Wisconsin Lawyer
Vol. 77, No. 4, April 2004

Sidebars:

• Convention Program Stresses the Benefits of Work/Life Balance

How often do you reach the end of your workday feeling that time is never, ever on your side? You navigate through a whirlwind of client appointments, staff meetings, conference calls, hearings, depositions, research to do, emails to answer, legal documents to write ... and on it goes. You find yourself wishing for more time. As for a fulfilling personal life? Now you're really dreaming.

Still, you love what you do for a living - using your analytical skills, solving problems, counseling clients. Most days you're happy you're a lawyer. It's just that law practice devours such a huge chunk of your time and energy. Instead of law taking over your life, you'd prefer it were a part of your life.

Sadly, lawyers often feel guilty or anxious about even contemplating such notions. Self-doubts begin to creep in: Why can't I get better organized? Be more efficient? Become a master at multitasking? Women attorneys, especially, fear revealing any sign that they can't keep up at the office - and raise well-adjusted children and manage a home.

The message hovering over the entire profession is that real lawyers should be able to do it all, work long hours, and hold up under the pressure. Accomplishing anything less is merely due to a lawyer's own shortcomings.

But more attorneys are questioning these old assumptions and looking for ways to strike a balance between work and the other parts of their lives. The legal professional culture itself must change, some contend, if lawyers are to function effectively and have satisfying careers.

"Every law firm and every lawyer wanting to maintain competitive advantage and the highest standards of professionalism in the 21st century needs to begin a serious dialogue about work-life issues," writes Ellen Ostrow in her online newsletter, "Beyond the Billable Hour." Ostrow, who will speak at the upcoming State Bar convention, is founder of Silver Spring, Md.-based LawyersLifeCoach.com^™ providing personal and career coaching for attorneys nationwide. (See the accompanying sidebar, "Lawyer Coach Makes the Case for Balance.")

In Wisconsin, the beginnings of a dialogue on work-life issues date back to at least the late 1980s within the Special Committee on the Participation of Women in the Bar, resulting in the publication in 1990 of a handbook to help lawyers and legal employers establish flexible work options. Now the topic is gaining renewed attention. Last year, State Bar President George Burnett created the Ad Hoc Committee on Flexible Work Options, charging it with the task of revising the handbook. (See the accompanying sidebar, "Updated Flexible Work Options Handbook Debuts.")

Flexible work options are key ingredients in attaining work-life balance. These options include reduced hours, job-sharing, flextime (shifting daily schedules, but working five full days), compressed work weeks (working full-time hours in a shortened week), leaves, and telecommuting.

Not for Mothers Only

Katherine Williams, Milwaukee, is one Wisconsin attorney who can look upon flexible work arrangements with the advantage of hindsight. From 1987 to 1995, she worked four days a week, or 80-percent time. That gave her "breathing room," she said in a Wisconsin Lawyer interview 13 years ago, to juggle career and home life. Today, Williams is full time at the same firm, where she's now partner, and her two sons are 25 and 27. "I'm glad I did it," she says of her part-time years. "Both of my sons have mentioned that they remember how they liked that I was home on Fridays." Her part-time status didn't slow her advancement to partner, although, of course, she earned less money. "That's the choice you make," she notes.

Now that about 50 percent of law students are women, part-time options will be increasingly important in the legal profession, points out James Sandman, managing partner at Arnold & Porter, Washington, D.C., who speaks and writes frequently about flexible work arrangements. He has been a strong proponent of these ever since he took a five-month sabbatical 14 years ago to be home with his infant son.

"As long as societal pressures place more of the burden for child care on women than men," Sandman notes, "law firms are not going to be able to retain their talent if they don't offer effective part-time programs. What they'll find is that they're limiting their access to only half the talent pool. And no smart business would do that."

Priorities are shifting among men, as well. For instance, in 2000 the Radcliffe Public Policy Center, Cambridge, Mass., did a study of men in their 20s and 30s, and found that their top priority was having work schedules that allowed them time to be with their families. In fact, 70 percent said they'd be willing to take lower salaries in exchange for more family time.

