is there life after partnership?

Is There Life After Partnership?Author(s): Stephanie Benson Goldberg, Valerie Feder and BARBARA KATE REPASource: ABA Journal, Vol. 74, No. 6 (JUNE 1, 1988), pp. 70-75Published by: American Bar AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20759954 .

Accessed: 15/06/2014 21:31

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

American Bar Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to ABA Journal.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 195.34.79.88 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 21:31:24 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=aba

http://www.jstor.org/stable/20759954?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


I AW

Is There life

After

Partnership' BY BARBARA KATE REPA

She was a loner in law school, and has planned and sacrificed to get ahead. She is devoted to her

work, and often thinks the new crop of women lawyers lacks true grit. Her newest challenge is rainmaking, and she can network with the best of them.

Above all, success means more to

her than simply making partner. She's one of the hearty few who

made it up the partnership ladder. No longer the novelty they were in the early '80s, women partners are still in the minority?only 8 percent of the partnership of large firms, according to a recent newspaper survey.

Despite stepped-up hiring and rosy forecasts earlier in the decade, the percentage of women partners has risen only 1 percent a year since 1982. At that snail's pace, only one in five partners will be female by the year 2000.

What separates the women who make partner from those who don't? How are they changing the profes sion? And is partnership all it's cracked up to be? We put these ques tions to 40 women partners across the nation, with an age span ranging from the late 20s to the early 60s.

Some common themes emerged. Rainmaking is an all-impor

tant skill. The biggest change that comes with partner status may well be the increased pressure to bring in business. Unfortunately, conven

tional modes of rainmaking don't al ways work for women. Long excluded from all-men's clubs and social activ ities where the seeds for new busi ness are thought to be planted and cultivated, women are much more

likely to be referred clients because of their professional stature than their golf game.

"I am a major rainmaker," says Rita Hauser, a partner at New York's Stroock & Stroock & Lavan. "But it's an area where women have not been successful. You have to be outgoing, committed, and unashamed to go after business. A great number of women find that difficult."

Some of this is cultural, says Hauser. "You must be willing to ac

cept a certain amount of rebuff, which is a hard kind of rejection for women. You have to like to compete, in the best sense. And you have to have little guilt. You have to be will ing to say, this is what I want and not care whether people say otherwise."

Barbara Billauer, also of Stroock & Stroock & Lavan, says she has found the gate-crashing method of rainmaking at odds with her person ality. Instead, she writes articles and makes speeches?something she ad mits to being somewhat manic about. "I wish I could say that women don't

need to be so single-minded to estab lish themselves, but I think that un less you are, you get too distracted by the interference that is put in your path."

Martha Barnett, managing part ner at Holland & Knight's Tallahas see office, sees rainmaking as sep arating the good lawyers from the drones. Barnett even makes a revo

lutionary prediction: Time will dem onstrate women's superiority at rain

making. "Women are problem-solvers,

men are fighters," she says. "We are

listeners, thinkers, negotiators. We fight, but in a much more subliminal way. Women are better able to put aside their own perceptions and go after the bottom line, to discover what the client wants." And that is the key to getting and keeping more of them, Barnett says.

Washington, D.C., lawyer Jane Dolkart, who formed a partnership with two other women, agrees that rainmaking is still a major obstacle for women. "They just aren't used to

doing it. Women do not generally see themselves from Day One as business partners, or see the need to work a cocktail party from a business per spective. Men always have," she says.

Not long ago, she and her part ners were able to woo some new

clients via a round of business lunch es. "It has been successful," says Dol kart of her rainmaking. "But it took us two-and-a-half years to get to the point of being able to do it."

Barbara Kate Repa is a lawyer and legal writer in Washington, DC, and the editor of Preview of United States Supreme Court Cases.

70 ABA JOURNAL / JUNE 1, 1988



Stephanie Kanwit_abaj/ui?is Souie

ABA JOURNAL / JUNE 1, 1988 71



U

Barnett knows the same sense of

hesitancy. "I walk into a room and I begin at once to work the crowd," she says. "But I can't tell you how many times I've stood outside a hotel con ference room with my hand on the doorknob, trying to talk myself into going inside. It's hard for anyone to put themselves on the line, but it's much harder for women."

Maintaining visibility is half the battle, says Maria Hummer, a partner at Manatt, Phelps, Rothenberg, Tun ney & Phillips in Los Angeles. The other half, she says, is convincing clients of your dedication to the profession. "As our numbers grow, these barriers will no longer stand in the way. Maybe time is the only cure."

Networking is essential. Many women look to networks for emo tional support and business contacts, although a few see them waning.

