Shoes, Clothes, and Law, Oh My

The Wall Street Journal has joined the hoary conversation on women’s professional apparel with a trifeca of articles/blog posts: first, with a profile of Lehman Brother’s CFO Erin Callan; next, with a follow-up post on The Juggle blog that specifically commented on Callan’s choice of shoes in the photo accompanying the profile; and now on the Law Blog, which picked up on comments that split on whether female lawyers indeed need to wear uncomfortable professional outfits in the courtroom.

And as regular Ms. JD readers know, this is indeed something that consumes a great deal of time and mental anxiety for female lawyers and law students (I’ve posted in the forum about it here; sintecho has written about long v. short hair here; and a paralegal has written about her sartorial quandaries here).

All of this leads to one simple conclusion: a lot of people have strong opinions on whether appearances matter, particularly for women. Past that, good luck finding any consensus. I’m not going to hide the ball on my position, since I have always thought that (1) appearances matter a lot; (2) there are absolutely wrong choices to make; and (3) finding the right balance between what is appropriate, comfortable, and something you like is one of those juggling skills that only come with a lot of practice, some keen observations, and a good sense of self. As a huge fan of Go Fug Yourself and Jezebel’s Snap Judgments and the Good, the Bad, & the Ugly, I’m not afraid to stick with the notion that the message you send with your clothes and appearance will often precede you, and may even ensure that what comes out of your mouth (or from your briefs) can both be discounted or augmented by your appearance.

Personally, and (I think) in light of my relative youth, background, and brand new J.D. (a whole other post!), I go conservative.

Trading SAHM for SWAT?

There's a new article by Sue Shellenbarger in the Wall Street Journal that highlights an interesting trend:

The decision among some highly educated women to stay home with children is sparking a countertrend: The rise of the mommy "SWAT team." The acronym, for "smart women with available time," is one mother's label for all-mom teams assembled quickly through networking and staffing firms to handle crash projects. Employers get lots of voltage, cheap, while the women get a skills update and a taste of the professional challenges they miss.

This article seems mostly applicable to the MBA crowd, but similar things are happening in the law (Axiom Legal, for example, is a firm that provides flexible legal hiring). I'm not sure, however, if the trend this article discusses is a good or bad development--after all those long hard years getting a higher education and in the work force, should these women be contracting themselves out for bottom dollar (i.e., aren't they worth more than that, even on a part-time or temporary basis)? Or is this a good way for companies to get affordable troubleshooters and for these women to keep their fingers in the mix? And is this one way to help women who have elected to stay home (perhaps for a limited period of time) be able to "ramp on" in the future?

Gen Y and the Blame Game

The New York Times’ Lisa Belkin—she who graced us with the oversimplifying phrase “opt-out”—is a good writer, and she frequently touches on subjects that I find personally compelling. This is largely because she’s one of the few mainstream media writers writing about the working life struggles that I face or will face, and which I spend a lot of time thinking about. (Why she has been cosigned to the Styles Section, rather than, say, the Business Section, and what message that sends about the valuation of issues relating to working women and men vis-à-vis their personal lives, is worth a whole other post.) Still, while I appreciate that she is talking about various issues that I think are extremely important, I always feel as though her articles leave me feeling unhappy or unsatisfied because she has left out important points or only presented a narrow side of the story.

Today’s column, Prepping Children for the 9 to 5, is no exception. In it, she talks about the effect that parents can have on their children’s attitudes and expectations about work. For the record: this is a great topic, and one that is probably deserving of much more study and discussion. I’m sure that if you scratched the surface a little, most people will reveal that their thoughts, expectations, and aspirations about work are heavily influenced by their parents’ experiences, and their interpretation of their parents’ experiences. I, for example, realized very early how frustrating it was for my mother to give up her career to stay home with me and my two brothers, even though she made this choice willingly and wanted, at some level, to be a SAHM.

But where Belkin lost me is when the article took a turn and indicted an entire generation—my generation, Generation Y—for being self-absorbed, unwilling to work hard, and easily dissuaded. The anecdotes used are particularly telling: one is about consultant running into a friend who quit his job because it interfered with his social life and he had to work weekends. The other is a quote from another consultant, who said “This generation has been spoon-fed self-esteem cereal for the past 22 years. They’ve been told it’s all about them—what they want, what they are passionate about, what they find fulfilling.” And while Belkin does allow that the “sharply different attitude toward work” of Gen Y is “probably their parents’ doing,” there is not much else to counter this image of Gen Y-ers as fragile, self-centered creatures who will quit or give up at the slightest sign of difficulty.

[More after the jump]

More Part Time Lawyers Are Women (duh)

NALP just released some new numbers on part time lawyers (see here for the New York Law Journal writeup). These are some pretty telling stats. Less than 6% of all attorneys work part time, even though 98% of law offices report offering part time options. Not surprisingly, most of those working part time are women (only 5.4% of all attorneys worked part time; close to 13% of women worked part time). New York continues to lag behind other markets in terms of flexibility in work arrangements.

Is opting back in really a trend?

What would we do without the New York Times’s Lisa Belkin?  I know that I’ve acknowledged that every now and then, the Times gets it right, but I’m returning to my default position, which can be summed up like this: oh, come on.

Big Brother v. Due Diligence

This is nothing new, but there have been several stories out there about the real life consequences of law students’ online life. There is one in the New York Lawyer, the WSJ Law Blog, and Jill Filipovic has discussed the AutoAdmit scandal

Billables: on their way out?

Over at the WSJ Law Blog, they have a post up today entitled "The Billable Hour: Still the Lead Dog, But Gaining Competition" on some changes to the standard billing practice of law firms, namely the alternative practice of using fixed fees for legal services:

Team Players?

This past week, in lieu of studying, I piled into my school’s gym with most of my law school to watch our basketball team go head-to-head with our rival law school’s. Since I’ve gone to city schools for college and law school (the same city school, in fact), this actually was the closest I’ve ever gotten to a post-high school sporting event. I’m happy to report that my school won narrowly, money was raised for charity, and we all had a much better time than we would have had outlining.

Are They All Neanderthals?

Kalokagathia wrote earlier this week in Introductions Matter about potential problems arising from simple introductions, and it reminded me of a discussion we had Monday in my Professional Responsibility class (of all places) about male-female relationships in the workplace. It wasn't just romantic relationships (although that was part of it), but also mentor-mentee and co-worker relations that were discussed. And it appears that there is a lot of tension going on these days between the sexes.

No Pressure - Just Be Perfect

I was having a great weekend (given that Ms. JD had its national launch at Yale Law School on Saturday) when I opened up my Sunday Times. Great, I thought: just as was noted in Ms. JD’s presentation at the start of Legally Female, The New York Times has gone six months without some earth-shattering revelation about women, so another pronouncement was due.