New York Lawyer
November 1, 2001

Q:
I feel a little bit exploited by my firm these days. I am that rarity � a female partner, married with children, who is working full time and generating a substantial amount of business.

What is making me increasingly uncomfortable is being trotted out for display to all the young women who are interviewing for jobs at our firm � kind of like window dressing. I am supposed to be an example of how you can �have it all,� and I say all the right things, but inwardly I feel hypocritical, because I know how difficult it has been for me and how hard it will be for any of these young women who want to have families. I do try to say something cautionary, like, �It may look like what I am doing is easy, but it isn�t.� I feel, however, that my words fall on deaf ears, and that these younger women get the idea that if I did it, they certainly can.

I am grateful to my firm for all they have helped me accomplish and I don�t want to be disloyal, but I also feel a sense of obligation to people starting out their careers, so that they get a realistic idea of the future and make their plans accordingly. What I�m struggling with is coming to terms with this internal conflict.

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A:
Your dilemma is one shared by others. I have talked to many women in firms who express a certain level of cynicism about the way they are �shown off� for female recruits. And they express a similar internal tension, trying to reconcile their personal feelings with a recognition of what�s best for the firm. It�s admirable that you feel a sense of obligation to the potential hires, rather than just assuming it�s their problem.

Indeed, many young women are easily lulled into thinking that combining work and family is �easy� when they see an example such as yourself. Such concerns are not generally uppermost when a woman is in her 20�s, and it�s understandable that they might be set aside in a �let�s-think-about-that-later� compartment.

In every firm, the issue of retaining women is urgent. While the turnover figure for attorneys overall at firms is 43 percent over three years, it�s sharply higher for women, perhaps as high as 60 percent. So while women make up 50 percent of incoming classes of associates, their proportion shrinks drastically by the time they�ve been practicing in firms for six to eight years. Recent figures from the National Association of Law Placement (NALP) show that for female graduates from 1991 to 1998, nearly 75 percent had left firms by their 8th year. In other words, just as they are making large amounts of money for the firm, they leave. The business case for retaining women in greater numbers could not be clearer.

Doing so means going beneath the surface and confronting assumptions and stereotypes that are deeply entrenched. So long as it�s generally accepted that women should stay home and take care of children, and that the only good lawyer is one working 24/7, progress on this issue is doomed.

Keep in mind the power of one person (that�s you!) to make change, even if on a small, one-firm-at-a-time basis. If you haven�t already done so, talk to your partners a little about your discomfort. Point out that making you responsible for glossing over the extreme difficulties in combining work and family is a strain on your sense of personal integrity. After all, the young women who join your firm -- partly on the strength of your example -- will find out soon enough that �having it all� is a myth (for both men and women, by the way).

You can also urge your partners to have very frank discussions about their assumptions about parenting and reduced-hour schedules, so that your firm�s subsequent policies rest on a foundation of clarity (however painful it is to confront what people really think) rather than politically correct mumbo-jumbo that obscures the real problems. In that way, perhaps the future for the young women your firm is courting will offer more options, and people like you won�t feel like window dressing.

Sincerely,
Holly English
Principal Consultant, Values at Work