Whether you’re a solo with two employees, an AmLaw 100 practice group leader overseeing a team of attorneys and paralegals/assistants, or the managing partner of a midsize firm, you cannot escape the reality that there is a direct correlation between how well you manage the people on whom you rely and the results you get from them.

You didn’t go to law school to become a manager, an HR expert, a psychologist, or for that matter, a “boss”—it’s not what you were thinking about. But here you are, responsible for managing people and how they do their jobs. As it turns out, if they report to you, you’re “the boss.”

The title of Bruce Tulgan’s book could not be more direct: it really is OK for you to feel and act like the boss—and Tulgan lays out a clear process for how to be a great boss. (Tulgan also wrote the widely-acclaimed books Winning the Talent Wars: How to Build a Lean, Flexible, High-Performance Workplace and Managing Generation X: How to Bring Out the Best in Young Talent; he has studied thousands of managers throughout the world to distill his knowledge on how great bosses do what they do. Of particular interest to the readers of this review, he’s also a former corporate attorney.)

Tulgan believes that too many organizations suffer from an “under-management epidemic.” Head-on, he tackles seven “myths” that explain why managers tolerate compromised performance. The “Myth of Empowerment,” for example, is too often used as an excuse to let people manage themselves when they really need more guidance rather than less. The “Myth of the Difficult Conversation” says that being a strong manager requires having to confront people in ways that will be unpleasant. The “Myth of the Natural Leader” enables managers to let themselves off the hook because they’re just not good at it. What’s the mother of all myths? The “Myth of Time.”

This final myth is the most challenging and beneficial pill to swallow. As an executive coach working exclusively with attorneys, I have repeatedly seen extraordinary, measurable benefits when my clients devote as few as 30 minutes per day to consciously managing their people more effectively. Their first reaction, of course, is something like: “Bill, are you nuts? You want me to give up another 2.5 billable hours a week to do what?”

Well, no, I’m not nuts, and the gains—fewer errors and interruptions, increased billings, greater enthusiasm—become apparent almost immediately. As the boss, it’s within your power to manage for—and to actualize—these outcomes. Here’s Tulgan’s approach:

1. Get in the habit of managing every day
2. Learn to talk like a performance coach
3. Take it one person at a time
4. Make accountability a real process
5. Tell people what to do and how to do it
6. Track performance
7. Solve small problems before they turn into big problems
8. Do more for some people and less for others

Tulgan is a realist about the challenges bosses face. He explains each of the eight steps clearly (in language refreshingly free of management jargon) and provides illustrations to flesh out his guidelines. For example, he describes helping one of his clients address this common question: “How can I suddenly raise my standards and start holding people accountable when I haven’t been doing that all these years?”

Too many attorneys still cling to the antiquated notion that the law is a profession, not a business; that law firms constitute a unique cultural environment unlike other organizations; that as long as there are top-flight lawyers, things will be fine. This, of course, is bunk. Law firms are business organizations that must be led and managed effectively—which means that the people who do the work of the firm must be led and managed effectively. Tulgan’s book will teach you how.

RESOURCE

It’s Okay to Be the Boss: The Step-by-Step Guide to Becoming the Manager Your Employees Need, By Bruce Tulgan, HarperCollins, 2007

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Kevin Houchin, himself a successful attorney as well as a keen and insightful writer, decided that the poor souls who couldn’t be talked into a career as a beet processor and chose the law instead should have a guidebook as they trudged through three years of school before crossing the bar. His book, Fuel The Spark: 5 Values For Success In Law School and Beyond (Made Easy Publishing 2009) is a commendable accomplishment.

The book is a point-by-point guide on what to expect when the young lawyer-to-be enters the hallowed halls of the law. While it would be presumptuous to say it will take all of the uncertainty and sweaty palms away, it will, if taken to heart, clearly make things more manageable. Easier is another question, but that remains in the hands of the professors and the students. Sorry, but that’s one place Kevin can’t help.

Kevin’s Five Values seem self-evident at first, the kind you’ll find in any good motivation book. But don’t be misled. Underneath Accept, Show Up, Pay 100% Attention, Many Irons In The Fire and Stewardship are solid facts and advice based on Kevin’s real-life experiences. Each one has a powerful message.

Each Value has worksheets where the reader is asked – no, compelled – to translate the hypothetical into the personal, and that is another one of the real strengths of the book. You don’t just read it; you participate in it.

