Episode 147: Roberta Liebenberg & Lauren Rikleen

Law FirmEntrepreneur/Business
Written By Third Boxcar LLC

On Women's Progress In The Legal Profession

00:35:42
TPP Roberta Liebenberg & Lauren Rikleen | Women’s Progress
 

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Show Notes

Bobbi Liebenberg and Lauren Rikleen are both keen observers of trends in the legal profession and women's progress in particular. Joining MC Sungaila, they share their thoughts in a freewheeling discussion about challenges and opportunities for women's path forward in the law.

 
 

About Roberta Liebenberg:

TPP Roberta Liebenberg & Lauren Rikleen | Women’s Progress

Roberta Liebenberg

Roberta (“Bobbi”) Liebenberg is a senior partner at Fine, Kaplan and Black in Philadelphia and also a principal in The Red Bee Group, a women-owned consulting group that uses data-based strategies to attain DEI objectives. She focuses her practice on antitrust, class actions, and complex commercial litigation, and has been appointed by courts to represent classes in many class actions. She is now Lead Counsel for the End Payer Class in the Generic Pharmaceuticals Pricing Antitrust Litigation, which is the largest pending antitrust MDL in the country. She was also one of trial counsel for the class in the Urethanes Antitrust Litigation, where a $1.06 billion judgment was entered against Dow Chemical Company after a four week jury trial. That was the largest price-fixing judgment ever and was affirmed by the Tenth Circuit.

During Dow’s appeal to the Supreme Court, it settled for $835 million, the most ever obtained from a single defendant in a price-fixing case. She has also defended Fortune 500 companies, including Southwest Airlines, and Temple University in class actions and other complex commercial litigation. She has written and spoken extensively about many issues of importance to women lawyers and has served as Chair of numerous organizations devoted to gender equality in the profession, including the ABA Commission on Women in the Profession, the ABA Gender Equity Task Force, the ABA Presidential Initiative on Achieving Long Term Careers for Women in Law, DirectWomen (the only organization devoted to increasing the number of women attorneys on corporate boards), the Pennsylvania and Philadelphia Bar Associations’ respective committees on women in the profession, and the Pennsylvania Interbranch Commission for Gender, Racial, and Ethnic Fairness.

She has been honored with many awards, including induction into the American Antitrust Institute Private Enforcement Hall of Fame; the Margaret Brent Women Lawyers of Achievement Award from the ABA Commission on Women in the Profession; the Judge Learned Hand Award from the American Jewish Committee; the Lynette Norton Award from the Pennsylvania Bar Association; the Sandra Day O'Connor Award and Sonia Sotomayor Diversity Award from the Philadelphia Bar Association; the Florence K. Murray Award from the National Association of Women Judges; the Hortense Ward Courageous Leader Award from the Center for Women in Law at the University of Texas School of Law; the Martha Fay Africa Golden Hammer Award from the ABA’s Law Practice Division; induction into the ABA Antitrust Law Section’s “Hall of Fame-inism;” and Lifetime Achievement Awards from Corporate Counsel and Inside Counsel, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and The Legal Intelligencer.

She was named by former Pennsylvania Governor Edward Rendell as a "Distinguished Daughter of Pennsylvania,” and The National Law Journal named her as one of the “50 Most Influential Women Lawyers in America” and also one of the “Elite Women of the Plaintiffs’ Bar.”

 

About Lauren Rikleen:

TPP Roberta Liebenberg & Lauren Rikleen | Women’s Progress

Lauren Rikleen

Lauren Stiller Rikleen brings an extraordinary background to her work as President of the Rikleen Institute for Strategic Leadership as an author, former law firm partner, mediator, and a leader in professional and community organizations.

Since August 2020, Lauren has also served on the Board of Lawyers Defending American Democracy and has been its interim executive director since September 2021. LDAD’s mission is to galvanize the legal profession to protect democracy and the rule of law.

