law firms are laying off attorneys in response to the economic downturn. Layoffs, however, do not provide the largest cost saving opportunities and they create many negative repercussions. These include: increasing severance and outplacement costs; eroding institutional knowledge; disrupting continuity of service; losing talent; declining productivity; alienating clients and potential future hires; delaying resolution of pending matters; and, increasing long-term recruiting, training and replacement costs.

To respond to the economic downturn and avoid the costs resulting from layoffs, many firms are considering restructuring and dispensing with the billable hour. Billable hour rates and hourly demands are reaching a ceiling while clients are demanding more value and showing less loyalty. The billable hour model creates inconsistent interests between clients and lawyers by penalizing productivity and efficiency. The billable hour also creates temptations to pad hours, hinders associate training, discourages pro bono work, and detracts from collegiality.

But progress in banishing the billable hour may be slow. Many firms are afraid to make dramatic changes during an economic crisis. The billable hour has been entrenched since the 1950s. Billable hours are a simple method that has been profitable to firms, that puts a value on a service which many argue is hard to accurately fix, and that fits within the profession’s characteristic risk aversion.

Another response to the economic downturn is to offer reduced hours and other alternative options. These options include: mandating or encouraging reduced hours with commensurate reductions in pay; offering more telecommuting to save on energy costs; encouraging unpaid sabbaticals; offering unpaid vacations; issuing wage and hiring freezes; cutting salaries and bonuses; making pension cuts; offering early retirement packages; cutting temporary staff; reducing spending on marketing and travel; and, redeploying remaining lawyers to busier departments. If firms applied these steps, the savings would be considerable and firms would be more profitable than if they issued layoffs. However, many firms are unwilling or unable to impose these changes on a large-scale basis to respond to the economic challenges facing firms. Some firms argue, for example, that the stigma surrounding reduced hours has kept usage rates low, resulting in fewer savings than necessary.

While the billable hour remains intact and firms are unwilling or unable to use large-scale reduced hours and alternative options to address the economic crisis, FACTS is a necessary alternative methodology for firms to create savings, avoid layoffs and maintain viability. In the FACTS acronym, the key is “T” which stands for Target hours. Under FACTS, the terms “full-time” and “part-time” are eliminated and instead, a firm creates four to six Target billable hour tracks. These different Target tracks are determined by office, department, level of experience and individual performance and they are based on the four to six most popular Target hours that attorneys’ bill. For example, one firm may establish six Target hour tracks of 1200, 1500, 1600, 1700, 1800 and 2000, after identifying that most attorneys’ hours cluster around these six Targets.

Compensation under FACTS is determined by firms setting salaries at the highest Target for each associate class, and then adjusting salaries downward for attorneys in the lower Target tracks. For example, if 2000 is a firm’s highest Target and third year associates billing 2000 are paid $200,000, a third year associate with a 1500 Target would be paid $150,000. Individual compensation may be further adjusted to reflect work quality, non-billable contribution and business generation, where appropriate. Lawyers billing lower Target hours (previously called “part-time”), would be eligible for promotion, although it may be delayed. Lawyers’ hours and compensation would be reviewed annually to ensure fairness and make necessary adjustments.

The “F” in FACTS stands for Fixed hours and it provides additional cost saving measures for firms. Lawyers working Fixed hours (called staff or contract attorneys at some firms) exchange high level work and the opportunity for promotion for more control over their hours. Firms with more predictable and less challenging work can assign it to Fixed hour lawyers at a significantly reduced pay rate.

While the “T” in FACTS addresses how many hours are billed and “F” focuses on the type of work, the three other letters in FACTS are about the way work gets done – “A” stands for Annualized hours, “C” stands for “Core” hours, and “S” stands for Shared hours. For more information, see Deborah Epstein Henry, “Facing the FACTS: Introducing Work/Life Choices for All Firm Lawyers Within the Billable Hour Model,” Diversity & the Bar (Nov./Dec. 2007).

Many firms have already implemented a multiple Target hours approach. In the 2009 Working Mother & Flex-Time Lawyers Best Law Firms for Women national survey, 26 out of 105 applicant firms reported using multiple Target hours. Eleven firms reported two Targets, thirteen firms reported three or more Targets and two firms did not report numbers. The Target tracks that applicant firms used ranged from 1200 to 2200 hours. The FACTS Multiple Target approach is an extension and expansion of what many firms are already doing. Under FACTS, all lawyers would work in four to six different Target ranges – these ranges more accurately reflect the reality of current attorney billing patterns. Each track would have commensurate salary adjustments and firms would not separately categorize reduced hour lawyers – they would simply be on the lower end of a firm’s Target hour tracks.

Under the FACTS Multiple Target approach, while firms would still incur the overhead of lawyers who remain employed but bill less, some of this overhead is unavoidable for firms that remain in their current office space. Firms that are able to redesign new office space could significantly reduce their overhead as explained here, see Deborah Epstein Henry, “Creative Ways for Law Firms to Survive the Economic Downturn,” The Balance Beam (2007-08). For firms that retain their existing overhead, the overhead must be compared to revenue generation to assess a firm’s profitability.

Under the Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC) Value Challenge Law Firm Profitability Model (the “Model”), the savings to law firms by applying a FACTS Multiple Target Hours approach is greater than applying a layoff approach. Firms are encouraged to input their own numbers into the Model to determine their increased revenue and savings by applying a FACTS Multiple Target approach rather than issuing layoffs.

In addition to the savings gleaned from applying the Model, there are other economic benefits under a FACTS Multiple Target approach that are considerable. Firms would pay proportionately less to most attorneys while avoiding the outplacement and severance costs associated with layoffs. Client frustration and alienation would be minimized by firms providing continuity of service and avoiding loss of institutional knowledge. Firms would also avoid the expenses and uncertainty of recruiting, training and hiring future talent.

Applying a FACTS Multiple Target approach would also address the intractable problem of stigma that has been an impediment to lawyers using reduced hour programs since their inception. Under the FACTS Multiple Target approach, all lawyers would work in one system, within a range of different Target Hours, and the terms “part-time” and “full-time” would be eliminated, thereby diminishing the risk of stigmatizing a small group. Additionally, the FACTS Multiple Target approach would be implemented as a cost saving initiative to preserve the viability of firms. Thus, the lower Target hours would be viewed as an economic imperative rather than an accommodation. In sum, by implementing a FACTS Multiple Target approach, firms will garner the additional cost savings they need to avoid layoffs while retaining the morale and productivity of their lawyers and the sustainability of their firms.

For more information, please visit Flex-Time Lawyers LLC at www.flextimelawyers.com.

Are Men Necessary?

jrennie — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 20:11:00 GMT

Last year, in just about every law firm interview, I heard about women’s initiatives, generous maternity leave policies, flexible telecommuting alternatives, and part-time options. Almost without fail, the interviewer vaunted the brand new flex-time policy or insisted that he or she had time to spend with family and friends. Though I took in this information with healthy skepticism, I was heartened by firms’ recognition that these issues mattered to me and my classmates. Or perhaps just to half of my classmates.

I asked my male friends what they talked about in their interviews or at firm receptions – “sports,” “the type of work the interviewer does,” “my résumé.” Meanwhile, a partner cornered my female friends to tell them about the firm’s new lactation room.

Now, my female friends and I certainly discussed our résumés, potential work assignments, and different practice areas. But we also talked about how we would make our jobs work with the rest of our lives (or vice versa). Given, in the very few instances where the interviewer didn’t mention “work-life balance,” I generally asked about it, and my participation in Yale Law Women welcomed conversation about concerns many women law students and lawyers have. But this is precisely the problem – reasonable billable hours, flex-time, parental leave are all seen as “women’s issues.”

The truth is that as many men as women find billing 2500 hours a year unappealing. Men too want to spend time with their families. Men too want a diverse and balanced workplace. We should be discussing these things with our male friends and colleagues. Interviewers should discuss balancing work and life with male students, and male students should ask about these issues.

I sincerely appreciate the efforts firms have made to attract and retain women lawyers.
But until men are included in the conversation, very little will change. And not just because men make up more than 80% of partners at law firms across the country. But because until we recognize that the same issues matter to men too, these “women’s initiatives” will always be seen as accommodation – that is, exceptions to a normal career. So yes, men are absolutely indispensable. Without the participation of men, I fear that efforts to retain women lawyers will fail.

Jennifer Broxmeyer
Yale Law Women Conference Co-Chair
Yale Law School Class of 2009

Judith Warner: Families to Care About

jrennie — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 20:30:00 GMT

Interesting piece in the New York Times published March 19. Warner notes that a lot of the news coverage (or at least, perhaps, NYT coverage?) of the recession has focused on what in reality is a very small part of the economic downturn-- job loss and economic hardship for the fairly to very well-to-do. After discussing the fact that this is a "classic blue-collar recession," she writes:

The kind of marital tensions that we’re seeing in the downwardly mobile lifestyles of the rich and wretched, the family historian Stephanie Coontz told me this week, aren’t necessarily typical of couples further down the income scale, either. Wealthy families, she said, have tended, with their work-around-the-clock husbands and at-home wives, to have adopted a rather old-fashioned model of marriage, with fixed sex roles. They’ve set the tone, but the rest of the population hasn’t necessarily followed.