Marjorie Steinberg, a partner with Tuttle and Taylor of Los Ange les, belongs to a women partners' dinner group that meets every six months. About 15-20 women attend the informal meetings, where discus sions range from rainmaking to cop ing with partnership responsibilities.

In D.C., solo practitioner Shirley i Z. Johnson formed the Senior Wom en's Forum, designed for women out of law school for 10 years or more. The group attracts 20 to 40 women per session. Past programs have been on investing in real estate and stocks and bonds, and a peculiarly D.C. problem?recycling your career after 10 years in government.

Another D.C. group, Women in International Trade, was formed re

cently so that women in this special ized area "would have more of a chance to network," according to one of the founders, Kathleen Patterson, a partner at Kaplan Russin & Vecchi. ! And Marna Tucker is one of a group of 20 women partners in D.C. who get together to discuss practice manage

ment, pension issues and what it is like to be the boss of three or four

men. "I guess the fact that we meet says we're still pretty much alone," she says.

Tucker is not the only partner to find it lonely at the top. "I wish there

were a support group," says one

woman partner at a large New York firm. "But if women partners are feeling insecure, they are not that I

much more likely to tell other worn- '

Is this all there is? ?women and job satisfaction

en partners. It's a fairly macho level and no one wants to admit they are not completely in charge. A support group cannot work unless you are

willing to let down your hair." And a few wonder if the concept

of organized networking is going out of vogue soon after being recognized. Janet McDavid notes that when she first came to Washington, D.C.'s Ho gan and Hartson in 1974, there were

only three women in the entire firm. They would get together to talk in a

tiny Chinese restaurant. Today, 11 partners and 45 asso

ciates at Hogan and Hartson are women. They still have meetings, but less frequently and in a much larger space. "Some of the younger women asked me recently whether it was

really necessary that we get together as a group any longer," McDavid says.

"At first, that made me sad?the all-women support network had be come important to me. But maybe it means we women in the law have turned a corner," she says. "Still, with the group, you always knew there were other people you could talk to."

. Being a partner can be a let down. "When you're first made a

partner, you think, 'Oh my God. I'm supposed to know what to do now and I don't,'

" confided a partner at a large

New York firm. "You're supposed to know business and direct others and practice law all at the same time. But nothing prepares you for it."

Another woman partner agrees. "As an associate, you go through a kind of teen-age period of convincing people why you should be made part ner. You make partner, and sudden ly, you're at the bottom of the heap again. It's a very rude awakening to feel as if the firm wouldn't notice if you left today."

Being a partner can also be bor ing. "It's nice to have a little more power and money," says Harriet Bab bitt, a partner at Robbins and Green in Phoenix. "But I don't think there's

much glory in it. It mostly involves things like accounts receivable."

Babbitt says she practiced law full time through three babies and her husband's gubernatorial campaigns, but cut back during his recent bid for the presidency. For her, the biggest change when she made partner 10 years ago was suddenly being forced to learn how to run a business.

Some women retrench after

According to a survey by the Young Lawyers Division, women are far worse off financially than their male colleagues. The median income for male junior associates is $30,000 vs. $25,000 for women; for male partners, it's $75,000 vs. $51,000 for women; and for male solo practioners, it's $32,000 vs. $17,000 for women.

The survey also found th?t almost twice as many women as men working in private practice are dissatisfied with their jobs.

"Across the board, women

experience a far more negative work environment than men," says YLD director Ronald Hirsch, who conducted the 1984 study of 3,000 lawyers of all ages.

Among lawyers in private practice: Far more women report a lack of

intellectual challenge in their jobs (18 percent vs. 12 percent).

Far more women report that their work atmosphere is cold and impersonal (23 percent vs. 7 percent).

Far more women report that their chances of advancement are poor (25 percent vs. 20 percent) and that advancement is not determined by the quality of their work (21 percent vs. 16 percent).

Far more women report a lack of time for themselves (57 percent vs. 45 percent).

According to Hirsch, the study suggests that women's "legal careers have taken a toll on their [personal] lives."

Compared to men, many more

women lawyers are divorced (13 percent vs. 4 percent) or single (22 percent vs. 15 percent). And far more are childless than their male colleagues (56 percent vs. 40 percent).

The survey also found that, among lawyers who entered the profession after 1968, fewer women were

employed in private practice than men

(54 percent vs. 76 percent), and far more men are partners than women (44 percent vs. 13 percent), but that women were more likely to be employed by medium- and large-sized firms.

