We're Outta Here: Why Women Are Leaving Big Firms
California Lawyer Magazine - February 2007 cover story
By Malaika Costello-Dougherty
First published in California Lawyer Magazine, February 2007
Genevieve S. Orta is the type of young attorney firms want to hire and
keep: sharp, well-spoken, charming, self-assured -- and looking the part
of the capable attorney, in her crisp, tailored clothes. But like many other
young female associates, Orta, 38, recently left a large law firm and is
now self-employed.
At the Conference on Work/Life Balance and Answers held last year in
San Francisco, Orta spoke on a panel of Gen X attorneys about her
decision to flee her firm. She said she felt the firm was asking her to
neglect her family, and that no amount of money was worth that.
"Is there anything a big firm could have done to keep you?" one man
asked from the audience.
Orta replied that before leaving, she had asked for part-time work or a
transfer out of litigation. But the firm never responded to either request.
The audience was quiet while Orta began to think out loud, reconstructing
the past. "I didn't have any role models. There were no other women at
the firm doing it successfully, who could talk me through it," she said. "It's
hard for the firms to do, but they have to keep women associates long
enough for them to make partner."
The past few years have witnessed the highest levels of associate
attrition ever documented, with an average annual attrition rate for both
sexes of 19 percent, as recently reported by the NALP Foundation for
Law Career Research and Education. Within five years of entering a firm,
more than three-quarters of associates leave. Female associates were
nearly twice as likely as males to depart to pursue a better work/life
balance.
The trend in departures means that by the time female associates come
up for partnership consideration -- around the time the firm's investment
in them starts to pay off -- they have already gone missing. In fact, the
percentage of female partners has increased only slightly during the past
ten years, stuck around 19 percent in California, even though nearly half
the firm associates in the state are women.
The Generation Gap
There is a growing disconnect between the last two generations of women
lawyers, a development that is most apparent in large firms. Female
senior partners from the baby boom say they are frustrated that the
younger women don't want to give the same amount of blood to their
careers. And many of the younger female attorneys look at the few
women at the top and label them drudges who sacrificed too much
personal freedom for their jobs.
"We didn't feel entitled to these careers," Joan C. Williams, 55, a law
professor at the University of California Hastings College of Law, told a
gathering of about 100 professional women last year. She was
addressing the kickoff to the Heller Ehrman Opt-In Project in San
Francisco, organized to help overcome obstacles to women in the
workforce. "Gen X and Gen Y women are really different. They feel
entitled."
Echoing that refrain is Beth H. Parker, 51, a partner at Bingham
McCutchen who joined the firm in 1982, when McCutchen, with 128
attorneys, had only two female partners. She says women in her
generation were grateful to firms for their jobs and felt privileged they had
an opportunity to do what they wanted in their professional lives.
"We were the first layer of women lawyers at every level," she says. "We
were the first group to get maternity policies. There was a pattern of
hitting obstacles, but we got so used to doing it that we began to like it."
War stories from other women of the pioneering generation have a similar
ring. After the speakers at the Opt-In event finished, groups of mostly
senior women lawyers huddled at round tables in the W Hotel's gray
conference room and informally discussed the sacrifices they made. They
recounted staying up into the night to finish briefs after they put kids to
bed -- managing to be both mothers and lawyers -- but not expecting to
be treated any differently than the men who came before them.
"The older folks (myself included) who worked so hard as women to make
partner and generate business made many sacrifices. We put our clients
first -- sometimes in front of our friends and family," wrote one of the
event's moderators in an internal memo that her firm will analyze at the
end of the yearlong project. "The new generation may simply not be
willing to do that."
Indeed, not only are many young women lawyers unwilling to make these
sacrifices, but they see them as deal breakers.
"What do we want? We want it all. We want a great career and kids," says
Orta, the associate who left big-firm life. "And if I cannot have it at one
firm, I will move."
This free-agent mindset of the younger generation is part of the reason
that women may not be pushing as hard for change at the firms where
they work. They speak loudest with their silent departures.
Kari E. Hong, 35, a former associate at Morrison & Foerster who is now a
sole practitioner, says that the younger generation hasn't demanded
changes -- and as a result hasn't carried the ball forward for women in
the law.
"Once we make the decision not to put up with it, as opposed to talking to
someone, we choose to leave," Hong says. "It may be a generational
tendency that it's easier to leave than to be proactive."