Increasing numbers of working class women now — in a downturn where 82 percent of the job losses have been among men – have become their family’s sole wage-earners, it’s true. But their husbands, very often, are holding their own at home just fine. For while the stereotype has long been that working class men won’t do “women’s work,” Coontz said, the truth is that in recent years they’ve had a better track record than the most high-income men in sharing domestic duties. Twenty percent of these men, in fact, actually do more housework and child care now than their wives. “These people have been doing it for some time and they’re much more ideologically committed to doing it,” she said. “I think your worst offenders” (dirty coffee mug-wise), “are in that top 5 percent.”

I would recommend reading the whole column. I was heartened by Warner's call to action for broader changes in the workplace:

There’s a deeper reason, too: paying attention only to the – real or perceived – “choices” and travails of the top 5 percent hides the experiences of all the rest. And this means that the needs of all the rest never quite rise to the surface of our national debate or emerge at the top of our political priorities.

This happened very obviously in the 1990s, when the New Traditionalist story line hid the fact that many mothers at home were actually either poor (and unable to “afford to work” if they had kids, as Coontz puts it), or had had their nonworking “choice” made for them by an inflexible workplace or a high-earning husband’s nearly 24/7 work schedule. Years of public prosperity passed without any real action on creating family-friendly workplaces.

While I think that Warner does a bit of a disservice in this piece to women who may be in the "top 5%" (of what? I'd like to know) but who face or faced the same challenges as the rest of all women, with inflexible workplaces or spouses or partners who (also?) have a very time-consuming profession, that may just be part of a larger disagreement with her views on opting out, or maybe a generational shift, or my own blissful naivete. She makes good points though, about the need for broader legislation-- paid leave, flexible workplaces. Take a look!

Guest Bloggers: Jennifer Kohler & Brande Stellings

jrennie — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 21:01:00 GMT

Today we are lucky to be joined by guest bloggers Jennifer Kohler and Brande Stellings of Catalyst. Ms. Kohler is an Associate in Advisory Services and Ms. Stellings is the Senior Director of Advisory Services, where she leads Catalyst's practice to advance women and promote inclusion within the legal profession.

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Getting Beyond the “F” Word

Many organizations already support workplace flexibility as a means to recruit and retain talent and increase employee productivity. But is it enough? Our research, our consulting work with companies and firms, and the work of other organizations suggest it is not.

Although our reference to “flexibility” as the “f word,” is a bit tongue-in-cheek, the need to get beyond discussions of flexibility – and concentration on flexible work arrangements as the solution – is very real. As currently practiced in most organizations, flexibility has not been leveraged to its full potential. Instead, it:

Focuses on the short-term
Focuses on individual work solutions
Is an accommodation for a select few
Values time spent
Regards employee needs, interests, and concerns about burnout as obstacles to accomplishing work
Focuses on managing employee schedules

We hear all the time from women (and men) at law firms about these limitations. Utilizing a flexible work arrangement is often seen as a career derailer. A woman law firm associate told us, “Reduced hours schedules are a mommy track; they reduce the ability to do substantive, important work and limit advancement.” This perception is not without merit; in some law firms, working reduced hours is a barrier to attaining the top position in a law firm – equity partnership. This might explain why lawyers report one of the lowest levels of utilization of flexible work arrangements among professionals; although 98% of law firms offer flexible work arrangements, just 5.4% of lawyers availed themselves of reduced hour schedules in 2007, according to NALP. Of course, we know that not everyone wants to work reduced hours and it can be hard to know what the take-up would be in a world where working differently might not foreclose future opportunities. It is worth noting that at the “Best Law Firms for Women,” as awarded by Working Mother and Flex-Time Lawyers, 8% of lawyers worked reduced hours in 2007.

We also hear of other limitations: from a culture of secrecy where a flex-time lawyer is advised to hide the arrangement to perceptions that flexible arrangements are available only to women with children, leading to resentment from co-workers without children who feel that they are expected to pull late hours or heavy weekend work.

This is not to say that firms should abandon flexible work arrangements or the very laudable programs that some have put in place, many of which are hugely valued by their participants. In one innovative program, Weil Gotshal created a new partnership category, the Flex-Time Partner, which was created for new partners making a long-term choice to work on a flexible schedule. Another law firm, Gibbons, a 2009 Catalyst Award winner, has successfully created a flexible working culture, where women have combined both parenting and career success: more than two-thirds of the firm’s women partners are mothers.

These successes, although notable, are not the norm for many organizations. A shift in focus is required for many organizations. At Catalyst, we advocate adopting the larger paradigm of work-life effectiveness (“WLE”).

Catalyst’s approach to WLE combines flexibility with process improvements to support individuals, teams, and the bottom line. This approach goes beyond the traditional notion of flexibility as an individual employee “perk” to view effectiveness as a mutually beneficial partnership between business and employees. It is a management tool aimed at finding workplace solutions to common challenges affecting all employees and allows organizations to be more flexible, adaptable, and nimble – enormous benefits in a competitive and constantly changing global economy, in both good times and bad.

In the current economic environment, every program is under scrutiny. An integrated approach to work-life effectiveness need not be “on the chopping block,” as it can be a useful and viable strategy in place of downsizing. Some companies are cutting back on administrative operations, adding unpaid vacation days to reduce operating costs, or shifting work schedules to better reflect client needs, demonstrating that the strategies used can be more or less aggressive. The limitations posed by the billable-hour model – where time spent working on client matters is directly linked to increased revenue – may be weaker in this economy, where traditional ways of doing things are up for grabs. Law firms are working with their clients to come up with win-win billing solutions for both parties, ones where fixed, flat fees may reward efficiency over hours billed.

WLE, at its core, is about evaluating work and work practices and eliminating inefficiencies. It is about how the work gets done. While the law firm/billable hours environment does not naturally lend itself to time efficiency, the focus on strong performance and employee sustainability under any circumstance is very applicable. Recognizing when employees do their best work and capitalizing on it by allowing them to work early or late, starting from home or ending at home, scheduling meetings during a range of “core hours” can be part of bringing better work-life effectiveness into the law firm environment. Some law firms have been successful at this; because the emphasis is on getting the work done, the “face time” culture has diminished, although the trade-off requires being constantly connected to one’s Blackberry. This is precisely the point, however: focusing on work-life effectiveness means having candid discussions about the trade-offs associated with different approaches and options.

Keep in mind that WLE is an approach that meets the needs of virtually every employee demographic. Going far beyond the traditional view of flexibility as a “women’s issue,” WLE has the potential to meet the needs of men, single employees caring for aging or sick parents, the disabled, students, those with long commutes, dual-career spouses, younger employees, and more. We have seen from Phoebe Taubman’s blogpost here and her work at A Better Balance that the workforce of the 21st century law firm – both women and men -- desires better work-life balance and is willing to make trade-offs to attain it.

Employing WLE requires clear communication and business-based criteria and will not work in every situation. It must be presented and adopted as a business-based strategy that enables the organization to react quickly to changes in the economic environment. The approach also requires organizational support from leaders and managers, many of who are already employing elements of the approach in their daily juggling act but are not necessarily transparent about it. Recognizing and supporting WLE is critical, as is monitoring the success of fostering a WLE culture. Monitoring need not be a full-time job; however, as managers should already be paying attention to the productivity, satisfaction, and individual needs of employees, likewise, individuals should hold themselves responsible for managing these elements of their career.

In this ever-changing global work environment, the ability to identify what is most important and to focus effectively on priorities will help both individuals and organizations remain resilient against challenging external circumstances. WLE fosters a high-performance, sustainable work environment which has implications for success both now and in the years to come.

Some forward-thinking organizations have already begun to adapt to these changes. Deloitte’s Mass Career Customization is an innovative program that moves the discussion beyond flexibility to one about building careers and developing talent over the long-term arc of an employee’s career. It is now time for law firms to begin to build work environments that fit the needs of the 21st century workforce.

For more information, link to Catalyst and search for work-life effectiveness materials, knowledge products, and content experts. Also, feel free to check out the Catalyst publication, “Making Change: Beyond Flexibility: Work Life Effectiveness as an Organizational Tool for High-Performance.”

A Hodgepodge of Interesting Things

jrennie — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 20:16:00 GMT

Just a quick post to point out some great things I've come across in the last week:

Sharing the workload at work- and home: A San Francisco Chronicle piece that interviews Sharon Meers and Joanna Strober, the authors of Getting to 50/50: How Working Couples Can Have it All by Sharing it All and Why It's Great for Your Marriage, Your Career, Your Kids ... and You. There are some great thoughts here:

Q: You write about the "maternal wall." What is that?

Meers: There are a variety of attitudes and entrenched policies that make it hard for women to continue to be successful when they are mothers if they are working as hard as they were before. There are expectations about how women will perform once they are mothers that women have to overcome. Someone called it postnatal hazing.

Exemption from Service: Mothers in the Military and Fathers at Home: A great piece by Katherine Franke at Feminist Law Profs, cross posted from Gender & Sexuality Law Blog. This is the recent news coverage of Lisa Pagan, who showed up for deployment with her small children in tow. She received an honorable discharge so that she could care for her children, the reason being that her husband's job in sales required a lot of travel. Prof. Franke makes a critical point:

On the other hand, when I read the Times story I thought: what about the children’s father? Can’t he take care of the kids? If their positions had been reversed, and the IRR member called up for active duty had been a man, do you think the military would have allowed him to plead “family hardship” if his wife was unwilling to quit her job to take care of the kids?

