In Praise of Mom Firms

Mom Firms, small/solo law practices consisting of accomplished female Biglaw refugees, can offer corporate/insurance clients greater efficiency, more control over file management, and superior attorney quality at more reasonable rates. The Mom Firm “lean and green” business model also stands as the antidote for well-known Biglaw billing abuses.

The Biglaw Brain Drain

One afternoon at Biglaw, I looked around and wondered, where did the exceedingly bright women with excellent academic credentials, strong litigation “chops”, and superb legal pedigrees go? After all, over 15 years earlier when I started out, nearly half of my law school classmates and contemporaries were women. But then, as we scratched our way up the law firm pyramid, our numbers dwindled markedly. Each year, one or two women just went: some went in-house in search of work-life balance; some went into government service; and many others chucked their promising legal careers entirely, convinced that work-family balance is unattainable in Law.

Join Latham & Watkins LLP, Levo League, and Ms. JD for Levo's Office Hours with Warren Buffett!

Warren Buffet is bullish on women! Check out his new essay on why. Then, see him in person talking about these issues through our partnership org, the Levo League.

Ms. JD Sponsor, Latham & Watkins, is going to be a part of this incredible event by hosting the San Francisco viewing party.

Join us in SF or host your own viewing party in another city!

Subsidized Tickets to California Women Lawyer's Annual Conference Available to Ms. JD Community!

Ms. JD is pleased to announce that we have received a limited number of subsidized tickets to the California Women Lawyer's Conference this Saturday, May 4th, in San Francisco.  The conference, featuring a keynote speech by Representative Nancy Pelosi is one of the largest gatherings of women lawyers in California each year. 

With the subsidy, students and young lawyers who would like to attend the CWL conference need only pay $50.00.  If you are interested in attending, please send an email explaining why you'd like to attend to president[at]ms-jd.org. 

For more information about the conference, click here.  We look forward to seeing many of you there!

5 Top Tips for Networking in Large Groups

Face-to-face networking, whether done one-on-one or in a large group, can be challenging. In the first of this two-part series, I will share my top five secrets to successful networking in a group.

1. Be ready to work the room, but narrow your focus. Do not attempt to meet everybody. If there is an invitation list or some way to figure out who will be at the event, identify the people you want to meet. Think of the large networking event not as an opportunity to accidentally make useful connections but as an occasion to connect with people you planned in advance to meet. Be prepared and proactive as possible.

2. You can show up with your friends, but do not stay with your friends. Yes, friends will introduce you to other people. But if you go with friends, the idea is to send them off in two or three different directions with the idea of scooping up some good contacts for each of you.

3. Set a goal. Plan to meet two or three people on whom you can focus your attention and conversation. Look to identify the kinds of people who will refer you business, or help you get involved on a charity board, or something that is important to you.

Coffee Date

I recently went on my first coffee date! As a 1L I've been constantly been bombarded with advice to network and find a mentor. So I called a chief public defender here in Minnesota and she scheduled an informational interview with me. My first piece of advice for contacting attorneys is be patient. They're busy people and it may take a week for them to get back to you.

We hiked to the starbucks on campus and had discussed what the public defender's office had to offer for summer clerkships, law school, Minneapolis and what she thinks makes a good public defender. She was so cool. It was wonderful to talk to an attorney who loves her job, and it reassured me that law school was the right choice for me. I think she was impressed that a student contacted her which leads me to believe that it doesn't happen very often.

So... ask attorneys out! Not only is it a nice change of pace from class all day, they like talking to law students and want to see you succeed. After our meeting she introduced me to one of the attorneys who supervises law school clerks and I was offered a job for the summer if I go out and find funding for it. Pretty sweet no?

Read With Us!

Sheryl Sandberg recently released her new book,  Lean In, which she describes as  "sort of a feminist manifesto."  Sandberg was named the fifth most powerful woman in the world by Forbes magazine.  She currently holds the position of Chief Operating Officer at Facebook.

On a recent Ms. JD Board call, we, the Ms. JD Board, decided to read this book in a book-club fashion, so that we can discuss it during our upcoming retreat in Austin, Texas.  We want to also invite our wonderful blog readers, volunteers, and program participants to join our "book-club" by picking up a copy of Lean In and reading along with us!

We would love to open up a discussion about this book, and we welcome your blog posts with your reviews, general thoughts, and questions on Lean In. 