?Stephanie Benson Goldberg




ABAJ/Wide World

making partner. Stephanie Kanwit was the first woman partner at a ma

jor Chicago firm, but soon became disillusioned. "When you're a part ner in a big firm, you're in a big busi ness and you must run it as a business. Your concerns are what

kinds of computers to buy, what kinds of pension plans to have and when to have the next partnership meeting.

"I had had enough of that," says

Kanwit. "I wanted to strike out on my own and see what I could do. I want ed to develop my own client base. I wanted to practice law."

Kanwit left the firm to start the civil litigation firm of Lamet, Kanwit & Associates, which now has seven

lawyers. She is positive she made the

right move. "There is no such thing as a security blanket," she says, pointing to the recent break-ups and

Martha Barnett, left, and Barbara

Billauer, below, take different ap proaches when it comes to rainmaking.

mergers of several established law firms. "And sometimes, a security blanket can become a shroud."

At Kanwit's new firm, flexibility is encouraged by design. Several as sociates work part-time 15-20 hours a week. They are paid hourly, an ar

rangement that gives clients more work for less money, Kanwit says.

Sometimes you have to make your own breaks. Jane Dolkart is a case in point, an entrepreneur who started her own firm. After serving as a Carter appointee in the Equal Em

ployment Opportunities Commis sion, she briefly considered?and rejected?the idea of joining a big firm, and then did a brief stint as a solo practitioner before forming a

partnership with two other women. "It was a conscious choice to start

a partnership with only women," she says. "For years, I had been involved in civil rights issues, and related a lot to the women's community. I saw my clients coming from there. And I be lieved there was a tremendous need in the city for good women attorneys to represent people in these areas."

Since becoming a partner, Dol kart says she feels an incredible re

sponsibility, not only to her other two

partners, but for the business she now owns.

"You constantly feel the tugs and pressures, more than at a large firm. In a small firm, it's not a matter of

generating a few dollars more or less in a multi-million dollar business. It's your livelihood."

"We're the pioneers." Each

generation of women lawyers be lieves they are tougher and more idealistic than the next. Women's ex

pectations and how they view part nership may depend on when they came of age?as 70s yuppies, '60s radicals or bonafide pioneers from the '40s and '50s. Comments Mary Cran ston, who made partner at San Fran cisco's Pillsbury, Madison & Sutro in 1983: "Many of us who graduated in the '60s cared most about women's

rights. There was a militancy about our demands.

"I think we found that we were more easily accepted, that life in the legal profession just went more

smoothly than we thought it would.

Many of my compatriots and I found ourselves sitting in our armor with no real reason to have it on."

Barbara Billauer sees something

ABA JOURNAL / JUNE 1, 1988 73



U

like the Wimp factor setting in. A decade ago, women were bringing lawsuits so they could be made part ners, she recalls.

"Those women self-destructed, but others drew on their progress," she says. "Women today seem more

willing to compromise on how far they will go professionally. They are

willing to opt out for part-time status in a firm as long as they can combine it with a personal life. They don't

want to sacrifice their femininity."

By contrast, Billauer's class mates were used to fighting, she says. "Women today are caught short. Mid way up their careers, when it be comes tough to make partner, they get a blast of discrimination and they are not prepared to deal with it. Women must realize the fight is not over."

Marna Tucker agrees with Bil lauer. Tucker says that she and her contemporaries 20 years ago were loners?women who were willing to

ABAJ/Ed Glendinning

i

make sacrifices for the future. "Women today do not have the

same sense of history," Tucker says. "They are earning higher salaries, but shortchanging themselves. They may make partner, but they are giving up a lot of other important things."

She thinks that many of these young lawyers are driven by the profit motive instead of principles. "The wonderful thing about the law yers you look to as your heroes, like Clarence Darrow, is that they all had developed other parts to their lives? interests in art, music, history. To day, lawyers lack that well-rounded ness, the sort of moral fiber that makes for greatness."

Then, there are the trailblazers. Admitted to the bar in 1950, Shirley Hufstedler remembers "when people thought it was a very strange thing for women to go to law school."

A former judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit and now

managing partner at the Los Angeles firm of Hufstedler, Miller, Carlson & Beardsley, Hufstedler had to contend with the post-war pressure on wom

en to move to the suburbs, rear large families and stay out of the labor force.

"We approached the law with out thinking we were going to get a warm social welcome," she says. "The

legal profession was just a more vivid illustration of society in general."

Hufstedler recalls that her circle was able to find strength in its small numbers. "In my time, if you were

going to make it, you had to figure out how to do it on your own."

Because women lawyers were not allowed to join the junior bar, they formed their own organization, the Women Lawyers Club, working to reform the laws and prevent sex discrimination in the workplace.