Kevin has high hopes for his “students,” as well he should. If the diligent student reads carefully, participates fully, and thinks openly, success, while not guaranteed, will at least loom brighter on the horizon.

In his closing, Kevin makes a powerful point to the law student:

Most importantly, you’ll be far more likely to end up using your legal education in a way that fuels your personal spark of creativity and divinity, and make the world a better place for yourself and all of us sharing this planet with you.

I’ll take that any day of the week.

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[The review originally appeared in the September 19, 2008 issue of The Recorder and is reprinted by permission of the author.]

New York City lawyer Ari Kaplan’s new book on how lawyers and law students can build a professional network and successfully nurture their career draws on the author’s considerable versatility and skill not only as an attorney but as a business planner, networker, rainmaker and writer.

It’s a treatise (but short and sweet) on key elements in Career success. Kaplan – principal of Ari Kaplan Advisors and a familiar face and voice on the law-conference circuit and in legal publications — explains how to unlock opportunities for success in traditional and little-considered places, beginning in law school and not, as a policy, ending in law firm partnership.

Kaplan exhorts anyone reading his book to begin thinking of how to become his or her own opportunity maker. And he provides succinct, accessible, practical pointers on how to do it, with special attention to junior associates and students.

Kaplan’s primary message is that you can make your own way with the help of others whom you make your friends and mentors, and clients. You do it by: drafting a personal business plan; vetting it through the considered advice of experts who have established their profile and crafted a steadfast client list; “doing” for others; being adaptable; and changing your outlook from one of waiting and accepting to one of acting and acquiring.

He advises his readers to take a risk. Sure most of his readers are law school students and lawyers, traditionally averse to risk. But they can take a calculated risk, Kaplan suggests, an educated sojourn on a self-mapped path toward establishing and cultivating their own brand — themselves — to generate clients. Anyone who truly wants to should rain-make up a storm and reap the benefits — for oneself and one’s clients.

Sound tough? Sound too easy?

It’s a bit of both. Every lawyer knows that billable hours are life itself. And that associates and new hires often have little life outside the firm for which they’re generating paperwork and brain brawn for the partners who bring the clients in. But, Kaplan says, new lawyers, or even veterans looking for a change, should — and sooner rather than later — begin thinking not just about learning the law and how to practice it, but about the business of law and how to keep themselves in clients, in the black, and in demand.

Kaplan’s been what the reader is now, and he knows a great deal about where he or she wants to go, and how to get there. And he’s willing to tell.

In that last sense alone, “The Opportunity Maker” is a welcome amicus curiae not only in the legal world, but in any profession. But its legal specificity – by a lawyer for lawyers — makes it especially valuable to attorneys. Kaplan logged a decade with New York firms; he knows the talk and has walked the walk. And he talks without slinging jargon and walks a straight and steady line.

Imagine the novelty of attending a conference, walking up and saying hello to someone. Sounds like common sense? Well you know what they say about common sense. And how common a sight is a loop of lawyers who arrived at a meeting with one another that remains a closed circle? You see Kaplan’s point, then. And there are practical tips on how to make meetings and contacts, even cold ones, work.

Or how about this: Do someone a favor – offer some guidance, trade notes, make a friend. If practicing altruism sounds somewhat unlawyerly, well, that seems partly to be Kaplan’s point: Don’t be just a face in the crowd, be a face that others recognize, trust and want to deal with. Yes, learn the law, but meet and greet, be open and friendly, be interesting and become part of a community, or a professional association — and then get moving.

Most lawyers write a lot, but relatively few get published. All lawyers went to law -school, but few maintain, a mentor. Everyone attends meetings and belongs to societies, but not many get full value from these activities. Kaplan provides diverse insights from many experts but also delivers a miniature media and public-relations and self-promotion guide geared to lawyers. Readers can learn how to get published — including how to query editors, construct an article, retain copyright and leverage published work; find a mentor; use media to build a profile, including blogs; network creatively; design a career plan; and build a rainmaking team.

This is a little book brimming with big, but manageable, ideas. It fits nicely into a briefcase, and should go where a briefcase goes.

Michael Lear-Olimpi is principal of Susquehanna Editorial Services, Harrisburg, Pa. He is also editor of incisivemedia’s e-Commerce Law & Strategy newsletter, a Recorder affiliate.