Ms. JD put us on the front page (keep scrolling...). It's a *great* blog that links to a lot of excellent news stories and creates a lot of interesting content, like the latest in their Superwomen JDs series featuring an interview with Nicole Auerbach.

Guest Blogger: Eli Wald

jrennie — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 17:09:00 GMT

Today we are joined by guest blogger Professor Eli Wald. Professor Wald is Associate Professor at University of Denver Sturm College of Law. His academic interests include the American legal profession, legal ethics and corporate law. His recent research has examined topics such as the regulation of the corporate bar, increased lawyer mobility, attorney-client communications and the rise and fall of Jewish and WASP law firms.

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Kicked Out or Opted Out? Gender Stereotypes in an Increasingly Competitive Large Law Firm World

When women lawyers leave jobs at large law firms, understanding whether they were kicked out or instead had opted out involves an analysis of gender stereotypes. But now that lawyers are leaving firms in unprecedented numbers, two specific aspects of stereotyping may have even greater explanatory power: some stereotypes can perversely help their targets when people in power change their attitudes towards particular stereotypical attributes (like “aggressiveness” of Jewish lawyers), and the impact of stereotypes may vary in different phases of a victim's career (Asian “attention to detail” may be perceived as a plus for associates but a negative for partners). Seeing how stereotypes work in these ways suggests a grim reality for women lawyers at large firms because an increasingly competitive work environment combined with an economic meltdown compounds the negative consequences of gender stereotyping.

Gordon Allport, a pioneering scholar of prejudice, defined stereotypes as exaggerated beliefs associated with a category whose function is to justify and rationalize conduct in relation to that category.

At large law firms stereotypes impact pre-hiring decisions such as who gets interviewed, who is invited for a call-back and who is offered a summer associate position. Stereotypes later influence retention decisions, such as who to mentor and how much training one receives, and they finally play a role in promotion and post-promotion decisions such as who makes partner, what kind of a partner (equity, non-equity etc) and how much sway one has as a partner.

Since women began to enter the legal profession in significant numbers in the 1970s, gender stereotypes have degraded their experience at large law firms. The gender stereotype exaggerates beliefs decision-makers at large law firms have about female lawyers. According to the gender stereotypes, women attorneys prioritize having a family and primarily caring for their children over a commitment to the firm. In addition, the stereotypes suggest that women lawyers tend to be less adversarial, less controversial and bring to the practice a professional temperament that Carrie Menkel-Meadow has called the “ethic of care.”

As a result of these exaggerated beliefs, male lawyers, historically the powerful decision-makers within large firms, typically conclude that women lawyers represent a higher risk of leaving the firm several years down the road and are not worth the investment in mentorship and training as their male counterparts. The gender stereotype thus leads to negative consequences as female associates tend to receive lower quality assignments. Furthermore, firm partners assume that because female associates prioritize their personal lives over their professional commitment, they will likely work and bill less hours relative to male associates and therefore will not be available during “crunch” time – late at night, over the weekend, and during family holidays.

These gender stereotypes may lead rational decision-makers within the firm to systematically prefer male associates to female lawyers. And the stereotypes will be self-reinforcing. Male associates will likely receive better assignments, superior mentorship and advanced training. Over time, male associates will therefore become better lawyers, rationalizing the biased decisions against women attorneys.

Gender stereotyping most obviously harms female attorneys. But it also harms law firms. The firms end up giving up, to an extent, on a significant pool of its own lawyers, relying on exaggerated assumptions as proxies for their hiring and promotion decision-making.

Unfortunately, that is not the end of the story. Two qualities of stereotypes compound the negative impact of gender stereotypes on women lawyers working at large law firms, especially at times of heightened competition and economic downturn. First, as pointed out by Allport in a different context, stereotypes may be positive or negative, or more accurately, stereotypes may have positive or negative consequences. Second, stereotypes have a dynamic influence, that is, they tend to interact and respond to changing practice realities, culture and ideologies.

That stereotypes may have beneficial consequences is evidenced by the experience of Asian-American associates at large law firms. Asian-American lawyers may benefit form the racial stereotype of “Asians work hard,” have a “strong work ethic” and are “loyal” to the firm. Especially under a competitive professional ideology that demands more and more billable hours and sacrifices in terms of one’s personal life, these racial stereotypes may lead decision-makers within the firm to give better assignments and superior mentorship to Asian-American lawyers.

The dynamic characteristic of stereotypes is demonstrated by the experience of Jewish lawyers. Jewish lawyers, who were systematically discriminated against by the large law firms on Wall Street under the old-boys’ club and pseudo-meritocracy professional ideology of the early and mid twentieth century, suffered from the negative ethno-religious stereotypes of having “oriental minds,” a “pushy immigrant mentality,” and a “money grabbing, manipulative” frame of mind, which was considered inappropriate given the then prevailing white-shoe professional ethos. As the professional paradigm changed, however, and became explicitly more competitive, emphasizing the financial bottom line (as in profits-per-partner), the same old ethno-religious stereotypes became an asset for Jewish lawyers. Aggressive representation was now considered an asset, shrewdness and manipulation on behalf of clients a model for client representation, and money grabbing a quality to celebrate. Jewish lawyers thus benefited from the “flip-side-of-bias,” under the new, hyper-competitive professional paradigm. See Eli Wald, The Rise and Fall of the WASP and Jewish Law Firms, 60 Stan. L. Rev. 1803, 1844-47; 1860-61 (2008); Eli Wald, The Rise of the Jewish Law Firm or Is the Jewish Law Firm Generic?, 76 UMKC L. Rev. 885, 929-33 (2008).

The dynamic, transient, nature of stereotypes may be further illustrated by the experience of Asian-American lawyers at large law firms. The very same racial stereotypes that may benefit Asian-American junior associates may later on harm senior associates seeking a promotion to equity partnership. Exaggerated assumptions about ”working hard,” having a “strong work ethic” and being “loyal” may be valuable in one’s early career at the firm, but may become a liability when coupled with other aspects of the racial stereotypes, such as “lacks imagination and creativity.” The combined effect of the racial stereotype may lead large law firms to refuse to promote a senior Asian-American associate to equity partnership, instead opting out to offer “promotion” to non-equity partnership or to “of counsel.”

Since the 1980s, large law firms have been experiencing a race to the bottom, a growing influence of the competitive, even hyper-competitive professional model and a decline in the old merit-based model. More and more emphasis is being put on the financial bottom line, profit-per-partners and rain-making capabilities, to the relative exclusion of mentoring, training and professional satisfaction.

Under this new professional paradigm, gender stereotypes have increasingly negative consequences for women attorneys. The hyper-competitive professional model, with its growing emphasis on an increased number of billable hours, demands of increased commitment to the firm in both the short and the long run, more aggression, and more explicit business orientation, tends to further exaggerate the beliefs of decision-makers within the large law firm about women lawyers. The gender stereotype, with its assumptions about female attorneys’ preferences for family life over their professional careers and their “ethic of care” style of practice, is less compatible with the increasingly prevalent hyper-competitive ideology of the large firm.

This is not to glorify the “good old days,” as women lawyers faced difficult challenges even under the old, so-called merit-based professionalism model now replaced by the new hyper-competitive model. The point, rather, it is to suggest that the consequences of gender stereotyping may be even worse for women attorneys under the new professional ideology now dominating large law firms.

Add bad economic times to the mix, and the negative impact of gender stereotypes gets compounded. The recent economic meltdown has caused numerous large law firms to freeze salaries, eliminate bonuses, fire associates, de-equitize partners and close offices. The unfortunate marriage of an economic downturn and a hyper-competitive professional ideology leads large firms to over-react and seek efficiencies, real and perceived. The unhealthy mix may lead such firms to further exaggerate assumptions made about female associates – about their commitment to the firm, willingness to work around-the-clock in the service of corporate clients, ability to tough it out, etc.

Efforts to better understand the experiences of women lawyers at large law firms, let alone effectuate change and break the glass-ceiling effect, must take into account the dynamic influence of gender stereotypes, their interaction with the current professional ideology among large firms and the compounded impact of exaggerated assumptions during times of economic instability.

PAR's Report on New Partners

jrennie — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 17:02:00 GMT

The Project for Attorney Retention (PAR) released its yearly report on the percentage of women in law firms’ 2009 partner classes, and the news is pretty grim.

14 firms did not make a single woman partner (Cadwalader, Cleary Gottlieb, Dechert, Foley Hoag, Kaye Scholer, Lowenstein Sandler, Milbank, Schulte Roth, Steptoe, Strook, Venable, Wachtell, White & Case, and Wilkie Farr), and several others came in below 20% (Pillsbury Winthrop (9%), Latham & Watkins (10%), O’Melveny (11%), Howrey (13%), Finnegan Henderson (13%), Morrison & Foerster (13%), Winston & Strawn (13%), Locke Lord (14%), Nixon Peabody (14%), DLA Piper (15%), Ropes (17%) and Akin Gump (17%)).

The good news is that there were a handful of firms with partner classes that were 50% or more women (Cravath (67%), Dickstein Shapiro (67%), Wiley Rein (60%), Andrews Kurth (57%), Bryan Cave (56%), Arent Fox (50%), Baker & Daniels (50%), Hogan & Hartson (50%), Holland and Hart (50%), King and Spalding (50%), Luce Forward (50%), Simpson Thacher (50%), and Sullivan & Cromwell (50%)), and special mention goes to Arnold & Porter, Crowell & Moring, Perkins Coie, and Sullivan and Cromwell, who have all had new partner classes that were 40% or more women for the past 3 years.