"Women found ways to help each other. The feeling was, 'If you can't find a way to get in the front door, you climb through the win dow,'

" she says.

Definitions of success are changing. Women partners tend to measure success by their personal lives as well as by their professional accomplishments. And some, who put off having children or chose not to have them, are a little regretful about the choices they made.

"Babies are the Cuisinarts of the 1980s," says Susan Illston, a partner

Maria Hummer,

left, and Shirley Hufstedler, below

ABAJ/Wide World

1




Networking through women's bar associations

Some women believe that the best way to function in the male-dominated legal profession is exclusively through traditional bar associations.

Susan Loggans is one of them. The Chicago plaintiff's attorney believes that involvement with women's bars keeps women out of the mainstream.

"There is no doubt in my mind that women's bars do positive things," she said, "but there is a danger of isolating ourselves as an oddity."

On the contrary, said Janine Harris, president-elect of the National Conference of Women's Bars. Women's

bars train women to operate in a male dominated profession, she said.

Women's bars have many solid achievements, said Harris. They have promoted civil rights litigation, helped formulate maternity and family-leave policies, helped pass child-care legislation, investigated gender bias in the courts, and helped put many women on the bench, she said.

"We have pushed for more women on the bench because it's very important to have a representative judiciary?-not just for women lawyers, but for women litigants and the citizenry at large," Harris said in February at the ABA's hearings on women in the legal profession.

"We address issues that other bars are not interested in or have a different stand on," she said. "They just aren't responsive."

Because their membership is united, women's bars respond more

quickly, said Bankruptcy Judge Lisa Hill Fenning, current NCWBA president and a member of the ABA Commission on Women in the Profession. While mainstream bars may debate endlessly about taking a position, women's bars can act immediately, said Fenning.

They also provide women with leadership opportunities they might not get in other bar associations. "You just

ABAJ/Wide World

Lisa Hill Fenning

don't find the same recognition and support for women in the mainstream bars," Fenning said.

And women's issues are getting more recognition in mainstream bars because women are bringing them there from the women's bars, said Lynn Hecht Schafran, also on the ABA Commission on Women in the Profession. Through "cross

fertilization," she said, different points of view and ideas are being filtered into the mainstream.

Nevertheless, some women shy away from women's bars because they anticipate a negative response from their colleagues.

"It's true," said Fenning. "Men

sometimes make fun of women or

denigrate them for that activity. That's partly because they're afraid of it." Some men fear that women will develop the political skills necessary to advance in the legal profession, she said.

Nevertheless, membership in the women's bar association in Los Angeles alone has dramatically increased over the past three years, Fenning said. Women's heightened awareness has caused them to turn to women's bar associations. "Until this profession is truly and fully integrated, there is a need for women's bar associations."

?Valerie Feder

in the 11-member firm of Cotchett & Illston in San Mateo, Calif.

"In younger women partners, I see more of a willingness to get fam ilies started earlier. I also see more

willingness for women to become permanent associates or something else that requires less commitment," she says.

As a member of California's Committee on Women and the Law, she hears many partners grappling with the issue of building flexibility into their firm's structure, such as al lowing part-time work without fall ing off the partner track.

Illston is particularly encour

aged that men are getting caught up in quality-of-life issues.

One is Larry Baskir, a D.C. law yer and husband to Marna Tucker. He recalls shifting around his work schedule to spend more time with his wife and first child. Baskir says that both men and women must be pre pared to set rational boundaries on their jobs, but admits, "It's only after a certain stage of self-confidence and awareness that you can do that."

Judy Perry Martinez of New Or leans planned her life around her and her husband's careers. But like many others who barreled down the part nership track, she is now a little wist ful. "So many women like myself who have ordered and prioritized our ca reers and waited to have a family may find we have put off the decision for too long."

"If I had a family when I was a new associate, I would have been di vorced or they would have come and taken my children away," says Patri cia Seitz, a partner for nearly a dec ade at the Miami firm of Steel, Hector and Davis. "I never went home be fore 10 p.m. I found that after I was

made a partner, I could cut back some on the time at work because I was more efficient and there were other people to help me out," she says.

"The fact is that for women, the choices are still not very many," says Hufstedler, who has a son and three grandchildren. "You can decide nev er to have a family, but you have to live with that decision. If you make the choice to try to have a family, you are going to have to work harder than anyone else. When I talk with wom en partners who have raised families, none of them wants to trade in their children."

ABA JOURNAL / JUNE 1, 1988 7B



is there life after partnership?

Documents