The Opportunity Maker, Strategies for Inspiring Your Legal Career Through Creative Networking and Business Development

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• The Decision: Should I go solo? What are the benefits? Can I hang out a shingle straight out of law school?
• Planning the Great Escape: How do I leave my current position? How do I actually begin a practice? Who will my clients be?
• The Practice: How do I handle clients and billing? How do I manage my cash flow? How do I grow my practice, and what happens if I get more work than I can handle, or if a matter involves an unfamiliar practice area?
• Marketing: Where will I find clients? Do I go with “traditional advertising” (Yellow Pages and billboards) or should I rely on the Internet? Where can I get the most bang for my marketing buck?
• Frequently Asked Questions: How can I compete with other lawyers and law firms? Will clients really hire a new solo? How do I learn the nitty-gritty parts of practice? How do I move from a large firm or government position to solo work? How do I handle part-time work and maternity leave? If my practice doesn’t go well, how do I know whether or when to throw in the towel?

A meaty appendix concluding the book adds a wealth of information and resources. (An index would have been equally helpful). Throughout the book, Elefant’s tone is consistent: she’s a mentor who’s undergone the transition, experienced the challenges, and prospered. By including experiences and tips from other solos, she subtly models one of her key messages: although a solo may be the only lawyer in his or her practice, every solo must have relationships with lawyers who can pass off overflow work, lend a hand with a legal or practice management question, and provide camaraderie and support. Aspiring solos will appreciate the simplicity of Elefant’s advice. For instance, she offers six reasons to go solo (including the desire for autonomy, practical experience, flexibility, and career satisfaction); five common motives for hanging out a shingle (a long-held dream, unhappiness in a large firm, wanting to be a stay-at-home mom, having been fired, and wanting to practice law on one’s own terms); several self-assessment questions to judge whether you have the solo temperament; and a framework for a financial and economic analysis of going solo. She then narrows this analysis to three essential questions:

1. Are you willing to do what it takes to establish your firm?
2. Are you confident with your lawyering skills?
3. Will you regret it?

Elefant also substantively addresses the financial aspects of solo practice. Encouraging new solos not to adopt the billable hour model simply because of its familiarity, she delves into alternative methods of charging clients; how to determine an appropriate fee and how to get paid, as well as how to generate fast cash (through temporary agencies, requesting contract work, approaching legal services plan networks, public appointments, and more); and how to market for direct clients. Lawyers who’ve been sole practitioners for several years will find the marketing chapters particularly helpful. This readable book is an invaluable resource. If you’re wondering whether solo practice might be right for you, if you’re on the cusp of beginning your own practice, or if you’re struggling to make your new solo practice work, you will benefit from Elefant’s concrete, detailed, implementable suggestions. You’ll also be inspired—or reinspired—by your decision. Few books, no matter how useful, are destined to become classics in their field, but Solo by Choice is one of those few.

RESOURCE Elefant, Carolyn, Solo by Choice: How to Be the Lawyer You Always Wanted to Be, Niche Press/DecisionBooks, January 2008

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The field of law is notorious for causing burn-out and disillusionment, with lawyers ultimately finding a loss of meaning and purpose in their lives. There are currently over a million lawyers in the U.S., and many attorneys express professional discontent and are seeking solutions. (According to a New York Times article (1/6/08), 44% of lawyers surveyed by the ABA said they would not recommend the profession to a young person.)

The Reflective Counselor: Daily Meditations for Lawyers is designed to help lawyers recover from spiritual bankruptcy. Each daily entry includes an introductory quotation, followed by a refection inspired by that quotation. Themes found in the book include overcoming fear, exploring personal beliefs and values, maintaining integrity, personally defining success, dealing with difficult people, and common workplace challenges.

This is the only book of its kind written just for lawyers. Readers of this important book can reverse the burnout trend, and discover how easy it is to put energy and enthusiasm back into their career with this once-a-day meditation strategy. Lawyers might also appreciate the book as a gift as well.

The authors are uniquely qualified to provide on-target guidance for the legal professional.

F. Gregory Coffey is a clinical psychologist with more than twenty-five years’ experience in therapeutic practice, including acting as a life coach for many attorneys. Maureen C. Kessler spent 30 years as a practicing securities attorney in New York City, later becoming an ordained minister.