Sandman also sees an attitudinal shift underway among male lawyers. "I think if men thought they could take advantage of reduced or flexible hours without damaging their careers, they'd do it in a minute," he says. "I think the change will come. It will just happen gradually."

After the birth of his first daughter, Jon Padgham dropped to 60-percent time at the Lancaster, Wis., office of the State Public Defender (SPD). Today he has two daughters, ages 5 years and 17 months, and works at the SPD's Appleton office four days a week, with Fridays off. "I love those days with my daughters," he says. "It helps me keep everything in perspective."

With an academic background in developmental psychology and child/family studies before he became a lawyer, Padgham long ago got past the "men don't do this" mentality. But he has also found strong support for his part-time arrangements from judges, judicial staff, and SPD colleagues, in both Lancaster and Appleton. "I almost think I get more good-for-you's than a woman would who's doing the same thing," he says, noting it's simply assumed that women want to spend more time with their children.

But children aren't the only motivation for lawyers to reduce work hours. Caring for elderly parents may be a priority, or the desire to explore personal interests. Having more time with her children, ages 10 and 13, is one reason Eagle River attorney Marcia Bains-Grebner chooses to work 75-percent time in her solo practice that focuses on guardian ad litem cases and special prosecution work for the district attorney's office. But it's not just a mom-issue for her. She also wants time for gardening, volunteer work, serving on the local school board, and other community activities. "Every once in a while someone [among legal colleagues] takes me to task for 'wasting' my legal mind," Bains-Grebner says, a perspective she shrugs off as "misguided."

Madison attorney Ken Lund has worked various part-time schedules with the SPD since 1990. Back then, his decision "had a lot to do with my kids," he says, but today his daughters are college-age, and Lund has chosen to remain part-time. "I was a carpenter before I went to law school," he says, "so now I work with Habitat for Humanity. I try to go down to Mexico a couple times a year to coordinate construction projects. I'm active in my church, I'm learning Spanish ... I have a lot of different stuff I like to do."

Doubts Remain

When it comes to reduced-hours schedules for lawyers, a gap persists between theory and reality. Note, for instance, the results of a 2003 survey by the National Association of Law Placement (NALP), Washington, D.C. In gathering data on part-time employment at more than 1,300 law offices representing more than 600 large U.S. law firms, NALP found that 96 percent of the offices had a part-time work policy for their attorneys.

The proportion of attorneys actually working part time, however, was only 4.1 percent. That compares to 13 percent in 2002 in other professions, such as engineering and medicine, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Why do so few attorneys take advantage of part-time schedules? Some, of course, prefer to work full time, or feel they need the added income. Others, however, avoid broaching the subject because they believe their employers are convinced part-time schedules can't work, even if such a policy is on the books.

Ostrow encounters that attitude all the time in her consulting work. "Many male attorneys, senior partners, have said to me things like, 'You can't practice law that way,'" she observes. "And these are people who think of themselves as progressive thinkers."

One argument is that clients will disapprove. Clients want their lawyers to be available when they need them, and part-time lawyers won't be available enough, the assumption goes. Sandman contends, however, that in talking to clients, he finds an entirely different belief. "Some of the most passionate advocates of our firm's part-time policy," he says, "are clients who are working with part-time lawyers."

He cites two reasons. First, the client, who has built up a relationship with a lawyer, wants continuity and thus hopes the firm will do whatever it takes to assure the lawyer stays. Second, clients support part-time arrangements because they do get good service from their attorneys. "Part-time lawyers, in my experience, are every bit as professional as full-time lawyers," Sandman says.

Milwaukee attorney Beth Hanan has never found availability to clients or on client matters to be a problem in her three years working an 80-percent schedule as a litigator. "Occasionally I can't take a deposition," she says, "so someone else from the firm steps in" - just as full-time attorneys sometimes need a colleague to cover when they have scheduling conflicts.

As for responsiveness to clients, thanks to cell phones, voice mail, email, laptops, and computer networks, the part-time lawyer can be as accessible, or nearly so, as one who's in the office all day, five days a week. "Sometimes it may not be quite the same immediacy," Hanan says, "but there's only a small difference." Besides, full-time lawyers are at any given moment unavailable to some of their clients, too. Clients are used to sharing their lawyers with other clients.

