jlwallace's Recent Blog Posts

Naming It, Claiming It: Pursuing a Legal Life on California's Central Coast

Note: On January 1, my husband and I made a resolution for the New Year: we would move to California's Central Coast before the end of 2010. This series will chronicle the career component of our journey as I attempt to make connections, build a network, and, hopefully (fingers crossed!), find a legal job in the next twelve months.

This column was born at Brent's Delicatessen in Northridge, California. Ms. JD's Executive Director and I had met for lunch and, over two heaping plates of cheese blintzes and potato pancakes, she convinced me that I should document my adventure. There’s something decidedly crazy about moving to a small beach community, particularly when one owes massive loans and one doesn’t have a job lined up in the small beach community of one’s choice.

Initially, I planned to write anonymously. At the time, I had several irons in fires in cities across the country. I was moving steadily along in the Presidential Management Fellow application process. I hadn't heard from my summer employer—although, considering the current spectacle that is the California state budget, I suspected that my odds were not great. I had numerous applications outstanding.

What if an employer selected me for one of these positions? Worse yet, what if an employer in Washington, D.C. saw this post—this very post that I am writing now—and decided that, clearly, I wasn't interested in moving permanently to our Nation's capital and, therefore, decided to withdraw the offer?

I worried that writing this series might preclude me from certain opportunities, might close proverbial doors. Using a pseudonym seemed a reasonable judgment—I could share my story while protecting my identity—but something felt cowardly and incompatible about this approach. I wouldn't be moving to the Central Coast, after all, if I took a job in some other location.

And, so, I decided to up the ante on risk.

A Woman's Nation Changes Everything

Submitted by jlwallace

The Shriver Report: A Woman's Nation Changes Everything, released this week, focuses on a vast array of issues facing women in the workforce, from health to education, media to marriage. The comprehensive examination of women in the labor force includes data points, policy suggestions, academic research, and reflective essays.

This report describes how a woman’s nation changes everything about how we live and work today. Now for the first time in our nation’s history, women are half of all U.S. workers and mothers are the primary breadwinners or co-breadwinners in nearly two-thirds of American families. This is a dramatic shift from just a generation ago (in 1967 women made up only one-third of all workers). It changes how women spend their days and has a ripple effect that reverberates throughout our nation. It fundamentally changes how we all work and live, not just women but also their families, their co-workers, their bosses, their faith institutions, and their communities.

Quite simply, women as half of all workers changes everything.

Although the report does not focus specifically on women in the legal profession, many of the topics are relevant to women lawyers. Additionally, contributers to the report include a number of women attorneys.

The contents of the report can be viewed here and the entire report can be downloaded here.

Lisa Belkin on The New Gender Gap, Flexible Work

Submitted by jlwallace

Lisa Belkin has two pieces in the New York Times this week, both focusing on women in the workforce.

One piece, featured in New York Times Magazine, discusses The New Gender Gap:

Under other circumstances, that would be cause for celebration. But women have gained this latest bit of ground mostly because men have lost it — 78 percent of the jobs lost during this recession were held by men. So not only is it unseemly to rejoice over a larger share of a smaller pie, it is also unsettling to face the fact that so much of the history of women in the workplace (both their leaps forward and their slips back) is a reaction to what was happening to men.

The other, a blog post on her Motherlode blog, looks at Flexible Work in a Recession:

The American Society of Human Resource Managers found that while the number of companies offering things like flextime, part-time and telecommuting schedules had been increasing steadily leading up to the down-turn, the latest measure showed a drop of five percent.

Reduced Hours, Full Success

Submitted by jlwallace

The Project for Attorney Retention's newest report, Reduced Hours, Full Success: Part-Time Partners in U.S. Law Firms, maintains that law firms can create successful part-time programs.

Part-time arrangements have long been viewed as bullets to the heart of lawyers’ careers—and dubious propositions for law firms’ bottom lines. This report challenges that view. It shows that law firms can create successful reduced-hours programs—and that part-time lawyers and their law firms can flourish when they do.

Mareile Cusack, General Counsel, Ariel Investments

Submitted by jlwallace

Mareile Cusack, General Counsel at Chicago investment firm, Ariel Investments, recently selected for The Glass Hammer's Voice of Experience series, has a few words of advice for young women entering the legal profession:

[Ms. Cusack] believes that young women first entering the industry should focus on obtaining the building blocks they need for the future. “When I first started practicing law,” she said, “I had some high expectations and a certain amount of arrogance…I thought that people would simply come to me. What I found pretty early on was that people didn’t. Unless I was willing to do the grunt work, regardless of whether I thought it was at my level, I simply wouldn’t get good work. I learned that very quickly that if you wait around for the perfect situation or perfect assignment, it is never going to come. You have to go and work as hard as you can and do whatever is needed to get the job done and to treat every assignment as an opportunity to show your competence and show the extent to which you can be additive to the process.”

The Harried Life of the Working Mother

Submitted by jlwallace

The PEW Research Center released a report today, The Harried Life of the Working Mother, discussing the competing roles mothers play at work and home.

Women now make up almost half of the U.S. labor force, up from 38% in 1970. This nearly forty-year trend has been fueled by a broad public consensus about the changing role of women in society. A solid majority of Americans (75%) reject the idea that women should return to their traditional roles in society, and most believe that both husband and wife should contribute to the family income.

Ms. JD Public Interest Summer Scholarship Honorable Mention: Jennifer Siepel

Submitted by jlwallace

Ms. JD is pleased to feature Jennifer Siepel, recipient of the Ms. JD's Public Interest Summer Scholarship Essay Contest Honorable Mention Award. Here is her essay submission:

When interviewing with the judge for whom I will clerk this summer, we began discussing my career aspirations. I told her the classes I most enjoyed and those I was excited to take. She began to share stories of her years in law school over thirty years ago and what her life was like when she was a new attorney. She explained she was the only female in her firm (if not the town). She described her initial aspirations and some of her favorite cases, but she also shared an interesting piece of wisdom. “Don’t let them stick you with the women’s work” she told me.

I was taken aback by this statement and looked at her inquisitively. She continued, “In firms, it’s easy for them to think ‘Hey, you’re a woman. So, of course you’ll want to deal with women’s stuff.’ You know, family law – divorces, custody, children’s issues. They assume of course, you wouldn’t want to deal with the dirty stuff like oil and gas or litigation. But don’t let them. If you want to do oil and gas, if want to do litigation, do it. Fight for it. Do what you want to do. Don’t let them stick you with the women’s work.”

Putting on Heels

Submitted by jlwallace

While getting ready this morning, I listened to a piece on NPR, Workers Dressing Better To Hold On To Jobs:

The recession is changing the workplace in many ways. Financial Times columnist Lucy Kellaway says many workers are kicking it up a notch with dressier work clothes and more formal e-mails. Kellaway tells Renee Montagne that's because employees are trying to hold onto their jobs.

Listen to the piece here.

In her Financial Times column, Lucy Callaway has argued in the past that dressing to impress lifts spirits and increases productivity. She advocates for replacing Casual Friday with High Heels Fridays:

I have a friend who has just been appointed to a senior managerial job and her first decision has been to launch High Heels Friday. Early soundings suggest that this is going to be popular with her female staff.

Ms. JD 2009 Summer Scholarship

Submitted by jlwallace

Ms. JD is awarding two $500 scholarships to female law students entering their second or third year at an accredited U.S. law school and working the summer of 2009 at least 35 hours per week for a minimum of 8 weeks at a government agency or nonprofit organization. Unpaid judicial externs also qualify. Applications are due no later than May 1st.

Click here to apply!