Jennifer Broxmeyer
Yale Law Women Conference Co-Chair
Yale Law School Class of 2009

NYT: Why is Her Paycheck Smaller?

jrennie — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 01:15:00 GMT

The NYT has a fascinating chart today called Why is Her Paycheck Smaller? It charts median weekly pay for women against that of men for dozens of professions and color-coded by type of industry. An especially salient statistic: female lawyers make, on average, 22% less than their male counterparts. The article mentions, "Economists cite a few reasons [for the wage gap]: discrimination as well as personal choices within occupations are two major factors, and part of the gap can be attributed to men having more years of experience and logging more hours." An interesting empirical question would be what portion of the difference is explained by those "personal choices," which are the center of the subject matter we hope to address at the conference. Other interesting factoids:

Female retail sales workers make 35% less than males of the same occupation. What does this say about rainmaking?
Female chief executives make 19% less than male CEOs.
Female compliance officers make 33% less than male compliance officers.
The largest gap: 40% disparity between male and female physicians and surgeons.

My in-house skeptic (the boyfriend) immediately took issue with what a "comparable" job was. While these occupations are split into broad categories, it is true that an attorney at a huge Wall Street firm is going to make immensely more than an attorney in a smaller firm in a smaller city. The same goes for an engineer at the top of R&D at General Electric with one working at a smaller company. Without comparing salaries within the same company, he thought this data was "intentionally inflammatory" and of little use. More useful would be information that showed whether there were differences in pay between women and men of the same class year at the same firm. Without this information, it's hard to know whether the data is skewed by the fact that a larger proportion of men work at larger firms than women do, but those who work in truly comparably companies make similar wages. While there is not much information about the methodology of the study, I think these broad snapshots are useful. The differences between workers at different types of companies, I think, are an expression of some of those "personal choices" that women make-- to work closer to home, to work at a smaller company that requires fewer at-work hours, etc. What do you think?

Student Guest Blogger: Helen O'Reilly

jrennie — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 00:27:00 GMT

Today's student guest blogger is Helen O'Reilly, a member of the Yale Law School class of 2011. Helen is 28 years old and grew up in Jackson Heights, Queens.

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When I graduate from law school in 2011, I will be 31 years old, married, and on the way to my first job as a lawyer. I will also be thinking about starting a family. The Opt Out Conference is of particular interest to me, and perhaps other older law students, whose entry into the legal profession may coincide with their entry into parenthood. Since starting as a first year student in August, I have followed with great interest the conversations within the Yale Law Women community about “family friendliness” and kinds of work environments that women can expect or demand from 21st century employers. This topic is personally very relevant, and I continue to wonder: If you have an infant child at the same time as an infant career, can both grow up as well as you may like?

On January 13, 2009, Carol Bartz was named the CEO of Yahoo!, and as I read more about her great professional achievement, I was struck also by her views on women’s attempts to “have it all” while also trying to do it all. In a More magazine article, Bartz said, "They [women] think, 'I'm going to cook a great breakfast, wash up the dishes before I leave, take the kids to school, call my college roommate on my way in to work, be a CEO all day, volunteer on the way home, do a little exercising, cook a wonderful dinner, help with homework, have sex.' . . . I don't think so." She advised that working parents should focus on doing one thing well at a time, instead of seeking the perfection of a daily balance. In a January 15th 2009 profile of Ms. Bartz, The Economist optimistically reported that “[y]ou can ‘have it all,’ as she does, but only by cutting life into compartments and then ruthlessly maintaining the boundaries.” According to the profile, when Bartz’s daughter, whom she had at 40, was a baby, she spent three days a week looking after her at home in Dallas. On Mondays she handed the baby to her nanny and flew to Silicon Valley for four days of work; then she flew home again at midnight on Thursdays. Describing this commute in More magazine, Ms. Bartz said, “It was awesome for me, and I don’t think [my daughter] is any the worse for it.”

Is this split between work and children a new way forward or an example of a sacrifice that women had to make, but should no longer? This Conference will be an opportunity to have a conversation about this and other important questions with parenting professionals – and students headed down that road.

Student Guest Blogger: Alex Crohn

jrennie — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 01:02:00 GMT

We are joined by student guest blogger Alex Crohn. Alex is a member of the Harvard Law School class of 2009.

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I was once told that the reason gay men and women have thrived so much in finance is because banks realized that gays were less likely to have families and would therefore be less distracted from their work. Now, I am all for the increased presence of gay individuals in fields that have traditionally been dominated by straight men, but somehow this fact did little to comfort me. Whether or not this story was actually the truth, it remained true that in the early days when gay men and women first started coming out in the workplace they were simply less likely to have children, and as a result, were able to devote more time to their work.

We live in a different time now and gays are increasingly seen not just as efficient workers, but as individuals with specific needs. Many law firms have LGBT affinity groups, attend LGBT career fairs, adopt non-discrimination policies, and provide leave to new parents who adopt. Yet disparities still exist, and these disparities show that law firms have failed to completely acknowledge the reality of gay families. In almost all law firms, more time is given for maternity leave than the leave given to parents who adopt. This, of course, ignores the fact that in some same-sex relationships, neither parent will qualify for maternity leave. Biological births present unique challenges to mothers, but adoption has its own share of hardships. Providing reduced leave for adoptions fails to acknowledge the fact that gay couples face significant challenges during the adoption process that are incredibly time consuming. Gay couples experience increased scrutiny from private adoption agencies and are prohibited from adopting children from certain foreign countries. Additionally, some law firms give monetary gifts to lawyers who get married. This of course ignores the fact that the vast majority of gay lawyers are legally prohibited from getting married and are ineligible for such a gift. A failure to acknowledge the impact this has on gay couples in committed relationships reveals a lack of sensitivity on the part of some law firms towards the needs of their gay employees.

The issues that gay lawyers face in major firms are not insurmountable obstacles and are clearly within the power of firms to address. Of course these issues are relatively minor when we are faced with the fact that 30 states provide no workplace protection on the basis of sexual orientation, 37 states provide no protection on the basis of gender identity/expression, and no federal laws exist whatsoever to protect the LBGT community from workplace discrimination. And of course there are many legal employers that provide no recognition of their gay employees. However, until employers that pride themselves on the inclusive nature of their legal practice provide full acknowledgment of the reality of gay families, gay employees will continue to be seen only as efficient workers, and not as individuals with specific needs.

Guest Blogger: Phoebe Taubman

jrennie — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 16:54:00 GMT

Today we are welcoming Phoebe Taubman as guest blogger. Her organization, A Better Balance: The Work and Family Legal Center, issued a report in June 2008 entitled Seeking a Just Balance: Law Students Weigh in on Work and Family. She highlights the findings below.

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Last year, my colleagues and I surveyed students at NYU School of Law to gauge their thoughts about balancing work and family in their future careers. Our findings provide a snapshot of attitudes and expectations among students at a top law school and offer some insights into how this group of lawyers can help to influence their profession.

We discovered surprising gender parity in student attitudes. Seventy-two percent of male students we surveyed, and 76% of female students, said they were very or extremely worried about being able to balance work and family as lawyers. That’s more than twice the number of students who were worried about earning top pay, handling high profile cases or working for a prestigious firm. Similarly, 7 out of 10 respondents said they expect to make career sacrifices in order to have a satisfying personal life. As one male student put it, “I wouldn’t like sending my kids to child care all day, and I’d rather be around for them.”

We found that both male and female law students are willing to put their money where their mouths are. Eight out of ten would be willing to trade money for time, that is, to accept reduced earnings in return for flexibility, predictability and reduced hours. According to one of male student, “All the firms pay pretty much the same amount, and prestige, you know, means something, but I think it’s a lot less important than kind of being in control of what your life looks like.”

Our findings are consistent with other evidence of increasing parity between men and women when it comes to worries about work/life balance. In a poll of likely voters conducted around Election Day 2008, three quarters of working fathers said they worry on a daily basis about meeting work and family demands. Similarly, a 2007 survey of Generation Y workers found that 73% of young people are worried about balancing work with their personal obligations.

While both men and women in our study agree that a larger cultural shift is necessary to make a healthy work/life balance possible for lawyers, there is still a disconnect between that view and the way they anticipate resolving these issues in their own lives. The women talked about solving work/family conflicts on an individual basis—by relying on a supportive spouse—while the men talked about relying on the inevitable change that an increasing flow of women in the field will bring. Along the same lines, female survey respondents expressed greater concern than their male peers about the nuts and bolts of a range of workplace policies. For example, 40% of women in our survey were very or extremely worried about having the option to work full-time flex-time, compared with only 15% of men.

Our survey shows that male and female law students have similar hopes for their careers and for their profession but that they need to coordinate better in order to turn those hopes into reality. Students should communicate more openly about their fears and aspirations around work and family, something that may be especially challenging and unfamiliar in the competitive environment of law school. Conversations between men and women are especially important. We hope that the “‘Opt-Out’ or Pushed Out” conference will spark such conversations, and we particularly encourage female conference attendees to engage their male peers on these issues. Ultimately, the more that work/family challenges and caregiving obligations are understood as gender-neutral responsibilities and privileges, the better off all lawyers, and their families, will be.

