ABA Division for Bar Services: Bar Leader Magazine

Print This | E-mail This

The next step:
Boston bar encourages law firms to implement family-friendly policies

By Jennifer Martin

Nancy Baron-Baer is a pioneer, of sorts. When she had her first child 18 years ago, she became the first employee in her large Philadelphia law firm to request a flex-time schedule.

"I worked with people who had some ability to see into the future," says Baron-Baer, a lawyer. "They saw the firm would lose people if it didn’t accommodate this."

So Baron-Baer started working about 60 percent of the time. Her firm benefited from her expertise, and her children (she later had two more) benefited from her presence. “I didn’t want to lose my kids’ young years," she says. "The thing that made it work is that clients always knew I was there for them, 100 percent."

Baron-Baer was on the front end of a trend that has been escalating since the 1980s. More and more, young associates--men as well as women--are demanding more time for their families and personal lives. It’s a pattern that has put enormous pressure on law firms as they try to keep their billable hours competitive while keeping their lawyers from bolting.

Recognizing the tension in law firms around the country, the Boston Bar Association launched an exhaustive study on work-life balance in law firms in 1998. Entitled "Facing the Grail," the study--which examined the lives of hundreds of lawyers--concluded that deep-seated changes need to take place in the legal profession, or attrition rates will be steep. (See "Boston bar report encourages law firms to examine work-life balance," Bar Leader, December 1999, p. 7-8.)

Fortunately, those changes can be taken one small step at a time, according to a follow-up study finished recently. The Boston bar issued a new report last fall that outlines a systematic strategy for implementing new "family-friendly" policies in law firms. The bar itself is leading the charge, working with about two dozen large firms around the Boston area.

Consultants have spent the last several months conducting lengthy interviews with managing partners at the firms. Currently, they’re analyzing data about policies, procedures and cultures in each work environment with the intention of suggesting new policies to enhance work-life harmony. For example, law firms may be encouraged to allow more telecommuting or job-sharing arrangements.

The plan is for each partner to adopt one new policy, or revise a current one, to promote greater balance in the workplace. The success of the changes will be evaluated over the coming months.

"It makes sense for even competitors to share best practices," says Bill Lee, managing partner of the Boston firm Hale & Dore, LLP, which is participating in the study. Lee is also co-chairing the study, called the Managing Partners Initiative.

"I think everybody will be receptive to a new idea or a new policy," he adds.

Time is ripe
Almost universally, lawyers and employment analysts say the time is ripe for change in the legal profession. Last year, for the first time, the number of women entering law school was higher than the number of men--about 52 to 48 percent. Because women tend more than men to ask for time off in their child’s early years, experts predict that flexible schedules and reduced work hours will be a necessity in the next 10 to 15 years. Otherwise, firms will simply lose their talent.

Many say that’s already happening. "You don’t want to sacrifice what you’ve built up in your professional career, but you can find it elsewhere," says Donnalyn Kahn, a municipal lawyer for the city of Newton, which lies near Boston. Kahn left a large law firm when her second child was born in 1997. Her workweeks dropped from between 50 and 55 hours to between 40 and 45 hours.

Kahn has watched a number of lawyers like herself take a pay cut to leave the legal "rat race" behind. "Who’s benefiting is the municipalities, the start-up companies, companies with in-house counsel," she explains. "They’ve got some great counsel (now) because it’s the people who have opted out."

The Boston bar’s study, "Facing the Grail," mirrors Kahn’s perceptions. It found that 43 percent of new associates leave their firms within three years. Attrition rates are even higher for women, minorities and associates in the largest firms. "A major reason for attrition is family-life balance concerns," the study reports.

"The bottom line is changing enormously," remarks Nancer Ballard, of-counsel to Boston’s Goodwin Proctor LLP. Ballard chairs the bar’s Task Force on Work-Life Balance, which produced "Facing the Grail" and last fall’s follow-up report.

"When you have over 50 percent of your workforce in their childbearing years at the very same time you demand that they work 60 to 70 hours a week, you’re not going to have a stable workforce," Ballard says. "They’re going to go somewhere else where they’ll be more respected and have more flexible lives. So I think (law firms) will respond to that because there will just be so much of a labor shortage."

The Boston bar made a number of recommendations that could help law firms head off high attrition rates. Firms can start by examining how they do and do not support family-work balance. From there, they can develop a company-wide policy statement, create the broadest possible variety of work-family plans, and establish internal benchmarks for measuring progress. Some firms might allow more time for maternity leave; others might allow employees to work from home more often; still others might assign part-time employees to teams rather than forcing them to work cases solo.

Also, the bar notes, law firms must change their definition of success.

"Part of our attitude here is that if there’s a man or woman who has to work a little bit less for 10 years while they’re raising young children, but who (wants) to cycle back to being full-time, we want that person here," Lee says of his own firm. Some lawyers may have to work harder, but those lawyers, in turn, may get the breaks they need when their co-workers come back full-time.

"Really, you have to change attitudes more than have policies," Lee says.

Experts recommend that law firms define success in terms of long-term loyalty and hard work, rather than in terms of billable hours. That’s easier said than done, they acknowledge, because the modern business world sees legal consultation as a commodity rather than a long-term relationship.

"Twenty years ago, if you said, ‘I can’t get to it till next Monday,’ (the client) would say, ‘Fine.’ Today, they say, ‘All right, I’ll take it to (another law firm),’" Lee notes. "Clients today ask us to do things in three days that used to take three weeks."

Still, keeping a certain percentage of part-timers on staff may even make good business sense in the short-term. "What if the firm has a cycle where they don’t have enough work for everybody at the 2,200 (billable) hour level?" Ballard says. "An argument can be made that (part-timers) ultimately create a more stable workforce."

Also, law firms might remember that the part-timers themselves may be an excellent investment. "It’s more the nature of the person (that’s important)," Lee says. He remembered one lawyer in his firm who became a senior partner when she was a part-time lawyer with young children at home. She was a top business producer in the real estate and trust areas.

"The one thing she never let go was her client relationships; she continued to nurture and grow them," Lee says. "She’s full-time now. She’s got a wonderful practice."

Jane Bermont, a consultant working with the bar on its Managing Partners Initiative, said such alternative modes of thought will have to take place if law firms are to remain competitive.

"The paradigm has to shift from an ‘accommodation’ model to a strategic-business model -- to labor-force and talent management," says Bermont, senior consultant at Work/Family Directions Inc. of Watertown, Mass. "I think the more sophisticated managing partners understand that…the young labor force has different expectations."

The Boston bar’s follow-up study contains a number of initiatives to better understand the mindset of young lawyers. For example, the bar is working closely with law schools in Massachusetts, striving to gain a better sense of students’ expectations before they enter the workforce. With this approach, education can take place on both sides--student and firm--so that culture shock may be averted.

Jeff Jones, managing partner at Palmer & Dodge, a Boston firm participating in the Managing Partners Initiative, says he was impressed by both "Facing the Grail" and its follow-up study.

"There are no magic-bullet solutions" to work-life conflicts, he notes. "But on the whole, all of us want to create work environments where people feel they’ll be treated fairly, and the workplace doesn’t consume a disproportionate portion of their lives."

The author is a writer from St. Joseph, Mich.