As a former law firm equity partner, Lauren managed a diverse environmental law practice, bringing her strategic and negotiating skills to her clients’ enforcement and compliance problems. She is also an experienced mediator. For two decades, Lauren was selected by her peers to be listed in Best Lawyers in America. She has also been included in Chambers USA America’s Leading Business Lawyers and in Massachusetts Super Lawyers.

Lauren is the author of four books. The Shield of Silence: How Power Perpetuates a Culture of Harassment and Bullying in the Workplace combines detailed research, extensive interviews, and strategic recommendations for addressing workplace misconduct and the silence that fuels it. The book compellingly argues that sexual harassment and misconduct will not be stopped unless the condition that drives victims and bystanders into silence—the overriding fear that reporting misconduct will result in retaliation—is eliminated. A must-read for anyone interested in stopping harassment and negative behaviors, The Shield of Silence documents the link between the creation of a respectful, inclusive, and diverse workplace culture and the elimination of negative workplace behaviors.

You Raised Us - Now Work With Us: Millennials, Career Success, and Building Strong Workplace Teams provides a nuanced perspective and rebuts old stereotypes about Millennials, offering practical recommendations for all generations to strengthen workplace relationships and promote organizational excellence. Since the publication of this widely acclaimed book, Lauren has been invited to speak and has been interviewed by publications across the country about her insights into today’s multi-generational workplace.

Lauren’s two other books focus on the legal profession. Ladder Down: Success Strategies For Lawyers From Women Who Will Be Hiring, Reviewing, And Promoting You offers lawyers – and law students – a guidepost for meeting the challenges of the legal profession with enthusiasm. It is written for both women and men who seek a satisfying career in the law.

The advice and strategies offered in Ladder Down evolved from the challenges identified by Lauren in Ending the Gauntlet: Removing Barriers to Women’s Success in the Law. This ground-breaking book details institutional impediments to women’s advancement in the legal profession and offers concrete recommendations for change.

Lauren is the author of more than 200 articles, including topical commentary and op-ed pieces. She has written for or been interviewed by such publications and media outlets as: Fortune.com; the Harvard Business Review; BBC; Public Media’s Next Avenue; The Washington Post; The Boston Globe; The New York Times; MSNBC; National Public Radio; The American Lawyer; The National Law Journal; Forbes Woman; the Careerist; WBZ Radio; New England Cable News Network; The Boston Business Journal; Law 360; the New York Lawyer; Glass Hammer; Monster’s Legal Career Center; and Know Magazine.

Within the American Bar Association, Lauren is Co-Chair of the Women’s Caucus. Among many other ABA roles, Lauren has served as a member of the Board of Governors, as a Special Advisor to the American Bar Foundation Board, as Chair of the Section of Civil Rights & Social Justice, and as a member of the ABA Journal Board of Editors.

Lauren’s business leadership roles include serving for 17 years as a member of the Board of Trustees of Middlesex Savings Bank and as the first woman to chair the MetroWest Chamber of Commerce. She is also a former president of the Boston Bar Association and a former trustee of Clark University.

In other community leadership roles, Lauren served for 14 years as a member of the Board of Directors of the Massachusetts Women’s Political Caucus, a non-partisan organization devoted to helping women seek elected office. She helped create and served as president of two local charities: one providing services for victims of domestic violence and the other transporting donated food and personal care items to local shelters and pantries. Lauren is also a founding member of the Council for Women of Boston College and former chair and long-time Board member of the Environmental League of Massachusetts.

Lauren is the recipient of numerous awards, including the prestigious 2017 American Bar Association Margaret Brent Women Lawyers of Achievement Award. She was also named by Public Media’s Next Avenue as one of the 50 Most Influential People in Aging.

Among her other honors, Lauren was selected by Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly to its Circle of Excellence - Top Women of Law, received the “Friend of the Division” Award from the Law Student Division of the American Bar Association for her guidance, support, and mentorship, and was honored by the Boston College Law School Women’s Law Center as its Woman of the Year. She was also a Leading Women Award recipient from the Girl Scouts of Eastern Massachusetts, a recipient of the Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly Women of Justice Award, the Barbara Gray Humanitarian Award from Voices Against Violence, the Lelia J. Robinson Award from the Women’s Bar Association of Massachusetts, the Boston College Alumni Award for Excellence in Law, and the Boston College Law School 75th Anniversary Alumni Medal. The MetroWest Chamber of Commerce named her Business Leader of the Year, and she was a winner of its Athena Award.