Introducing the Panelists: Workplace Flexibility

jrennie — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 19:18:00 GMT

An integral part of the opt out discussion involves the "regular" "standard" work day, whether that means 9-5 or 8-8 plus checking your Blackberry at least twice an hour until you fall asleep. Another critical aspect of the discussion involves the "standard" career path (a continuous stint at one or several companies, with regular upward advancement and increasing responsibility and compensation) versus one that requires off ramps and on ramps (shorthand for the degree to which it is possible for professionals, especially female professionals, to leave the workplace entirely for a period of time, often several years, and then jump back in and reintegrate themselves into a full-time position with the possibility of advancement).

The concept of workplace flexibility has sprung up in recent decades, and in theory allows employees to structure their working time outside of this "standard" frame. It can mean working part-time, shifting the work day, telecommuting, changing responsibilities, or other ad hoc or personalized tweaks that change the meaning of "work day" and "at work." Expanding the discussion, we will address whether it is possible for women to fully reintegrate into the workforce after an absence, whether it should be possible, and how this might be accomplished.

In the Workplace Flexibility panel, we will discuss whether and how employers and institutions can reshape how work is accomplished and what careers can look like in order to accommodate the multi-faceted realities of their employees' lives.

Leslie Bennetts is a journalist and the author of The Feminine Mistake: Are We Giving Up Too Much?, a controversial and ground-breaking examination of women's life choices that was named one of the best books of 2007 by The Washington Post. She is also a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and Portfolio. Ms. Bennets spent more than a decade writing for The New York Times, and has also written for a number of other publications, including Town & Country, Parenting Magazine, and The Nation.
Claudia Goldin is a professor of economics at Harvard University and director of the NBER's Development of the American Economy program. Her research is in the general area of American economic history. She is an author of several books, one of which is Understanding the Gender Gap: An Economic History of American Women. Ms. Goldin also writes and researches gender issues that include the career and family tradeoffs made by college-educated women and family and career transitions for men and women who have graduated from elite educational institutions.
Michael Teter is a supervising attorney and clinical fellow at Georgetown University Law Center. As part of his clinical duties, he represents Workplace Flexibility 2010, a multi-year research, outreach, and consensus-building enterprise focused on developing a national policy on workplace flexibility that fits the needs of employers and employees. WF2010 is the lead policy component of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation's National Initiative on Workplace Flexibility.

We are lucky to be joined by Lynn Neuner as a moderator of this panel. Ms. Neuner is a litigation partner at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP in New York City. She is a 1992 graduate of Yale Law School. The American Lawyer named Ms. Neuner one of the nation's top litigation "rising stars" in its January 2007 issue: "The Young Litigators Fab Fifty". She is also named in the 2008 issue of the New York Super Lawyers – Metro Edition.

This panel can be a meaningful discussion of how women attorneys shape their work-lives, but will only come to life with your participation. To begin the discussion,

What are your work hours? How many days a week do you work outside the home? From home? What other scheduled activities create the "frame" for your days, e.g., caretaking responsibilities, spiritual observances, or classes or workshops to further some aspect of your career? What do you wish your work hours were? Would it require working fewer hours, or working different hours (or both?)?
Have you left the work force, and if so, did you ever return to your former company? To your former industry? To any full time work?

To learn more, check out some links that I have found useful and informative:

The Women at Work member blogs: http://www.womenatworknetwork.com/index.php?q=community/externalBlogs
Thoughts from the Fast Company Blog: http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/heath-row/one-step-forward-two-steps-back-work and http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/fast-company-staff/fast-company-blog/ramps-and-ramps-and-why-its-so-hard.
Workplace Flexibility 2010: http://www.law.georgetown.edu/workplaceflexibility2010/

Equality for Women at Law Firms? Only 106 Years To Go!

jrennie — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 04:44:00 GMT

Women have made up 40% or more of law school students since 1985, but in 1996, only 14.2% of partners at law firms were women, and the number rose to only 17.2% in 2005. And the percentage of women equity partners is even lower; firms include non-equity partners when reporting numbers. At this rate, women will make up 50% of law firm partners in 2115.

Source: the current "Infobit" (at the sidebar) from the Project for Attorney Retention. (Older infobits here!), also included in Raising a Gavel for Women's Equality, which includes this statistic as well:

Less than 5 percent of the nation's largest law firms are led by women managing partners and only 16 percent of Fortune 500 companies have women as general counsel. And while our current Congress holds the record for the highest-ever female representation, 16 percent is no cause for celebration.

Jennifer Broxmeyer
Yale Law Women Conference Co-Chair
Yale Law School Class of 2009

Equal parenting and breast milk

jrennie — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 04:35:00 GMT

Sarah Waldeck writes a provocative piece called Milk for Concurring Opinions that links to some great recent articles about the relationship between pumping breast milk and the degree to which institutions are graded "mother-friendly." She takes on some broader underlying issues, and ties breast-feeding advocates to more uncomfortable and personal (more personal than breastfeeding? indeed) decisions women make about spending quality time with their infants. I find myself tempted to copy the entire (brief!) post, but instead I will offer only this as a party-starter:

For mothers who do eschew formula or at least resist the slippery slope, breastfeeding is sometimes about more than “just” infant and maternal health. We (rightly) hail the benefits of equal parenting. But once society has tumbled to the conclusion that a baby is fine so long as its caregiver is providing loving attention, some women may feel the value of “mother” erode.

Go read it.

Student Guest Blogger: Ami Parekh

jrennie — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 02:47:00 GMT

Our next student guest blogger is joining us today. The post below is written by Ami Parekh, a joint MD/JD student and a member of the Yale Law School Class of 2009. Ami is a married mother of an 8-month-old.

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Opting Out of Law School

I used to LOVE the stairwell at Yale Law School. For those of you who have never walked up our stairwell - it is located in the middle of our one hallway'ed law school. It goes up three flights of stairs culminating in the high ceilings of the main room of the library. And on the walls of the stairwell is poster after poster advertising one event or another, or asking students to join an advocacy or interest group, or a journal, or a reading group. It, to me, was the purest representation of why I came to Law School - so many exciting things happening all the time in this little building on Wall Street - all of which I could be a part of. It would often take me 30 minutes to walk up the stairs - not because they were steep (okay, fine a little because they were steep - especially when I was pregnant) but because I would be reading the posters and deciding what to get involved in, and what to go to.

This year, I have been known to avoid the stairwell. Not because I wouldn't love to know what is going on at School, but because it is a reminder of the things I can't go to. This year, my third year, is my first year as a mom in law school. There are many pluses about being a mom in law school - a flexible schedule being probably the biggest advantage of having a child in school versus while working. However, there are minuses and some of the minuses are a result of the system of recognition and reward we have set up at law schools.

A little bit about me, the mom part. In some ways, I may be unique - I, the mom, am the law student. Although I would never admit this before having the baby, there are differences between being a dad and being a mom -- breastfeeding and morning sickness during pregnancy being two key differences. My husband works a lot as well (and commutes to NYC everyday to financially support me and my expensive education - and in some ways, I have had a similar experience as the one Josh describes in his blog post) - so I do not have a partner who can really shoulder the logistical responsibilities that come with having a child. Finally, we have decided on group childcare - we think our daughter thrives in group care and want her to have that. We did not get off the waitlist at any of the Yale day cares (YLS daycare told me they had a waitlist 14 people long when I got on it - I signed up when I was 12 weeks pregnant!), so my daughter's daycare is a 20 minute drive from the Law School.

You might be wondering why I am boring you with the details of how we do childcare, but it is important because it means that I can't get to law school before 8:30 and I have to leave by 5. This means not only that I can't take classes that meet outside of those times - and believe me, there are a number of them; but it also means I can't do most of the activities I used to love.

This would not be so problematic actually - because in some ways I made a choice - to have a child. I "opted" to have this child. So it seems fair that I have to give up some things - all parents do. However, the problem comes when it is precisely those things that make you a "good" Yale Law Student. For example, many would tell you that if you would like to clerk for a Judge, you should work on a Journal. Unfortunately, most journal work, the source-citing and book pulls, occurs after 7:30pm. As do moot court, trial practice and most of the other things good law students should have on their resumes.
In addition to these "prestigious" activities that ambitious law students "should" pursue, many activities that may be seen as less important but were integral to my law school experience were also out of my reach. For example, most of the progressive reading groups and meetings were after 5pm, as were most YLW membership meetings.

All in all, in my case, it isn’t that important that I do a journal, or moot court, or trial practice – I am not going to be a lawyer next year (I am a joint MD/JD so will be a resident physician – but a discussion of that would be a whole separate blog post!). All I lost, really, was the option to do a few things I would have enjoyed doing and taking a few classes I would have enjoyed taking – so maybe I “opted out” of being a good law student. However, if I truly wanted to clerk, or land a “prestigious law job,” I wonder if I could have opted out so easily or I would have be “pushed out” of pursuing those types of career paths. At Yale, a lot of us don't want to be lawyers when we graduate, which might make this less problematic; however, we also don't get grades which makes our extracurriculars a little more important regardless of what we want to do when we graduate - this, I think, may make it significantly harder for parents to truly succeed as Yale law students.