The book has been more than enthusiastically received by lawyers, psychologists and spiritual advisors alike:

“This is a remarkable book. The authors are to be commended on putting together this splendid contribution to legal education and the legal profession.” –Bob MacCrate, Past President of the American Bar Association and Senior Drafter of the MacCrate Report

“Every lawyer could use an opportunity to pause and reflect. The Reflective Counselor provides brilliant insights on a range of issues faced by those trying to balance heavy work commitments with complicated lives.” –Theodore O. Rogers, Jr., Partner, Sullivan & Cromwell LLP

“The Reflective Counselor is by far one of the most uplifting and heartfelt books of its kind that I have seen. The uniquely qualified authors achieve a real empathic understanding and have put forth a valuable and very welcome guide for soul-searching lawyers, eager to find meaning and purpose beyond the daily grind. This book is to be highly recommended.” –James B. Snyder, M.D., Board Certified Psychiatrist and Director and Founder, Long Island Psychiatric

“There’s no quick fix. Show up, wait, watch and work: ‘You don’t give up,’ says Anne Lamott. Routine, rigor and unrelenting demands mark the landscape of every lawyer’s life. These meditations offer space, time and rearranged moments. Not shallow piety but layered insights that awaken and re-charge.” –Janet R. Walton, Professor of Worship, Union Theological Seminary

“This book is filled with wonderful quotations and wise commentaries, one for each day. Designed as ‘daily meditations,’ each provides a thoughtful way to begin a lawyer’s often complex and challenging day. I can think of no lawyer, whether patient or friend, that I would not be happy to present with this excellent book.” –Don-David Lusterman, Ph.D., Author of Infidelity: A Survival Guide.

RESOURCES

Coffey, Gregory F. and Kessler, Maureen C., The Reflective Counselor: Daily Meditations for Lawyers, ABA Publishing, 2008.

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I’d like to think that once we find the right home, most lawyers find real satisfaction in the work we do. After all, we’re part of a very small and elite class of individuals who are fortunate enough to have been accepted as members of the Bar. Unfortunately, my own personal survey of friends and colleagues often tells a different story. Though there are some who have found their niche, there are as many or more who seem to be on a continuous and seemingly unending search for career satisfaction.

Until a recent publication, there weren’t many roadmaps or guides to help unhappy lawyers chart out their paths. Thankfully, Monica R. Parker, a “former lawyer turned life coach” saw the need and found a way to fill it. Unhappy Lawyer: A Roadmap to Finding Meaningful Work Outside of the Law, authored by Monica R. Parker, is specifically written for lawyers who believe that there might be something more than the legal practice in their future.

This book is a phenomenal resource, with the perfect blend of realism and humor. Best of all, it doesn’t just offer lofty notions about career options that are out there. Instead, it helps readers chart a specific course to reach their goals. First, the author helps readers discern between periodic burnout and something more. For instance, you might want to keep reading if every Sunday has become a countdown to the dreaded start of a new work week! Second, unlike many other career guides, it does more than just identify the problem. Unhappy Lawyer offers exercises and resources to help readers identify the right career, in or out of the legal profession. Third, once you’ve identified some possibilities, the book walks you through how to thoroughly explore them, through informational interviews and other means. Fourth, the author deals with the nitty gritty mechanics of walking away from a six-figure salary – from managing the debt that holds some lawyers hostage to budgeting for your career change. Fifth, Unhappy Lawyer holds your hand as you take the leap of faith, talking you through your fears and helping you work against your natural propensity as a lawyer to be risk averse. Finally, my personal favorite part, is that each section includes real life stories of those who have found their purpose outside of the law. These are stories of inspiration because they show that it can be done.

In sum, if you’re one of those attorneys who frantically check the lotto numbers each week to find out if you can finally be free, or if you’ve been waiting on the light bulb moment to show you what you were really meant to do, I highly recommend Unhappy Lawyer: A Roadmap to Finding Meaningful Work Outside of the Law, available on amazon.com and in bookstores. It has better odds than the lotto, and it could very well inspire the light bulb you’ve been waiting on for so long.