 

Transcript

I am so excited about this episode and discussion. We’re going to have two leaders in the law, but also, deep thinkers and studiers of women’s progress in the profession, Bobbi Liebenberg and Lauren Rikleen. Both of them are ABA leaders extraordinaire in a number of different ways. Lauren published the book through the ABA, Her Honor with a series of essays from the ABA Commission on Women in the Profession and the judicial winners of the Margaret Brent Award. Bobbi, together with Stephanie Scharf also through the ABA, has done a lot of analytical studies and data-driven studies with regard to women’s status and progress in the profession. Welcome Bobbi and Lauren.

Thanks, MC. We’re excited about this opportunity to have this conversation.

It’s an important discussion to have and one to have publicly and to engage others in this kind of discussion as well. I hope we do that and do our part to move some change forward in the profession through that. Before we get to the discussion, I wanted to make sure that everybody had a little bit of background in terms of both of your experiences in the law from your own perspective and your practice. Bobbi, can you talk a little bit about what you do in your practicing law hat?

I am a partner at the law firm Fine, Kaplan, and Black in Philadelphia and I concentrate my practice on complex commercial litigation including antitrust, white-collar criminal defense, consumer protection, and other data breach types of cases. I represent both plaintiffs and defendants. I have a very interesting practice where I’ve represented Fortune 500 companies and universities in some tuition refund cases as well as representing consumers and companies on the plaintiff side with respect to the types of class actions that I’ve described.

You are a powerhouse litigator, especially in antitrust as how I know your work. Lauren, before you started writing, you are a prolific author of many books, you were also involved in the practice of law. Can you talk about that background a little bit?

I wrote my first book while I was a partner in a law firm. I practiced environmental law and was a mediator for over twenty years because I was the only mother in our equity partnership, both when I came and when I left. I had spent a lot of my career pretty obsessed with issues around women in the legal profession. I wrote the book Ending the Gauntlet: Removing Barriers to Women’s Success in the Law in 2006 while I was still at the firm.

Here we are, all these years later, but that’s part of the later conversation. I found myself drawn more and more to want to spend more time speaking, training, writing, and consulting on these kinds of issues relating to workplace culture and women’s advancement. I left and wrote several more books looking at generational issues. How do we strengthen generational teams in the workplace looking at the role of silence, power, and those dynamics and how they impact how misconduct is perpetuated in the workplace? I did that by creating the Rikleen Institute for Strategic Leadership where I did all this work.

In August 2020, I was asked two things. I was asked to be on the board of Lawyers Defending American Democracy, which had been created by several pretty prominent lawyers trying to understand where the voice of the legal profession is at a time when democracy and the rule of law were under attack. I became deeply involved in that and ended up being asked to take on the executive director role in addition to my board responsibilities.

I was also asked in that same timeframe to edit the book Her Honor: Stories of Challenge and Triumph from Women Judges. In many ways, those parts of my life do blend together. I have these three pieces of what I’m doing right now that in some ways mesh quite nicely and relate to each other in so many different ways.

MC, picking up on Lauren, I think it’s interesting. I had the same trajectory. I had been involved with chairing the Pennsylvania Bar Association’s Commission on Women in the Profession and co-chairing the Philadelphia Bar Association’s Committee on Women in the Legal Profession. I then went on to twice chair the ABA Commission on Women in the Profession where we’ve taken on and been one of the leading voices looking at issues that impact the advancement and success of Women in the Legal Profession.

After I finished that, I was able to co-chair when Laurel Bellows was president of the ABA Gender Equity Task Force. I turned to my good friend and a great resource, Lauren Rikleen, who helped with the publications that we did with respect to how we could close the gender gap, looking at issues around pay, power, and how women could become leaders. I was co-chairing the Presidential Initiative for Hilarie Bass on Achieving Long-Term Careers for Women in Law where Stephanie and I published our report on the disproportionately high rate of attrition of experienced women lawyers. Those lawyers who’ve worked many years in the profession. I’ll tooth both of our horns that were both Margaret Brent winners and again, one of the greatest experiences of at least my career winning that award.