There are ways to improve the situation for parents. For one thing - make on site daycare a priority. Yale uses their limited spots to attract professors, but by limiting the availability to students, it truly hampers the ability for parents to become full members of the YLS community. Second, if onsite daycare is not feasible - have onsite back up care available. On this point, Yale can learn from hospitals and law firms that provide free care for a number of days of the year: 20 - 40 at most places. Third, encourage student organizations to try and schedule meetings during the day - lunchtime could be used much more often; similary encourage professors to have classes within the times that daycare operates. Fourth, include the actual cost of daycare in financial aid decisions - Daycare costs $13,050 for the academic year after taxes (about $23,000 pre tax dollars) - this has to be included as a necessary cost when determining need. Lastly, on a cultural level, encourage, support and acknowledge the student parents - raising children in law school is not easy and it should be respected - the law school should be publicly proud it has parents among its student body.

Introducing the Panelists: Defining the Problem

jrennie — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 02:39:00 GMT

The main goal of the conference is to uncover what factors are influencing the choices of women lawyers in the workplace. The conference presumes a problem in the fact that women are leaving the legal profession and advancing in a noticeably different pattern than men. But what that problem is, where it comes from, and why it perpetuates are big areas of disagreement and debate that invite careful reflection on the role of gender and the incentive structures, professional and domestic, that inform the “choices” women make in subtle and not so subtle ways.
These are the orienting concerns our first panel on Friday, March 24th will begin to address. We are lucky to have four extremely knowledgeable speakers who have written and worked on the “opt out” phenomenon in depth but from different professional orientations.

E.J. Graff, author of “The Opt-Out Myth” published in the Columbia Journalism Review in 2007, is a journalist whose work appears in the New York Times Magazine, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, Columbia Journalism Review, The New Republic, and the Women's Review of Books. She is currently the senior researcher directing the Gender & Justice Project at Brandeis University's Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism, and works on issues of gender and workplace discrimination.
Pamela Stone is a Professor of Sociology at Hunter College in New York and a fellow at the Gender Equity Project. Her bio can be found here. She is the author of numerous articles on work-life interaction, pay equity, workplace discrimination, and gender bias in employment. Her recent book “Opting Out?: Why Women Really Quit Careers and Head Home,” analyzes labor market trends, the experiences of a sample of high achieving women, the media treatment of what became known as “opting out,” and why these three do not match up.
Audrey Bracey Deegan has over 20 years of experience consulting on strategic and organizational issues, both inside and outside companies such as McKinsey & Co. and Deloitte LLP. Deegan has worked closely with companies in examining the effect workplace culture and organization has on encouraging career advancement and talent development. She was part of Deloitte’s major workplace reforms that examined out of date assumptions about female and male work preferences, and has worked on the effects of workplace structure in the law firm setting.
Paulette Brown is a partner at Edwards Angell Palmer & Dodge and is the Chief Diversity Officer and a member of EAPD’s Labor & Employment Practice Group. She has published several articles examining the experiences and particular challenges of women of color in the legal profession. She is also the current co-chair of the ABA’s Women of Color Research Initiative.

We are also lucky to be joined by Professor Vicki Schultz of the Yale Law School, an expert in the fields of employment law and the intersection of work and gender, who will be moderating this panel.

We are looking forward to beginning the discussion with these panelists and all of you! Please post questions and comments related to “defining the problem” and let us know what you would like our panelists and conference participants to discuss. A few initial questions to get our juices flowing:

What is the term “opting out” supposed to express? How is it linked to the idea of choice and voluntariness?
Who is harmed when noticeable numbers of pre-retirement age women leave the elite workforce? What makes this more relevant than an isolated individual choice?
What type of data is most useful in examining the status of women in the legal profession? How does the use of certain sources distort a complete view of the “problem”?
What are we most afraid of in discussing whether women are opting out or not? What are the implications we want to resist in the idea that women would not opt for complete and equal workforce participation? How is this gendered and how is this about work-life balance and workplace incentives that are (or could be) gender neutral?

Katie Wilson-Milne
Yale Law Women Conference Planning Committee Member
Yale Law School Class of 2009

Other good websites and blogs?

jrennie — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 21:38:00 GMT

I would love to put together a list of other great websites and blogs. Here are two to get us started, but please post more in the comments!

Ms. JD, Changing the Face of the Legal Profession: http://ms-jd.org/, especially this post, an interview in the "SuperWomen JDs" series.

Mommy Track'd, Managing the Chaos of Modern Motherhood, http://www.mommytrackd.com, especially http://www.mommytrackd.com/moments and http://www.mommytrackd.com/onthejob/ramps

Guest Bloggers: Chai Feldblum & Michael Teter

jrennie — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 17:01:00 GMT

In this guest post, we welcome Chai Feldblum and Michael Teter. Chai Feldblum is a Professor at Georgetown Law and Co-Director of Workplace Flexibility 2010, an initiative supporting the development of comprehensive public policy on workplace flexibility that meets the needs of both employees and employers. Michael Teter (YLS ’02) is a Teaching Fellow and supervising attorney in the Federal Legislation and Administrative Clinic at Georgetown Law. Workplace Flexibility 2010 is a client of the Clinic. Mr. Teter will be a panelist on the Workplace Flexibility Panel at the Conference.

For more information, visit www.workplaceflexibility2010.org.

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Opting or pushed, women attorneys’ exit from the legal profession denotes a serious problem in the American workplace. Indeed, more broadly, the unmistakable and erroneous message from such women’s exit resonates across the professional world: to remain competitive, our workplaces cannot afford to place any significant value on the personal and family needs of the American workforce. The result is that Americans struggling with the demands of work cannot always meet the needs of their families – and are sometimes forced to choose between them.

Over the last forty years, the American workplace has become increasingly demanding of workers’ time. In addition, the demographics of the American workforce have shifted dramatically in recent decades. Women now represent a major component of the American workforce – and, for most American families, the reality of today’s economy is that both members of a couple must work full time.

But to date, the normative structures of our workplaces have failed to catch up with the full ramifications of these changes. In an era when most families no longer have a person at home who can be tasked with ordinary life needs, there is often a serious mismatch between the workplace and the day-to-day realities of working families. Millions of American workers struggle to succeed at work while meeting the demands of family – and a significant majority feel they fail to achieve either one very well. And some believe that struggle has now prompted an exodus of some of the most highly trained, economically valuable women from the legal profession and from the public workplace.

Balancing work and home life is almost always painted as an individual problem that each employee or family must face alone. But achieving that balance isn’t an individual problem; it’s a societal imperative that demands public policy attention. In order to ensure the long-term strength of the American workforce – which requires providing professional women the opportunities they need to succeed at work while also caring for their families – we must address the mismatch between the policies that structure our workplaces and the daily realities faced by American employees.

At the same time, we must also acknowledge that this issue is much broader than just a caregiving issue and certainly broader than a “women’s issue.” As a realistic matter, the pressure to balance work and family is often still gender-skewed because women tend to carry more caregiving responsibilities than men. But this pressure is felt by both women and men in the workplace today who take their caregiving responsibilities seriously.

Indeed, this pressure to balance work and life is felt by millions of working Americans, representing every age, race, gender, and income level. It is felt by those who want to remain active in the workplace when faced with a chronic disease or disability; it is felt by those who are struggling to sustain a normal family life when a loved one is deployed to a war zone; it is felt by those who wish to phase into retirement but not leave the workforce completely; and it is felt by those who want to succeed at work while also returning to school, or engaging fully in their religious practices, or volunteering in their community.

Workplace flexibility – an approach that encompasses options from flexible work schedules and telecommuting to extended time off and phased retirement – is a solution at the crossroads of that myriad of pressures facing our workforce. Flexibility can help ease the intense strain that is created by the competing demands of work and personal obligations or family needs. It can provide employees with:

The ability to have flexibility in the scheduling of their full-time hours;
The ability to have flexibility in the number of hours they choose to work;
The ability to address unexpected and ongoing personal and family needs as they arise; and
The ability to have career flexibility with multiple points for entry, exit, and reentry into the workforce.

Essentially, it provides employees with the flexibility and freedom to work – and with the opportunity to achieve the highest professional success possible – without sacrificing personal fulfillment beyond the workplace.

The benefits of workplace flexibility for employees are obvious. But there is a growing body of evidence that suggests that workplace flexibility can also benefit employers. Flexibility is already serving as a strategic management tool for businesses to attract the best talent and increase their competitive advantage. Flexibility is being used in organizations and industries across the country to reduce turnover rates, boost recruitment, and enhance productivity and performance. And flexibility is now recognized by a growing number of business leaders as a way to streamline and modernize how work gets done.

Workplace flexibility can support both employers and employees in meeting the demands of the 21st century economy. But in order to make workplace flexibility a new standard of the American workplace, we must not only encourage voluntary business practices – but also develop consensus-based, common-sense public policies that work for families and in the marketplace.

Unfortunately, over the last several decades, the policy debate around the intersection of work and family has been plagued by political stalemate. But we believe that – through meaningful dialogue with business leaders, labor representatives, family, aging and disability advocates, and policymakers from both sides of the aisle – we can develop comprehensive workplace flexibility solutions that bridge political divides in Washington and beyond.

As workplace flexibility becomes an integral part of the American workplace, it will help ensure that women have every opportunity to flourish in their professional lives while caring for their families, whatever their choices about work may be. Ultimately, we believe workplace flexibility will support more effective business, a stronger workforce, and healthier families.