Parker, Monica, The Unhappy Lawyer: A Roadmap to Finding Meaningful Work Outside of the Law, Sphinx Publishing, July 2008

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As Cloke warns:

Every change entails a loss of certainty stimulated by the temporary transition from order to disorder, even if it is only in preparation for evolving to a higher, more successful level of order. Change therefore means, at least on a transitional and symbolic basis, surrendering the need for order and control, and accepting the inevitability of a period, however brief, in which there is disorder and loss of control.

We are a fractious, competitive, self-seeking, emotion-driven species. We compete for property, power and prestige. We wrestle with one another for the affection of our family members, potential romantic partners, and the esteem of our communities. We are fearful of hunger, thirst, disease and exposure. Living in a world of scarce resources and limited opportunities, we see your gain as our loss.

That we have resolved our conflicts over scarce resources for millions of years without wiping ourselves from the face of the earth is the most surprising thing about us. Confronted with our documented taste for one another’s blood, the only apparent explanation for our persistence as a species is our lack of the technology to finish the job. Now that self-extinction is possible, we either move to the next level of conflict resolution or we die. But where do we begin?

The medicines Cloke prescribes as remedies for our local and global conflict “dis-ease” are not new. As Cloke notes from the start:
Mediation, informal problem-solving, group facilitation, collaborative negotiation, public dialogue, prejudice reduction, and other conflict resolution techniques have amply demonstrated, in countless conflicts over the last three decades, that there is a better outcome than winning and losing, a more successful process than accusation and blaming, and a deeper relationship than exercising power over and against others.

What is new about Cloke’s conflict therapy is how thorough-going it is. This book contains the architecture necessary for the transition from the flying buttresses of Notre Dame to the curvaceous steel exteriors of a Frank Gehry concert hall. Cloke reminds us that the exterior creates an interior and the interior makes the exterior possible. Therefore, to make the transition from a rights-based to an interest-based society, we need not only to transform our own ways of viewing conflict but also to change the way we see our political, social, and economic systems.

To pick up these new conflict resolution tools, we first need to put down the ones we’ve been using with such mixed results. Why should we? Because, as Cloke explains, the resolution of conflicts based upon rights requires the use of:  legislation, litigation, adversarial negotiation, bureaucratic coercion, rules and regulations, contractual agreements, and policies and procedures.

And those “rights based processes” tend to:

generate winners and losers, undermine relationships, and result in collateral damage, . . . Since rights rely on rules, change is discouraged, though not prevented, and conflicts are settled rather than prevented or resolved.

We begin to change by taking a look at the institutions that contain us and our bickering clan. Cloke writes:

Most efforts at resolution. downplay or ignore the profound influence that social and cultural environments have on conflicts, and rarely examine or seek to resolve the underlying social assumptions, myths, mores, expectations, and ways of thinking and behaving that link seemingly isolated individual conflicts with the methods by which people ascribe and interpret their meaning.

If we do not recognize and provide for the context in which conflict arises, we have no hope of resolving our differences at either the individual or the societal level.

Have we done this before? Yes we have. Not so long ago, an entire generation of post-war women came together to learn about the social and political causes underlying their very personal and frustrating limitations. It was called “consciousness raising.” Did our education of repression lead us to wallow in self-pity? No. We went back to school. We changed our career aspirations from the three or four we believed to be available to us (waitress, wife, teacher, nurse) to the multitude we now inhabit as rightly our own—professor, lawyer, doctor, mechanic, machinist, welder, cabbie, firefighter.

As Cloke observes:  Social evolution and personal transcendence are . . . . linked. Each may take place in isolation, internally, and personally; or collectively, externally, and socially. We are therefore led to consider how conflict resolution principles might be used to proactively design social conditions that encourage the prevention, resolution, transformation, and transcendence of individual and social conflicts.

To the adage “know your enemy,” Cloke adds the exhortation that we also know ourselves and our friends, our comforts and our addictions, our fears and our resistance to change. If name be needed for our enemies, let them be called Prejudice, Nationalism, Xenophobia, Discrimination, Domination, Orthodoxy, even Capitalism, Competition and Money. But do not expect Cloke to take “sides” in the cultural and political wars of the 20th Century. Cloke is not talking about change. He is talking about transformation and transcendence:

For transformation and transcendence to occur systemically, we not only need to eliminate the social, economic, and political sources of chronic conflict, but to shift the paradigm of change itself, creating a “revolution in the revolution,” and changing the way we change . . . .