According to Ida Abbott, 59, an Oakland-based consultant on
professional development who practiced at Heller Ehrman for 15 years,
some of the women lawyers in the younger generation miss out on being
catalysts for change when they abandon law firms. "Instead of continuing
the battle my generation started so that women could thrive out of law
school, they see that the battle isn't won and things aren't fair," she says.
"They could redefine a man's idea of what it is to be successful and
persuade law firms it's in their interest to look at careers differently. But if
the only thing they know is to leave, then nothing will change."
Some gender pioneers say they also felt an obligation to help pave the
way for the women who would later come through the doors they opened,
a responsibility they don't see the younger women continuing. They
remember entering the legal profession for idealistic reasons and being
thrilled that they were the first generation of women able to make their
way into traditionally male law firms in significant numbers. They question
where the female associates now fleeing the firms will find themselves in
the future.
For many of those associates, it will be anywhere but a big firm. Like
many other young female lawyers who went to law school but had little
love for the law, one junior associate in the process of leaving a large firm
questioned why she took the job in the first place.
"I was good at reading and writing and speaking, so I became a lawyer,"
she says. "When I started to work at a firm, I wanted to repay my debts.
What I learned there is how to skim documents quickly and how to bill
time. I went to law school for three years to become the equivalent of a
word processor. Now I know I shouldn't have climbed the mountain just
because it was there. I should have first figured out which mountain I
wanted to climb."
Another point of disconnect may be that the generations now making their
way though law firms -- the Gen Xers born in the mid-1960s and '70s and
the Gen Yers born in the 1980s -- have a different view of work than the
women who came before them.
"The employment contract has changed," says law professor Williams.
"This generation may have seen their parents work their whole lives and
get laid off. They think, 'I'm not interested in that.' They say, 'Partnership
is like a pie-eating contest -- and the prize is more pie.' "
Kari Hong agrees: "A big part of what's changed has been the great job
market. We can leave in a way other women couldn't."
The Work/Life Imbalance
A different view of life has also emerged, creating a divide that has set off
perhaps the most contentious battles between the generations: The older
women sacrificed parts of their lives for work; the younger ones resent
work interfering with their lives.
"Younger women sometimes ask us baby boomers, 'Why did we inherit
this work/life balance problem? Why didn't you solve it?' Williams told the
crowd at the Opt-In event. "And I say to them, 'Honey, you don't realize
this: If we had rocked the boat, we'd be out on our ears so fast our heads
would spin.' "
Patricia K. Gillette, 55, a shareholder at Heller Ehrman, echoed the idea
of sacrifice at the recent Work/Life Balance conference. She discussed
graduating from law school in 1976 and then overachieving in both her
professional and personal lives. "There has to be a better way," she
reflected. "We made sacrifices, we have fewer friends, we got no
pedicures until age 40. We have a different lifestyle and way of
interacting."
Some say that the younger generation of women is taking a closer look at
the apparent success of their elders -- and concluding that the sacrifice
isn't worth it.
The junior associate leaving her big firm observes: "I thought I could do it
all. Why not? So many have done it before me. Then at a closer look I
see, no, they haven't. They cut corners; they just weren't professional
corners."
Another woman, a fourth-year associate currently at a midsize firm in
Southern California, notes: "Two of the three most senior women were
never married, and they never had kids. They want to see women
succeed, but they're not helpful about how to balance work and family, or
how to do well and also have a life. They don't have experience in how to
do that."
What she knows of big-firm life gives the departing junior associate little
hope for the future. "I haven't seen anyone really make it work. Generally,
the kids are raised by nannies. The mothers work incredibly long hours;
that's not how I want to do it," she says. "I'm glad they made it possible for
more women to be in the legal field. That was their choice, to make those
sacrifices. Now it's time for us to make our choice."
And, increasingly, young female attorneys are choosing to leave.
At the Work/Life Balance conference, Genevieve Orta described her
feeling of guilt at being the last one to pick up her child from day care,
after dark, with her BlackBerry buzzing and a box of documents in her car,
when she hadn't yet thought about dinner. "My family wasn't functioning,"
she said. Orta now practices law with Melinda MacDonald, a young
woman she dubs another "attorney-mom." "I gave up a big,
senior-associate salary. I sacrificed money for some sort of normalcy."
Indeed, women may need to cut their losses, San Francisco deputy city
attorney Joanne Hoeper, 53, told a young audience at a "Mentoring
Advice for Women Lawyers" panel last June. Hoeper, who worked at
Morrison & Foerster before joining the city attorney's office, where she is
now chief trial deputy, stressed the importance of not taking at face value
a firm's promise to support a balance of family and work. "Look around
the firm and see how many women are doing it, as opposed to saying
other people should," she said. "How many of the senior women have
children? Unless you're seeing a significant number of women doing it,
the firm is telling you something."