Introducing the Panelists: Parenthood and Gender Roles

jrennie — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 05:15:00 GMT

One aspect of the “Opt Out/Pushed Out” question that often gets overlooked is the “life” half of the (quickly becoming clichéd) phrase “work-life balance.” Yet what it happening at home is inextricably linked to what is happening at work. It is simply impossible to address the larger issues women (and men) face in the workplace without addressing their experiences at home.

And so, I am excited to introduce what will be our third panel, “Parenthood and Gender Roles.” The panel will examine how popular myths and ideals of parenthood are contributing to the “opt out” problem, how family and care responsibilities play out at home, and how we can examine and address these issues.

We have four terrific panelists who bring extensive knowledge, research, and experience to this topic.

Marc and Amy Vachon were featured in a New York Times Sunday Magazine cover story that came out in June, “When Mom and Dad Share It All.” They are the founders of EquallySharedParenting.com and have been featured in the Boston Globe, the Washington Post, the Today Show, Fitness Magazine, and the Huffington Post. Marc and Amy are currently writing a book about the benefits, challenges and practicalities of creating an egalitarian family life for Perigee/Penguin to be published in 2010.

Francine Deutsch is a Professor of Psychology and Sociology at Mount Holyoke College and the author of Halving It All: How Equally Shared Parenting Works.
She has explored the division of domestic labor in the modern American family and has researched and written extensively on gender equity at home and in the labor market and its effects on women’s well-being in a global economy.

Kathleen Gerson is a Professor of Sociology at N.Y.U. and has published widely in the areas of gender, work, and family issues. Her books include Hard Choices: How Women Decide About Work, Career, and Motherhood; No Man’s Land: Men’s Changing Commitments to Family and Work; and The Time Divide: Family, Work, and Gender Inequality (with Jerry A. Jacobs). Her new book, Blurring Boundaries: How the Children of the Gender Revolution Are Remaking Work, Family, and American Life (forthcoming in Fall 2009), examines young women’s and men’s responses to growing up in an era of changing families and gender transformations.

If you are interested in further reading on this topic, I suggest taking a look at some of the following thought-provoking articles:

“The Bad-Mommy Brigade” by Ayelet Waldman
“Men Who ‘Halve’ It All” by Laura Vanderkam
“Charlie LeDuff on Life as a Stay-at-Home Dad” by Charlie LeDuff
“The Needless Fear of Day Care” by Judith Warner
“When Mom and Dad Share It All” by Lisa Belkin

While we would love for men to participate in the conference as a whole, I strongly encourage men to attend this panel in particular and women planning on attending the conference to pass information about this panel along to their male partners, friends, and peers.

Please feel free to post questions or issues you would like our panelists to address in the comments section. Some to get us started:

How are domestic responsibilities usually divided in an average dual-working parent family?
What does a day in the life of an “equal parent” look like?
Can Equally Shared Parenting really work? Is it realistic where one or both partners are lawyers? What kind of lawyers?
What are the most important and overlooked care-taking issues people should discuss before having children?

We’re looking forward to what should be an interesting and provocative discussion.

Jennifer Broxmeyer
Yale Law Women Conference Co-Chair
Yale Law School Class of 2009

Student Guest Blogger: Josh Lee

jrennie — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 23:37:00 GMT

In the coming weeks we will be inviting several students to write posts from their own experiences or about things in the news. The post below is written by Josh Lee, a member of the Yale Law School Class of 2009 and a married father of two. Josh started and runs the Association of Law Students with Significant Others, which works to make the law school experience better for students with partners and children.

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I expect working at a law firm to be hard on me as a parent. I suspect most law students who think about it share my expectation. Long hours and demanding clients seem almost like a right of passage, a necessary hazing ritual, for newly inducted associates. Other lawyer-parents have confided in me their sense that a diminished relationship with our children “is the price you pay for the big bucks.” They seem almost resigned to this sort of Faustian bargain. And even though I reject it, I confess it has a certain logical resonance: you get paid more, so you work more. But, I find this explanation for legal work’s abusive relationship with parents unsatisfying. As with many things in the law, I suspect the anti-parent culture of law firms began for reasons totally divorced from the ones used to justify it today.

My three years as a law student suggest the expectation that parents will sacrifice their children to their profession owes at least some of its vitality to the culture of law school. Law school does many things right, being unusually receptive to student-driven change and (in the case of Yale) minimizing the competitive pressure of grades and class rank. And like most firms, what obstacles law school does erect for parents are unlikely the result of a conscious effort to disadvantage us. Instead, the problem seems more like a sort of nonchalance with respect to the practical challenges facing “working” parents.

What does law school do wrong? It begins right after admission by closing the doors to students’ families during the various indoctrination events. What is probably an attempt to keep costs down and space up has the effect of foisting all the childcare duties onto the non-student parent. This, in my case, has a certain bitter irony since my wife is the one whose income currently foots the bill for my participation in these events.

Law school scheduling has a similar burden-shifting effect. It assumes (and is largely correct to do so) that students are 24 years old, single, and have no kids. So, when I arrived at law school with a four-month old and a full-time, working spouse I was plunged into a world in which writing instruction comes after 5 PM, student organizations meet after 6 PM, and most meaningful social events take place after 10 PM. There is no way for a parent to be a full-fledged citizen of that world. As with admitted student events, every choice to participate means abdicating my parental role, leaving all the responsibilities (and rewards) of child-rearing to my wife, often after a full day’s work at her own job. Every choice to withdraw means lost networking, camaraderie, learning.

Finally, there is daycare, or the lack of it. I have benefited immensely from Yale’s provision of daycare. It is convenient, well-staffed, high quality. It is also small, and very expensive, and not every law school offers one, even on those terms. Despite having only a handful of student parents, the law school cannot accommodate all of their daycare needs. Student access is limited because the law school holds out daycare spots as a perk for visiting professors, while the cost is driven up by rising lease and insurance payments the law school does not fully subsidize. When once I addressed my cost concerns to a professor, he chided, “You guys are going to make so much money when you graduate, we should double the cost.” It’s hard to ignore the irony of that statement at a school that prides itself on encouraging public interest employment. When it comes to daycare, that may in any case be a self-fulfilling accusation. The more expensive childcare gets, the more pressure parents feel to seek employment in “big law” rather than the non-profit, government, and small firm jobs that have traditionally been more accommodating to parents.

The upshot of all of this is two-fold. First, for the non-student partner, three years of supporting a law student with your income and more than your share of child care has a way of burning you out. When your income is essential to stay afloat for three years, it means you don’t have the luxury of taking time off to find a more satisfying career, of taking vacation or even the night off if work days get displaced by kids’ sick days. It means you need a break. For the student-parent, it means the bill for three years of leaning on your partner comes due just as three years of law school loans drive you into a career that could make it harder than ever to pay down the childcare deficit. Second, for all fledgling associates, it means by the time you graduate, the sacrifices demanded of you as parents by your firms will seem perfectly normal, even reasonable. Of course the firm schedules work and events without regard to family demands. Of course those events are “employees only.” Of course there’s no daycare. “You guys are going to make so much money… etc.”

How can law school improve the situation? First, welcome the partners and children of student-parents into the community. Many of them shoulder the greatest burdens of three years of law school, so it’s fitting that they share in the rewards. But more than that, integrating families into the fabric of law school life lowers stress, increases satisfaction, and changes expectations about how work and family can and should coexist.

Along these lines, law school should also tailor parts of orientation to student-parents. At Yale that means assembling a Dean’s Advisor group for them. New student-parents have a unique set of needs that would benefit from a support structure dedicated to developing and passing on the cultural knowledge of graduating student-parents. How do I find daycare? How do I balance coursework with raising a child? Where can I turn when I need to get out of the library and have child-friendly fun? These are questions the current randomized group DA system is ill-equipped to answer. And while the danger of creating a marginalized, student-parent clique is real, the orientation period is so short, that danger should not be overstated in the face of the tremendous benefits a change would provide.

As for daycare, law school should make its universal provision a priority. Every student today expects their school to have a cafeteria or a gym, even sports teams. But there’s no particular association between these things and “the law.” Law schools provide them because they make life better, easier, more productive for students. The same and more could be said of daycare for student parents. It’s true that this change would benefit a much smaller subset of the student populace than a cafeteria. But the immediate benefit to a handful of parents is hardly the only benefit. Like welcoming families to law school events, the presence of a daycare shapes expectations of work-family coexistence. Those who aren’t parents in law school will certainly want to benefit from that paradigm shift if and when they become parents in a law firm. And there is a way to effect this change without asking law school to foot the entire bill. Right now $25,000 will buy you naming rights to a Yale library carrel. Why not solicit a daycare endowment? In my professor’s words, we’re “going to make so much money when [we] graduate,” someone’s bound to want to put their name on that, especially when it makes their law school experience that much easier and more rewarding.

In the News

jrennie — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 19:21:00 GMT

The economy is forcing some gender, parenting, and work issues to the forefront. A recent article in the New York Times is a veritable playground of issues that we will discuss at the conference. For example:

On average, employed women devote much more time to child care and housework than employed men do, according to recent data from the government’s American Time Use Survey analyzed by two economists, Alan B. Krueger and Andreas Mueller.

When women are unemployed and looking for a job, the time they spend daily taking care of children nearly doubles. Unemployed men’s child care duties, by contrast, are virtually identical to those of their working counterparts, and they instead spend more time sleeping, watching TV and looking for a job, along with other domestic activities.

. . . .

