1/caution: contains cc: @ErinDurant42 I was asked today at the #WomenInLawCA Summit what I was hearing from young women lawyers across the country, particularly those w/ childcare responsibilities about impact of pandemic

2/last week I asked you for feedback. Stories I heard were enraging. You (we) are anxious, tired, worried and angry. This applies to women with and w/o childcare responsibilities.

3/There was a bucket of concerns I’ll call, “my firm wants to act like everything is normal”. Like I can work a traditional “business day” keeping traditional “business hours”. This is untenable. Even more so w/ small kids around who need to be home schooled. Full stop.

4/stories in this bucket included things like “I was booked for multiple days of discovery w/o notice. They just showed up in my calendar. This was during the stay at home order. I have 2 school aged kids. I was worried about saying no. But also angry. Don’t they get it?”

5/“I was reprimanded by my principal for not attending a zoom client event at the beginning of the day. I’m setting up my kids for online learning at that time & I. JUST. CAN’T.”

6/many of you spoke to me about what happened when you did say something & asked for some flexibility: a benevolent (but insidious) paternalism kicked in.

7/Response was to lighten the load by taking you off files or giving a new lucrative file to someone else (in the stories I heard, usually to a male associate w/o primary care responsibilities or who had a partner that didn’t work outside the home).

8/however well intentioned, this has serious consequences for women = loss of access to firm’s more lucrative files, implications for salary, bonuses, budget + billable hours & potential deleterious consequences for partnership track.

9/ one woman told me that the moment she raised issues around scheduling she stopped receiving new files altogether.

10/ Another said she’s so angry & frustrated that she wants to walk out. Not an uncommon sentiment. Aligns w/ @VP Harris’ op-Ed in the @washingtonpost this week where she describes the mass exodus of women from the workforce.

11/this is an an unacceptable situation. And while of course systemic change is the goal, let me offer some concrete strategies to those supervising these young women lawyers while we wait & work toward that change.

12/ per @Breanna_Needham make it a point to check in every week with your associate. Ask her how she’s doing. Try to get a sense of how many hrs she’s working, whether she has room for “downtime”.

13/open up about your own struggles during these calls; usually creates trust + safe space for woman to express her concerns & anxiety

14/ encourage her to guard jealousy her private time & model the same by doing so yourself. Encourage extended time off.

15/Take concrete steps to ALLOW her get that downtime. I’ve covered the work myself or asked another member of the team to step in. If we all do this for each other, everyone gets a much needed break. But the PRINCIPAL must be the one to initiate the plan & action it.

16/Repeat: flexibility, flexibility, flexibility. Yes, there are hard deadlines in law, but internal deadlines are almost always arbitrarily set. I usually ask what works for the associate. 99% of the time I’m able to arrange my calendar to make it work.

17/signal to her that you understand she may be keeping irregular hours & that’s ok. Unless there’s a specific reason we don’t need to be on same schedule. 1 woman told me that she received a terse email b/c she didn’t respond to a 545pm non-urgent email until 2am.

18/I’m notorious for working odd hours, especially during pandemic. I don’t expect an immediate response & I make it clear that I don’t.

19/don’t take her off that file/give it to someone else. Talk to her about her schedule, let her reclaim agency & control. Work with her to make it happen. What can be adjusted? There’s almost always a solution.

20/Finally, for those w/influence & standing at firms, ADVOCATE for the young women associates. And be seen to be doing so. Let them know they have an ally.

21/Educate those around you about why it’s important. About why it’s urgent. And the immense talent we will lose if there’s not immediate action.

22/I realize there is lots also to say about women w/o caregiving responsibilities & tremendous + unique burdens they’ve faced w/respect to office house work. And how all of the above is aggravated for women from equity seeking groups.

23/ #lawtwitter #womeninlaw #womeninleadership #mentoring #sppnsorship #WomeninBusiness #womeninlawca #COVID19 #pandemic #feminism #law #legal #equity #lawfirm #lawfirms

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