And the work environment at law firms actually seems to be getting worse,
Hoeper said, requiring more billable hours but offering less support. She
described the pace of government work as similar to that of law firms in
the 1970s, when hours were reasonable and the environment more
collegial. When the panel discussion ended, a crowd of female associates
circled Hoeper, seeking more advice.
The Myth of Mentoring
Many people assumed that as more women entered the legal profession,
they would form mentoring relationships with younger women to pass
along the keys to success -- that the older generation would lend a
helping hand to the next to ensure women made it to the top. But that
hasn't happened.
NALP Foundation CEO and President Paula A. Patton points to the lack
of mentoring relationships between women and says it has a huge impact
on the failure to retain women at firms. In recent focus groups, the
organization interviewed many young female associates who said they
frequently looked to older women as mentors and role models. But if the
senior women partners weren't willing to take the time and energy to help
them, the associates assumed that they had been deselected from the
firm and left. Patton says firms seem oblivious about the message they
are sending to female associates who do not get mentored.
Also, many firms that give lip service to providing mentors but don't
deliver may pay the price. For example, the departing junior associate
who was assigned a formal female mentor when she began work at a big
firm now says, "I didn't feel my mentor was anyone more than someone to
check up on my billable hours and tell me if they were too low." She
laughs dryly as she describes how her firm scheduled a mentoring group
in a small conference room and held a lottery to select who could attend.
"They said they wanted to know what to do about the retention problem,"
she said. "We suggested different tiers of hours with pay differences. The
partners wouldn't entertain it. It was a talk without substance."
A first-year female associate at a major firm said that although she has
been assigned a formal mentor -- and gone to a beauty salon with her
mentoring group as a planned event -- she has never had the opportunity
to work with any senior women.
Hong says she noticed that younger female attorneys didn't know how to
seek out senior women for mentoring relationships. "There's a lot of
finger pointing. 'They didn't come to us,' [say the senior partners]. 'Well,
we didn't go because we weren't invited,' [say the associates]. It's like a
first date that never got set up," she says.
Beth Parker, the partner at Bingham McCutchen, says that associates
need to approach her to establish mentoring relationships. "The hardest
part is putting my effort into working with women, training them,
developing a friendship -- and then seeing them leave," she says. "I
wonder the next time whether it's worth investing in people who will not
stick around."
The Wake-Up Call
In the past, firms expected attrition as part of their pyramid structures, but
with attrition now at the highest levels ever, firms are starting to realize
that losing associates is both expensive and bad for business.
Meanwhile, the talent market is becoming increasingly competitive
because the number of law school graduates is static while law firms'
hiring needs are increasing. And now that about half of all law school
graduates are female, firms that don't hire and retain women will likely find
themselves short on talent.
Accounting firms, which faced a similar problem in the early 1990s, could
provide a case study for law firms on how to retain women. Back then, the
accounting firms hired more than 50 percent women but found most left
before becoming partners. So the accountants did the math and took
action.
For example, in 1993 Deloitte implemented the very public Initiative for
the Retention and Advancement of Women that attempted to change the
institutional culture to emphasize valuable work rather than mere face
time. Because accounting firms are generally top-down in management,
then-Deloitte Chairman and CEO J. Michael Cook's commitment to
retaining women became part of the firm's structure: Part-time employees
there could become partners, and nearly all employees could rely on
flexible schedules -- including changing their start times or telecommuting.
At the program's inception the number of women partners, principals, and
directors was about 7 percent; 13 years later, it's closer to 20 percent.
Wendy Schmidt, 51, a principal at Deloitte Financial Advisory Services
and a former big-firm attorney, delivered the business case to law firms at
the American Bar Association's Women in the Law Leadership Academy
in Chicago last spring. The biggest lesson relates to the bottom line:
Retention increases revenue. Schmidt says retaining people helps firms
make more money because clients value consistency and will pay more
for lawyers they know and trust. This means firms cannot afford to keep
losing women attorneys, Schmidt warns.
Hastings law professor Williams says that the blame should be placed
more on the law firms than the women within them. "I think we are all in a
tough situation, and the message is, you shouldn't be fighting with each
other," she says. "We should be changing the workplace arrangements."