Historically, the way couples divide household jobs has been fairly resistant to change, says Heidi Hartmann, president and chief economist at the Institute for Women’s Policy Research.

“Over a long, 20-year period, married men have stepped up to the plate a little bit, but not as much as married women have dropped off in the time they spend on household chores,” Ms. Hartmann says. This suggests some domestic duties have been outsourced, as when takeout substitutes for cooking, for example. And as declining incomes force families to cut back on these outlays, she says, “women will most likely pick up the slack.”

A severe recession could put pressure on these roles.

Economic pressures often change responsibilities, and even self-image, in partnerships and marriages. Do hard economic times erase equality gains that women may have made in the home and in the office? Do they have to?

Introducing the Panelists: Calling for Institutional Change

jrennie — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 19:13:00 GMT

We can only discuss the problem, share stories, kvetch or despair privately, and negotiate compromises in our jobs, personal relationships, and other interests for so long before we realize that something larger must be done to address the institutional and social hurdles that have the effect of discouraging women from advancing in the work force. We must call for institutional change. Luckily, we have four experienced, talented, and outspoken panelists to guide us in this challenge.

Wendy Schmidt is a former litigator and presently is a Principal in the New York office of Deloitte Financial Advisory Services LLP. In addition to her work in the Business Intelligence Services practices, Ms. Schmidt serves on Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu’s steering committee for the Global Retention of Women. She formerly served as the national leader of Deloitte’s US Women’s Initiative Network (WIN), where she developed programs aimed at the retention, promotion, and recruitment of women. Additionally, Ms. Schmidt is a member of the executive board of directors of the National Association of Women Lawyers, and is on the advisory board of the Women in Law Empowerment Forum in New York City.

Pat Gillette, a partner in the Employment Law practice group of Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP in the firm’s San Francisco office, is the founder of the Opt-In Project, a nationwide initiative focused on changing the structure of law firms to increase the retention and advancement of women in the workplace. She also serves on the Hidden Brain Drain Task Force, a cross-industry group engaged in developing practices to retain women and people of color in the workforce.

Mona Harrington is a writer on the subject of social and professional issues produced by the transformed roles of American women. Most recently she has engaged in research, analysis and advocacy of public policy on work-family issues. As Program Director of the MIT Workplace Center from 2001 to 2008, she directed surveys on career decisions and attrition rates of women and men in Massachusetts law firms and co-authored with Helen Hsi the resulting report, “Women Lawyers and Obstacles to Leadership” (Spring 2007). She also organized a national conference of Women’s Bar Associations and co-authored its report “Advancing Women in the Professions: Action Plans for Women’s Bar Associations” (June 2007). Ms. Harrington’s books include Care and Equality: Inventing a New Family Politics (Knopf, 1999) and Women Lawyers–Rewriting the Rules (Plume/Penguin, 1995).

Mary Ann Mason is Professor and Co-Director, Center, Economics & Family Security at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law. Her recent works have focused on working families, in particular the issues faced by the surging numbers of professional women in law, medicine, science and the academic world. Her most recent book (co-authored with her daughter Eve Mason Ekman) is Mothers on the Fast Track: How a New Generation Can Balance Family and Careers (Oxford 2007). From 2000 to 2007, she served as the first woman Dean of the Graduate Division at UC Berkeley. During her tenure, she championed diversity in the graduate student population, promoted equity for student parents, and pioneered measures to enhance the career/life balance for all faculty. Her research findings and advocacy have been central to ground-breaking policy initiatives, including the ten-campus "UC Faculty Family Friendly Edge."

We know these panelists will spark a thoughtful and engaging discussion. If you are interested in this topic, let us suggest a few articles and links to get you started:

Deloitte’s Women’s Initiative
Mass Career Customization
Lisa Lerer, Slate, How to Kill the Law Firm Billable Hour
New York Times, Economy Pinches the Billable Hour at Law Firms

We would love to know your thoughts before the conference begins. Let’s get the conversation started:

Does the rigidity of the billable hour affect women’s professional advancement differently than men’s? Or is this just one application/example of how employees with responsibilities outside their work life must have some flexibility in managing both?
How can we learn from other professions that have tackled retaining women in the workforce? What unique challenges does the legal profession add to the mix?
How can women work to shape the policies and structure of their workplaces? How can women work with men to change the discussion from one that is women-centered to one that is worker-centered?

Read this op-ed!

jrennie — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 20:16:00 GMT

In an Op-Ed in today’s New York Times, Stephanie Coontz writes that “[p]arents today spend much more time with their children than they did 40 years ago.”

“The sociologists Suzanne Bianchi, John Robinson and Melissa Milkie report that married mothers in 2000 spent 20 percent more time with their children than in 1965. Married fathers spent more than twice as much time.

A study by John Sandberg and Sandra Hofferth at the University of Michigan showed that by 1997 children in two-parent families were getting six more hours a week with Mom and four more hours with Dad than in 1981.”

And this despite women’s greater presence in the workforce. So where is the extra time coming from? From “shortchanging” adult time – time as a couple and time with friends.

Koontz goes on:

“Couples need time alone to renew their relationship. They also need to sustain supportive networks of friends and family. Couples who don’t, investing too much in their children and not enough in their marriage, may find that when the demands of child-rearing cease to organize their lives, they cannot recover the relationship that made them want to have children together in the first place.”

Fortunately, children actually might not want to be spending all those hours with their parents.

“Indeed, the researcher Ellen Galinsky has found that most children don’t want to spend as much time with their parents as parents assume; they just want their parents to be more relaxed when they are together.”

Lots of great ideas here-- you should check out the whole thing!

Jennifer Broxmeyer
Yale Law Women Conference Co-Chair
Yale Law School Class of 2009

Nancy Killefer’s “Nanny Tax” Withdrawal: Double Standard or Just Bad Timing?

jrennie — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 01:52:00 GMT

Nancy Killefer’s “nanny tax”-related withdrawal has brought to the surface some interesting and recurring questions about working women and domestic help. Emily Bazelon discusses the possibility of a tax screw-up double standard:

“When Nancy Killefer withdrew her nomination for chief White House performance officer this morning over unpaid nanny taxes, I got outraged e-mails screaming double-standard. Tim Geithner gets away with his tax mess-ups, which included a nanny-related screw-up, but Killefer doesn't? And what about Tom Daschle and his chauffered car?

But now Daschle's nomination is sunk, too. Is that evenhanded enough for us? Does it matter that Geithner's nanny tax troubles were of a pretty minor and technical variety (his kids' baby-sitter overstayed her visa for a short period)? And did Geithner just get lucky because his confirmation came first? Or is Kilefer's [sic] fate proof that unpaid nanny taxes trip up women seeking higher office more than men?”

Eve Fairbanks thinks it’s all “timing, timing, timing.”

What do you think – double standard or just bad timing? Should it matter that Killefer owed under $1000 ($298 in employment taxes and $600 in penalties) while Daschle owed $140,000 and Geithner $31,000? What does this say about the state of working women today that that this is the same debate we had in 1993 about Bill Clinton’s first attorney general nominee Zoe Baird, who withdrew her name because of “nanny tax” issues?

Jennifer Broxmeyer
Yale Law Women Conference Co-Chair
Yale Law School Class of 2009

Welcome from the Conference Committee: Things About Our Blog

jrennie — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 04:51:00 GMT

Welcome to the Yale Law Women “Opt Out” or Pushed Out Conference Blog!

Registration is now OPEN, so please register using the link in the side bar ("Registration").

We hope that the conference will bring together a diverse group of attendees and panelists, from practicing lawyers in the private, public, and nonprofit sectors, to students, legal scholars, and anyone else interested in the “opt out” myth as it relates to the legal profession. You can find full details on the conference here and at the "Conference Information" link on the sidebar.

This is the first of many blog posts in the coming weeks leading up to the conference on March 27-28, 2009 at Yale Law School. We have an exciting lineup of student and guest bloggers planned, and we hope you will visit the site frequently and offer your comments and insight to this online discussion!

In anticipation of the conference, we have several goals for this blog, and we hope you will help us fulfill them:

1.    Provide an online forum for attendees and panelists to learn more about the topics to be addressed at the conference and offer their preliminary thoughts so that we can foster a more thought-provoking and fruitful discussion once we convene together in March for the conference;
2.    Introduce the specific topics that each of our panels will address at the conference, and get feedback from attendees about what they would like to discuss;
3.    Provide background information about the limits inherent in our conference topic, and briefly discuss the important topics that unfortunately be outside the scope of this conference; and
4.    Create a permanent record of the conference for future use by attendees, Yale Law Women, and the law school.

We hope you enjoy this blog, and we look forward to meeting you in March!

Jill Habig
Yale Law Women Conference Co-Chair
Yale Law School Class of 2009

Conference Registration is Open!

jrennie — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 03:40:00 GMT

Welcome to the blog for Yale Law Women's Conference, "Opt Out" or Pushed Out: Are Women Choosing to Leave the Legal Profession?. The conference is March 27-28, 2009 at Yale Law School in New Haven, CT. The main web page for the conference is here. Registration is open! Please register today using our secure registration site. We especially encourage you to answer the survey questions that accompany the registration. We will be using the information in an anonymous and aggregate form during a discussion of what the face of the female legal profession looks like today. Accurate information about our attendees will make that discussion more relevant.

Please check back soon for in-depth discussions of the conference panels and guest posts by scholars and practitioners! We look forward to meeting you in March.