Happy reading!

Best Friends at the Bar: Women Helping Women---Or Not!

Any one of you who has read my books, follows my blogs or has heard me speak knows that “Women Helping Women” is a major theme of my work.  The Best Friends at the Bar project is a pay it forward project, and I hope we all know what that means.

Not so fast, however.  It appears that women are not always living up to the responsibility to help their fellow women, as recognized in this favorite quote from former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, “There’s a place reserved in Hell for women who do not help other women."  We knew that it was a problem in the past when women were just coming of age in the workplace, but we hoped that, in the day of enlightened women, it had gone away.  Apparently not.

In a recent WSJ article, “The Tyranny of the Queen Bee,” this deficiency is addressed again.  According to the article, the term “queen bee syndrome” was coined in the 1970s following a study at the University of Michigan, which examined promotion rates and the impact of the women’s movement on the workplace and concluded that “women who achieved success in male-dominated environments were at times likely to oppose the rise of other women.”   In other words, the women who had made it to the top wanted to remain exclusive and have all the female power.  If you saw the movie Mean Girls, you get it.

King Hall Women's Law Association Presents a Day of ADR & Second Annual Mixer

All Sacramento and Bay Area law students and attorneys are invited to attend the March 6 ADR events (3 hours CLE available) and Women’s Law Mixer, hosted by Hall Women’s Law Association of UC Davis School of Law!

When? Wednesday, March 6, 2013

Where? King Hall School of Law, UC Davis, 400 Mrak Hall Drive, Davis, CA

Click here to view the invitation and RSVP form for these events.

12:00 - 1:00 PM - Implicit Bias in ADR: The Uneven Playing Field

Lunch provided. 1 Hour Free Elimination of Bias CLE Credit Available.

King Hall Room 1001

Panelists: Maribeth Bushey, Administrative Law Judge & ADR Neutral; Yolanda Jackson, SF Bar Association Deputy Executive Director & Diversity Director, UC Hastings Professor; Cathy Ward, Lead Mediator at Lake & Mendocino Superior Courts, & Lead Mediator at Recourse Mediation Services

Moderated by: Rose Cuison-Villazor, UC Davis Professor

*Co-sponsored by the King Hall Negotiations Team and Coalition for Diversity

Best Friends at the Bar: Kirkland and Ellis and Ms. JD Bring Laurel Bellows to the Women of the Bar

Last week I attended an address by Laurel Bellows, the President of the American Bar Association.  She spoke at Kirkland and Ellis in Chicago, and her remarks were video fed to all other Kirkland offices around the country.  Lunch was served, and it was a very generous and gracious gesture from Kirkland and the co-sponsor Ms. JD.  I am sure that all other attendees enjoyed it as much as I did viewing it in the Washington, DC office.

I heard a lot to echo Best Friends at the Bar in Ms. Bellows' remarks.  I also related perfectly to the anecdotes from her early practice years.  She graduated from law school in the mid '70's, and I followed in the late '70's.  Things were different then---fortunately.  I smiled knowingly when she told the story of the judge asking her the whereabouts of her lawyer and her response that she was the lawyer and she was ready to go!  Those were the days when judges assumed women in the courtroom were either parties or court reporters.  Never lawyers.

Here are some highlights from Laurel Bellows' remarks:

Ladder Down: Arizona Women Lawyers Changing The Game

Women lawyers are entering the practice in greater numbers than ever before, but are struggling to land positions as equity partners, shareholders, and top rainmakers at firms across the nation.  The reason for the disparity is pretty clear: women lawyers are not receiving effective training on how to build a book of business.  The lack of training stems from a lack of mentoring; there are so few women lawyers at the top, it is hard for young lawyers to find role models.  The solution seems equally clear: provide women with the tools they need to get ahead.  Teach them how to seek out and maintain mentoring relationships, teach them how to develop clients and intentionally market themselves, teach them the strategies that top rainmakers utilize in their practices.  The question then becomes – where can women lawyers go to get this kind of training?  

The answer wasn’t clear to Arizona attorneys Beth Fitch and Alison Christian.  There are programs that exist through organizations such as the American Bar Association – like the Women in Law Leadership Academy – and there are groups devoted specifically to women lawyers – like the Arizona Women Lawyers’ Association – but there are no programs available at a local level that provide women with directed business development training.  And it’s time for a change.