Marriage as a means of advancement?
By Yes, Virginia • March 31, 2011 •Other Law School Issues
I read with great interest in today's Careerist column about Harvard Law School granting tenure to Professor Jeannie Suk. Vivia Chen stated that she was surprised to learn that Professor Suk was the first Asian-American woman granted tenure at Harvard, and then looked briefly at the lack of diversity among female tenured professors at the school.This is a fertile topic of conversation, but there was something that struck me as particularly interesting in the article. In the original post, Chen said: "Call me naive, but I was genuinely shocked that this big, prestigious bastion of liberalism didn't have a tenured woman…
Shoes, Clothes, and Law, Oh My
By Yes, Virginia • May 22, 2008 •Other Issues
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…
Trading SAHM for SWAT?
By Yes, Virginia • April 30, 2008 •Other Career Issues
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…
Gen Y and the Blame Game
By Yes, Virginia • April 17, 2008 •Other Issues
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…
More Part Time Lawyers Are Women (duh)
By Yes, Virginia • December 13, 2007 •Balancing Private and Professional Life
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. This sounds like women are leaving work rather than taking the part time options…
Is opting back in really a trend?
By Yes, Virginia • May 22, 2007 •Women and Law in the Media
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.This time my neck hairs are up about Belkin’s claim (nay, confession!) that she brought to a head the opting-out issue with her infamous “Opting Out Revolution” piece. Oh, Lisa. The Times might be all the news that’s fit to print, but this issue did not reach some theoretical high water mark because of one article. This phenomenon…
Big Brother v. Due Diligence
By Yes, Virginia • May 08, 2007 •Women and Law in the Media
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 here, here and here on Feministe. The upshot of all of this is that (1) employers are online, (2) they’re readin ur stuff, and (3) it matters. The New York Lawyer piece is very detached, taking the non-controversial position that is basically assumption of the risk:“Certainly, what a law student puts on the Web on his or her…
Billables: on their way out?
By Yes, Virginia • May 02, 2007 •Firms and the Private Sector
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: “Cisco, a leader in the area of so-called alternative billing, now farms out 70% to 75% of its annual legal budget, estimated at $125 million, under fixed-fee arrangements.” This follows a speech on the state of technology in the law by Cisco’s General Counsel, Mark Chandler (mentioned earlier here) in which he highlighted the decrepit…
Team Players?
By Yes, Virginia • April 22, 2007 •Other Issues
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. But one part of the evening left me with a…