After an exhaustive analysis of successful revolutions followed by failed economic and cultural orders; the triumph of a market economy that rests upon the back of an oppressed and impoverished “third” world; the problem of evil, the persistence of injustice and the horrors of terrorism, Cloke brings it all back home. Changing the way we change, he tells us will. . . . require us to recognize that interest-based conflict resolution techniques carry a price in our willingness to listen to people and ideas we do not like or agree with, and to share power and control over outcomes with people who are very different from ourselves. Ultimately, transcending conflict means giving up unequal, inequitable, and autocratic power- and rights-based practices and institutions and seeking instead to satisfy interests and the reasons people adopt power and rights approaches in the first place. . . .

In the penultimate section of Conflict Revolution, Cloke outlines the ways in which our existing systems can be redesigned. In many cases, these redesigned systems already exist, including victim-offender mediation for crimes against “the people”; peer mediation programs for conflict in our public schools; and workplace conflict resolution systems. Others will require the revolution in resolution that Cloke prescribes such as creating alternatives to capitalist and socialist markets; and designing interest-based political institutions.

Cloke has described himself as having an optimistic heart and a pessimistic mind. In forming Mediators Beyond Borders, Cloke has put both heart and mind together to raise the questions and implement the solutions outlined in Conflict Revolution. As Cloke explains:

The most effective international projects, in my experience, have been those that extend over decades, with people returning year after year to follow up, learn what worked and what didn’t, and provide fresh information, more advanced techniques, and nuanced advice as circumstances evolve and change. It will undoubtedly take considerable effort and commitment to design and implement such projects. Yet, as conflict has no borders, neither does compassion, or commitment to making a difference. We can only choose whether we will be distant, helpless victims of what we mistakenly regard as other people’s tragedies, or active participants in resolving disputes in our own human family, regardless of where, how, or among whom they are occurring.

This call to action—made expressly to mediators—has already been answered. The Founding Congress of Mediators Beyond Borders met this February at a retreat in Colorado to plan projects, discuss strategy, and to learn from one another how to transform conflict into committed activism worldwide.

The good news about this book is that you can begin to practice its principles right now. You do not have to believe Mr. Cloke’s thesis. You needn’t take an oath or recite a pledge. The resolution technology presented here will work whether you believe it will or not. Pick up a single tool offered by Cloke and try it out on something simple—household chores come immediately to mind. If that works, take another look at Cloke’s prescriptions and widen the scope of your effort. Eventually, you will become one of the millions and tens of millions in possession of the “secret” to saving the planet. And because this work requires courage, keep in mind what Ralph Waldo Emerson so long ago reminded us—what lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.
_____________
RESOURCES

Cloke, Kenneth, Conflict Revolution Mediating Evil, War, Injustice and Terrorism – How Mediators Can Help Save the Planet, Janis Publications, April 2008.

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The first book, written to be read concurrently with the second, focuses on the surprising failure of private law firms to promote and retain the highly motivated and talented women they recruit. The second book—interwoven with the first—arises nearly unbidden in response to Rikleen’s inquiries into the root causes of that failure. In this second, “shadow” account, Rikleen details the dramatic changes in legal practice over the past twenty years; the failure of law firm management to meet the challenges of the transformed legal landscape; and the destructive effects those failures have had on women’s legal careers. Although these harmful effects have primarily been visited upon women, Rikleen sounds the alarm for the continued viability of any firm unable to meet the organizational challenges facing them today. The last book, which appears in the third section of Ms. Rikleen’s treatise, prescribes systemic solutions for the system-wide problems analyzed in the book’s first two parts.

For the woman legal practitioner, the first two-thirds of Ending the Gauntlet  reads like a diary penned in the moment and forgotten in the present’s nearly overwhelming demands. The scores of personal narratives interwoven into the book read like illustrative YouTube videos of challenges overcome by the women who pioneered legal practice as well as those faced by those who followed them. These stories of slights experienced, ambitions frustrated, and relationships damaged or sundered solely because of one’s gender is difficult, but important, reading. As one legal scholar suggests, the simple act of attending to these narratives will “ruffle at the fringes” the many accounts of meritocracy that have left women feeling misunderstood at best and passed over or dismissed at worst.