That’s pretty special.

It’s a lot of amazing women, including the women judges who are in the book that you had just published, Lauren. Also, amazing women lawyers who are not judges like the two of you who are doing really important work for women and women in the profession. I wanted to talk to Bobbi about that study. I think it’s pivotal in the discussion. We talked about that a little bit before we started. In the study under Hilarie Bass’ leadership with the ABA, a lot of the discussion about women’s progress in the profession is very focused on the entry. The entry to law school, the entry into the profession, and the pipeline question and looking at the beginning of the career.

Very few studies, analyses, or any focus has been on the sustained work of women in the profession and why they might depart right at the point when their careers might be at what you would traditionally think would be. If you talk to some of my male partners, they would say, “At that point, that’s when you’re going to make the most money. That’s where you’re going to maximize all of the work that you’ve been working towards in your career.” We could never imagine leaving. Why would you do that? Your study tackles that. Maybe you can talk about that a little bit more. I think it’s a pivotal perspective.

Before I do, I want to mention that I’m also a principal in The Red Bee Group with Stephanie Scharf and we do consulting for corporations and legal organizations around DEI issues. Also, I was a Cofounder of an organization called DirectWomen, which is the only organization that puts women lawyers on the boards of public companies. Since the inception of DirectWomen in 2000, 42% of women lawyers who have gone through our program now sit on a public board. That is some good news and there is going to be some bad news in this show so I wanted to open with that.

You, Bobbi, definitely are not just talk the talk and do the work but you walk it. You do things to make things happen and to make sure that women have opportunities. Both of those ventures that you mentioned are pretty cool. You’re pretty entrepreneurial.

Thank you. We all have that in common but I think for us, what’s interesting about our walking-out-the-door study was that there’s been this common perception that women leave at their childbearing ages. That is true, but what the data was so interesting was that the biggest stampede out of the legal profession and generally from law firms, which is where we focused our research are that women are leaving law firms in their 50s. As you say MC, they should be at the pinnacle of how they’re being compensated and what types of leadership positions they’re having.

What we found was that there were significant differences in the everyday experiences of senior women lawyers compared to their male colleagues. Also, those differences based on our data were attributable to their gender. They were mistaken for lower-level employees. This is one of my favorite statistics. Eighty-two percent of experienced women lawyers were mistaken for lower-level employees compared to 0% of men.

They lack access to business development opportunities and are perceived as less committed to their careers, which is something that impacts women, particularly after they come back from maternity leave. Also, after they’ve had more than one child in terms of how they’re viewed about their commitment and dedication, and even competence in their law firms. They were overlooked for advancement. They were denied salary, bonuses, and increases. They were treated as token representatives of diversity. They lacked access to sponsors. They missed out on desirable assignments.

The percentages in terms of the differences are laid out in the report but when you looked at this data, I guess both Stephanie and I thought, “Why are women staying?” You see this and you think, “It’s not a wonder that they’re leaving. It’s a wonder that they’re staying.” I think what is so important about the research that I do and the research that Lauren does is that it gives voice and data behind these experiences. Many women came up to us and said, “I thought I was crazy. I thought I was the only one that this was happening to, but your data shows that this is a common phenomenon.” This was a report looking at the 500 largest firms in the US. This was a very broad survey. It gave voice to how women lawyers were experiencing and how they were being treated in their law firms.

That’s an important point you made too in terms of the individuals don’t feel alone because you might think, “That’s my experience. Those particular things just happened to me.” However, when you gather data like that, you realize there are a lot more people who are experiencing those situations. Lauren, how does that fit with your work and your study of women’s progress in the profession?

