LawyersUSA

During her tenure as president of the Boston Bar Association, environmental lawyer Lauren Stiller Rikleen created a task force aimed at identifying the principal challenges faced by female attorneys who were trying to balance their profession with their home life.

That task force led to a book entitled "Ending the Gauntlet: Removing Barriers to Women's Success in the Law," which includes a combination of analytical data and interviews with more than one hundred female attorneys around the country.

Rikleen has also founded her own advocacy group, the Bowditch Institute for Women's Success. Earlier this year, the institute launched its new website: www.bowditchinstitute.com.

Rikleen, a senior partner at Bowditch Dewey in Framingham, Mass., spoke with Lawyers USA on how firms and the women they employ can work together.

In your findings, what is the major impediment for women in the law practice?

The intense focus on billable hours. When you look historically at law, up to around the 1970s, this wasn't a driving factor of a lawyer's worth. Now it's everything. As a result, what you see now is constant turnover, and the toll it takes on people in the workplace, particularly mothers on whom a lot of the home responsibilities fall.

How does this effect the way women are treated by management?

It starts with the assignment process. Data shows that it's not that women don't get good assignments; but when there are those negative or uninteresting assignments such as document reviews or residential closings or the cases nobody expects to go anywhere, they tend to be assigned those. Men tend to get the work that gets more client exposure.

Then you have the whole evaluation process. There are a lot of hidden biases that can creep in. There is amazing research out there that shows how this works and how women can be evaluated differently. One of the studies showed when people were asked to grade identical tests, they gave higher scores to the test with the male name. It's usually not intentional, but it's a bias that exists nonetheless.

In interviews I did, I heard many anecdotes about situations where people felt they were unfairly evaluated in terms of their quality of work by the partners. This affects women in many firms where, if a partner retires, those unfair evaluations keep them from inheriting [some of the partner's] clients.

How can firms step in to avoid these potential prejudices?

Well, when it comes to issues surrounding assignments, one thing is to have a person in the firm who understands this issue and will monitor how assignments are distributed to the associates. They need someone who will ask questions. Are the assignments distributed fairly? Do they involve more client contact or no client contact?

Firms really should be aggressive in their training about how these hidden biases come out and how to watch for it. A great training document was put out by the ABA, called "Fair Measure." (To order this 120-page document call 800-285-2221). It's excellent. It's one of the strongest tools I've seen for law firms on how to implement gender-neutral systems.

How can women seeking senior leadership roles overcome these hurdles?

Women need to work together in a constructive way. Data shows that women tend to be more isolated at work because of their full time responsibilities at both work and home. Firms have started to recognize this and are creating women's initiatives, a group for women to work together with firm management to create a long-term plan that helps everybody.

The mistake is when firms say they will create a woman's initiative and then fail to support it, whether it is no money, no resources, no firm leadership or no statement from the management saying [this group] is important for the future of the firm.

What have you found women will do if they are unable to overcome these issues?

Anecdotally, I've seen a lot more senior level women are leaving to go elsewhere. When women leave, they tend to say they have this great opportunity, so often people are not that direct on what the reasons are. But I'm hearing a lot from women around the country who are frustrated at being at the lower end of the compensation systems, not being in on key firm leadership roles, not having opportunity for client credit. They reach a point where they are talented and capable and see other opportunities are available to them.

Where do they tend to go and why?

Mostly, they go to nonprofit firms, government jobs and in-house positions. Often times, those positions provide a greater opportunity for leadership and fairer compensation than private practice. If you're a senior partner in a firm you have terrific skills that other people want so if, for example, you go to an in-house position, by definition your job title means greater responsibility and a significant level of leadership. Women going into government jobs are going in at a senior level and running departments and agencies. All these talents that their previous law firms have not been using are all of a sudden blossoming in other fields.