But Ending the Gauntlet is not “merely” an anthropological account of women’s lives in the legal workplace of the 20th and 21st centuries. Ending the Gauntlet marshals so much evidence in support of its thesis that the modern law firm is positively harmful to those who inhabit it, that the problems addressed seem nearly insurmountable. The statistics on women’s progress in the field are particularly dispiriting. Ms. Rikleen cites scores of studies showing that gross monetary and power disparities between male and female attorneys persist.

The Massachusetts Bar Association reported in 2005, for instance, that while 32% of its male members earned in excess of $150,000 per year, only 12% of its women lawyers earned as much. Women were not only under-represented at the higher levels of compensation, they were also over-represented at the lower, with 75% reporting earnings of less than $101,000 per year compared to 47% of men. Three thousand miles away, in Washington State, a 2001 survey of private law firm compensation by gender showed that 77% of the highest earners (the top 25%) were men while 62% of the lowest earners (the bottom 25%) were women. Even more troubling, a 2004 nationwide study reported that the overall gap in earnings between male and female attorneys was sixty cents on the dollar.

These statistics are buttressed by other signs that the system is failing women, including research demonstrating that they abandon private legal practice in far greater numbers than men(1); are grossly under-represented in partnership(2) and management positions(3); and are the only gender whose careers are adversely affected by marriage and family.(4)
These types of statistics, much in the news in the past few years, have been used by some to demonstrate that women simply don’t want to work as hard as men; are not as ambitious as their male counterparts; are not well-suited to legal practice; or who “understandably” place more emphasis on family than they do upon success in the workplace.

Not so, argues Ms. Rikleen. Women who are attracted to the law in the first instance are driven achievers for whom success matters very much. Why, then, has the profession failed to retain them in its ranks and promote them to positions of power and prestige? According to Ms. Rikleen and the considerable academic support for her theses, the answer to this question can be found in the unconscious biases of a white male power structure(5); the very nature of modern legal practice; and management’s failure to respond to the needs of its very human resources.

The threat to women’s careers, argues Ms. Rikleen, is poised to engulf all attorneys in legal practice. The threats include:

Spiraling compensation demands that are seldom satiated, unpredictable (and frequently, unfathomable) decisions about who will be elected to partner status; loosely-formed, intermediate management positions where lawyers inexperienced in such roles often serve with ambivalence; and a workplace reluctant to invest in the well-being of its primary asset – the human capital by which it is able to continue feeding its hunger for growing revenues.

In response to the many deep and wide-ranging problems facing law firm management today, Ms. Rikleen makes specific, concrete proposals that can cut attrition and reform the legal workplace for men and women alike, including:

•    Re-focusing “on the significant gender gaps that exist in leadership positions, compensation and the overall retention and advancement of women”
•    Implementing a “firm-wide effort to recruit and promote women, ensuring a ‘critical mass’ at all levels of the organization”
•    Creating a “strategic plan that ensures that women attorneys are recruited, trained, retained and promoted at the same rate as their male colleagues”
•    Abandoning ad hoc management and developing leadership models in which the retention and promotion of women into key positions throughout the firm is front and center of firm policy
•    Introducing performance reviews that “feature rigorous, detailed criteria. . . that are regularly scheduled, taken seriously and conspicuously tied to compensation and advancement”
•    Replacing the billable hour with value or budgeted billing, taking responsibility for the firm’s inability to stay within budget and rewarding it for doing the job under budget
•    Including women in and training all lawyers for rainmaking activities at the highest levels
•    Abandoning client origination as the only truly important measure of an attorney’s worth to the law firm and compensating individual lawyers according to their contribution to activities the firm claims to value
•    Developing effective mentorship programs for all attorneys and rewarding mentors for their efforts
•    Possessing the agility to permit lawyers to integrate flexibility into their daily work lives
•    Working with corporate counsel to assist them in achieving their own diversity goals
•    Improving career counseling at the law school level.

At bottom, this book calls for management practices that will benefit all attorneys while at the same time recognizing the disparate impact current practices have on women. Women are, in effect, the “canaries in the mine shaft” of modern legal practice. As they fall victim to management inefficiencies, they are certain to be followed by both men and women of Gen X and Y, all of whom have seen the sacrifices of their elders and are refusing to repeat their errors.

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RESOURCES
Ending the Gauntlet—Removing Barriers to Women’s Success in the Law by Lauren Stiller Rikleen, Thomson Legalworks, March 2006

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