"Clients care that their attorney is responsive," Ostrow emphasizes. "They don't care if the attorney is calling back from home, the playground, or an art studio. It just matters that their lawyer is responsive."

Concern about overhead costs is another hurdle. The part-time lawyer costs as much as a full-time lawyer in terms of office space (unless two part-timers share an office) and malpractice premiums. While those overhead costs remain the same, the part-time lawyer brings in less revenue, so firms contend that the economics won't work.

Ostrow counters that it depends on how an employer chooses to size up the numbers. The cost of replacing a lawyer equals roughly 150 percent of that lawyer's annual salary, according to Ostrow, plus there are the costs of the lost institutional knowledge and damaged client relationships when a lawyer leaves. "When you lose somebody who's talented and has great relationships with clients," she says, "that's a big financial hit. When you add all that up, that costs more than the overhead. But that's not the way most law firms do their accounting."

Making It Work

Attorneys themselves also have their doubts about flexible work options, particularly reduced hours. They worry, for instance, that they'll slow their career progress and that others will view them as less committed to the profession. They have grounds for such fears.

A 2001 study by the Project for Attorney Retention in Washington, D.C. found that part-time attorneys reported various problems, such as receiving less challenging assignments; being slowed on or even removed from the partnership track; or becoming victims of "schedule creep," in which they ended up working full-time hours for part-time pay. Disillusionment led many to quit their jobs. Similar results emerged from a study in 2000 by the Women's Bar Association of Massachusetts.

But it doesn't have to be that way. Part-time attorneys can take on challenging work just as they would if they were full-time, just less of it. Also, a firm can opt to base partnership promotions on the quality of an individual's work and how he or she contributes to the firm, rather than on a more rigid time-based requirement.

Hanan, for instance, says that working part-time hasn't slowed her on the partnership track, and even if it did, she adds, "I have plenty of time to become partner, but only a few more years to be a present parent."

Part-time attorneys do need to be assertive, however, to make sure they land good assignments, get taken seriously, and protect their schedules. Likewise, they must be willing to be flexible themselves, if their flexible schedules are to work for all concerned. Giving extra to get the job done is the norm rather than the exception in law practice, whatever the lawyer's setting or schedule.

Such is the case at the SPD, where Lund works a 75-percent schedule. All attorneys there, whether full time or part time, have more to do than they can accomplish in their allotted hours, he points out. Like others, Lund puts in extra hours, but he still benefits from the flexibility of his workweek. "At least for me," he says, "when I work extra time, it means I go in an extra morning during the week, versus staying until midnight or working all weekend."

Other attorneys are looking for ways to incorporate flexibility into their work schedules, thus making life saner, even while working full time. Paul Stockhausen is an intellectual property litigator who works for a Milwaukee law firm but lives in Manitowoc, where his wife is a physician and needs to live to be near her hospital. He telecommutes from his home office, usually several days a week.

"It's a tremendous benefit for me," Stockhausen says. "If I had to drive to Milwaukee every single day, I don't think there's any way I could be doing this job. On the one hand, it's the practical matter that it saves me nearly three hours a day on the road, which would be mind-numbing and awful. But, beyond that, I find I work much more efficiently from my home office than I do from the firm's office. In hindsight, I'd choose this arrangement no matter where I lived, even if it was in downtown Milwaukee."

No client has expressed any problems with this arrangement, Stockhausen says. The only down side is that he's not in the downtown office every day to socialize and brainstorm with others. "But the reality is," he notes, "that you can do that by phone and email, too."

No matter what the flexible arrangement may be, the key is commitment on everyone's part. Green Bay attorney Bert Liebmann's firm has had several attorneys work on flexible arrangements over the years and "there have been no insurmountable difficulties," he says. To other firms and legal employers approaching the idea with skepticism, "I would say that if you come at this with the attitude that it won't work," he advises, "then it probably isn't going to work."

That coincides with Ostrow's observations as she consults with lawyers and legal employers and speaks to legal groups across the country. "I think the difficult piece to get around," she says, "is that if you believe something isn't going to work, you can make it not work. But in most instances, when there's been a fair test (of flexible options), they've worked out fine."

Wisconsin Lawyer