What Hope Lies Ahead
If law firms want to get the best and brightest young women to join them
and stay, they will likely need to change radically and adopt different
definitions of sacrifice and partnership.
Working models are beginning to spring up. Nancy J. Geenen, managing
partner at Foley & Lardner in San Francisco, says that several years ago
her firm recognized the generation gap and began thinking of strategies
to retain women. It gave strong support to women's affinity groups and a
mentoring program. It also began quarterly in-person office meetings with
female attorneys in the firm. And it put in place initiatives that included
emphasizing business-development skills and allowing women who use
flexible time schedules to make partner: Six of them have been elevated
in the past five years.
Geenen says these measures are responsible for closing the firm's
attrition gap between women and men. At the end of January 2005, the
women's attrition rate at Foley & Lardner was 19.1 percent, as opposed
to 9.9 percent for men. But by the end of October 2006, the women's
attrition rate was 6.7 percent, dropping even below the 7.8 percent figure
for men.
"It takes the baby boomers saying we don't have all the answers," says
Arin N. Reeves, founder of the Athens Group based in Chicago, which
studies generational issues in law firms. "You can't hold on to the way it's
always been. If you want to hire people of the younger generation, you'll
have to change the institution."
***
Sidebars:
What Happened to the "Men" in "Mentoring"?
Some claim it's the fear of sexual harassment charges -- which came to
heightened awareness about 15 years ago -- that has made mentoring a
tough role for many male attorneys.
In a recent Fordham Urban Law Journal essay about gender issues and
mentoring in law firms, Elizabeth McManus writes, "The prevalence of
sexual harassment training often outweighs the time and energy invested
in teaching lawyers about the importance of mentoring." Noting the
multimillion-dollar sexual harassment judgment against Baker &
McKenzie that later settled, she adds, "The legal profession has an acute
awareness of the ramifications and high costs of sexual harassment
litigation, which causes law firm partners to be understandably risk
averse."
McManus cites this as the reason male senior attorneys more often opt to
work with young male associates. In combination with the failure of many
mentoring relationships between women, this creates an environment in
which female associates are not adequately mentored.
Robert N. Schiff, 60, a partner at Haight, Brown & Bonesteel in San
Francisco, says that though he has thought about the possibility of sexual
harassment claims while mentoring women, he believes it's just a matter
of conducting yourself in a responsible way and not viewing mentoring as
a license to become involved in someone's personal life. He mostly
blames the changes in the profession for the general lack of informal
mentoring.
"When billable hours were 1,600 to 1,700, we would knock off at 5:30 and
go have a drink and learn by hearing war stories. It was a fabulous
education," he says. "Now, at 7 p.m. I am just heading home. The way we
work has changed informal mentoring as part of the profession. I really
miss it."
Schiff recalls that when he was a young lawyer, he worked under a name
partner who met with him for a half hour each day, teaching him lawyering
skills along with making sure he was paid right and helping him navigate
office politics.
"It's hard to learn the business if someone doesn't take the time to teach
you that way," Schiff says. "You can't get it out of textbooks."
***
Generation Generalizations: Shaping Work Through the Ages
Baby Boomers
Born: 1946 to 1964
How many: 78 million
What they grew up with: The civil rights movement; assassinations of
John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, and Martin Luther King; Vietnam War;
TV in every home; sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll; Woodstock; Roe v. Wade;
Watergate
Values and characteristics: Love/hate relationship with authority;
optimism, personal gratification; team players; strong work ethic
Work ethic: Driven
Presence in typical law firm: 45% to 60%
Roles in firm: Partners and leadership
Gen X
Born: 1965 to 1980
How many: 59 million
What they grew up with: HIV/AIDS epidemic; hippie parents; latch-key
kids; corporate downsizing and restructuring; fall of Berlin Wall; first
personal computers
Values and characteristics: Not impressed by authority; distrust of
institutions; want personal space; informality; self-reliance
Work ethic: Balanced
Presence in typical law firm: 40% to 50%
Roles in firm: Associates, junior partners
Gen Y
Born: 1981 to 1995
How many: 60 million
What they grew up with: Oklahoma City bombing; 9/11 terrorist attacks;
the Internet boom; ubiquitous technology; economic prosperity
Values and characteristics: Receptive to authority; civic duty; patriotism;
diversity; self-confidence; achievement; challenges
Work ethic: Selective
Presence in typical law firm: Less than 5%
Roles in firm: Summer associates, first- and second-year associates
Sources: U.S. Census Bureau; NALP Foundation
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