Here’s the problem:
"According to a study by Sylvia Ann Hewlett, president of the Center for Work-Life Policy in New York, 42 percent of female lawyers take time off — apart from maternity leave — in contrast to 30 percent of women in business and 21 percent of those with medical careers. Lawyers, the study found, stay out of the work force longer — an average of three years compared with just over two years for other professionals. And while only 7 percent of all professionals leave for six to nine years, 24 percent of female lawyers leave the work force for that length of time. "
And getting back in the groove after a significant period of time off can seem daunting to the individual and problematic to the potential firm. The key fear: Rustiness.
Before I tell you what the cure for rustiness might be, permit me to editorialize a moment about the magnitude of the personal and economic tragedy that the high attrition rate of women lawyers constitutes. I’ve witnessed, as I’m sure have you, the personal crises and long-term anxiety women confront as they try to "balance" (horrid, despicable word) our intense, client-service profession with the call of family and marriage and the expectations and demands of newborns and toddlers. You have heard, as have I, the female friend now 25 years out of a top-three law school, whose practice, in the ascendancy at an AmLaw 5 firm, ended 18 years ago, for keeps, when the first of her two children was born: And I quote, "I wasted my education, and my career!"
The economic tragedy is one we also know too well: As expressed by Arthur Field, retired corporate partner from Shearman & Sterling: ”Firms have a big investment in this group because they have trained them,” he said, ”while the individual lawyers have an enormous investment in their education. Those who want to come back will work harder. If it’s just a dollars and cents decision — which it shouldn’t be — why wouldn’t you hire more highly motivated people who have left and want to come back?”
Now, about that cure for rustiness I promised: It’s "Back to Business Law," a pilot program under the auspices of the ABA which was launched here in New York in April to provide, as they put it,
"continuing legal education programs and informal networking opportunities for attorneys who temporarily leave active practice in law firms or corporate settings (including women who leave for a period of months or years in order to care for children) but remain interested and engaged in business law issues."
It’s not nearly as dry as that makes it sound.
The goal of "BBL" is nothing less than providing intellectual engagement, stimulation, and feet-on-the-ground encourage to talented, bright, and energetic people who are temporarily on the sidelines, in the not-unreasonable hope and expectation that they’ll understand they, too, can get back in the game—and with a minimal level of fluency with the latest developments. If you know of a more imaginative, creative, hopeful way of dealing with the deplorable rates of attrition we see today, then you know more than I.
I had the good fortune of being able to attend their latest event, held last week at Proskauer Rose, on "Structured Finance: The $7 Trillion Industry," with a featured presentation by no less than the GC of Standard & Poors, Petrina Dawson. This is not your standard hotel ballroom CLE yawner. Other topics they’ve covered over the past nine months read like a Greatest Hits of early 2000’s Big Corporate Law Issues:
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Professional Responsibilities: Challenges and Pitfalls of the Corporate Lawyer, featuring E. Norman Veasey, former Chief Justice of the Delaware Supreme Court
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The Delaware Chancery Court Considers The Business Judgment Rule, presented by Edward P. Welch, who heads up the Wilmington office of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher and Flom LLP
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The Issuance And Trading Of Securities: The Changing Regulatory Framework In America, courtesy of Roberta Karmel, who was the first woman to serve as a Commissioner on the Securities and Exchange Commission
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Sarbanes-Oxley: What You Need To Know, from Marni Lerner, a partner at Simpson, Thacher and Bartlett, and
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Open Source: Corporations Taking Notice: Increasingly, intellectual property and intellectual technology issues are central to business. David Hudanish, a leading attorney in this area, will describe the “open source” movement and explain why the movement has gained the attention of corporate America and its lawyers.
After attending the event, I had the unusual opportunity to interview Linda Hayman, a Skadden partner and chair of the ABA’s business law section—who spearheaded creation of "BBL"—as well as her partner Kayalyn Marafioti, chair of the Advisory Board for the project. Linda and Kayalyn were gracious, forthcoming, and transparently enthusiastic about the program.
The program relies, they told me, on the generosity and public-spiritedness
of the speakers they’ve been able to recruit and on the support of firms
who contribute lawyers’ time, and their space and support, to get the program
launched and to watch it thrive. To be sure, there are (we hope!) countless
small networking groups among temporarily-sidelined lawyers around the country,
but this is to my knowledge the first launched with the ABA imprimatur and,
more importantly, with the backing of major-league firms as opposed to a
loose confederation of individuals. Certainly the members of their
Advisory Board come froma veritable Murderers’ Row of name-brand firms, including:
- Akin Gump
- Cadwalader
- Cahill
- Cleary Gottlieb
- Cravath
- Davis Polk
- Debevoise
- DLA Piper
- Fried Frank
- Gibson Dunn
- Jones Day
- Latham & Watkins
- Mayer Brown
- Milbank
- O’Melveny
- Schulte Roth
- Shearman & Sterling
- Simpson Thacher
- Sullivan & Cromwell
- Willkie Farr
- Weil Gotshal
- Winston & Strawn
Based on all of nine months’ experience in New York, their next ambition is to launch a similar program in Washington, DC, and after that they’re targeting Chicago and San Francisco. I laud them and foresee great success if energetic backers will step forth.
So here’s my call to action:
- If you’re in Washington, Chicago, or San Francisco—or are
in another major metropolitan area and want to try to steal a march on
those cities—contact Arthur
Field and he’ll
explain the New York "template" and what you need to
do to attempt a launch locally; and - No matter where you are, reach out to and tap your firm’s alumni network to let your talented "graduates" know about the "BBL" opportunity and enlist their interest. The feedback received from audience members and participants (which the CLE qualification requires be collected) is 1,000% positive. We’d like to expose many more people to the opportunity, but we need to find them or they need to find us. Help.
Thanks in advance for any interest you might have in pursuing this. The career you re-launch could be your spouse’s.