It’s totally aligned and it goes to the conversations we’ve had before we started the show that I’ve been having for years. This goes back to the beginning of our entry into the profession. When I wrote Ending the Gauntlet, I started researching that book probably around 2003 or 2000. I interviewed women around the country and these were telephone interviews. We talked about their experiences along the same kinds of parameters that Bobbi identified as being relevant and critical in the survey that she did around assignments and other opportunities. It’s the same heartbreaking story.

Also, the part that amazed me was I also, as part of the research for that book, interviewed managing partners. Oftentimes, every interview was confidential. There were times, when I’d interview a managing partner and would have interviewed some of the women, perhaps even a women partner in that firm, the dichotomy in their perspectives was night and day.

If I talked to a managing partner, the two-way person would say, “We know there are issues in this profession paused but we think we’ve got things under control here. We think things are pretty good. We got a handle on it.” Having talked to some of the women in that firm, they were describing an entirely different place and experience. That’s what we are faced with now as we were faced with decades ago.

What’s so interesting about what Lauren said is that the data from walking out the door supports that. We have a section that we call Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus because you see this total disconnect. For example, 91% of the male managing partners in senior men believe that firm leaders were active advocates of gender diversity compared to 62% of women. Eighty-eight percent of them thought that gender diversity was a priority compared to 54% of women.

91% of male managing partners and senior male leaders in law firms were active advocates of gender diversity compared to 62% of women.

Eighty-four percent thought that they were successful in promoting women leaders compared to 55% of women. I could keep going on but having this data and presenting this at a law firm summit where male managing partners were actually there and having them see this data to see the bar charts of this disconnect was impactful. Also, it goes to show that a picture is worth 1,000 words.

It’s important to have those discussions and to not be siloed about them because clearly, people have different perspectives and different views of what’s going on. Maybe because they’re seeing different parts of the elephant and it’s important to have the discussion so you can see the whole situation. If they intend to support women, it’s nice if they could know whether they were and whether there’s something else they could be doing to foster that.

When I was listening to both of you, I was having déjà vu all over again. I think of the stories. When I first came into the profession, I started working on some of the gender equity task forces as well. Some things have changed, but I had a little chill, Bobbi, when you were talking about that study. You said that even experienced women were mistaken or believed to be something else than what they were.

I thought, “That’s just a variation of the things that we’ve heard on this show that we’ve experienced,” whether it was being mistaken for the court reporter when you first come in to take or defend a deposition. Even before that, “We can’t believe that you’re a woman and a lawyer at all.” I like to see those things as being progressed. At least, we’re progressing and we do have women in more leadership positions at this point. To some degree, there is a little bit of Groundhog Day to it, which can be demoralizing.

What’s so great and I’m so happy to be doing this with Lauren is our work is so synergistic to some of the data around sexual harassment. Again, with experienced women lawyers, over 50% of them reported that they had received an unwanted physical advance and over 75% had received demeaning and insulting comments based on their gender. I know Lauren has done work on this as well. You always thought that we’ve been doing this work for so long. At least at this stage, that problem has been solved clearly with #MeToo. Having this data for the legal profession is important.

I’m so glad that you brought that up Bobbi because sexual harassment and misconduct remain a major barrier for women. Firms give lip surface training about sexual harassment in terms of the most egregious kinds of examples that they stand firmly against. However, what they never get to are the insidious death-by-a-thousand-cuts kind of harassment and misconduct that is absolutely demoralizing and harms careers.

The book that Bobbi alluded to that I wrote called The Shield of Silence came out of a study that I was asked to do for the Women’s Bar Association of Massachusetts. It’s doing a survey on sexual harassment and misconduct in law firms. The data is stunning and concerning. Also, the stories in terms of you try to use the process and then you are told by HR, “That’s just the way so-and-so is. We can’t do anything about so-and-so because he’s a major rainmaker here,” or you can fill in the blanks. What people learn is you better stay silent because the system won’t help you. Even firms that think they have systems in place really don’t have systems in place to protect victims from coming forward and protect people from being able to report any kind of misconduct or bad behavior.

That’s an important point too and an eye-opener for companies that think that they have that and maybe they don’t.

What organizations have to do is go beyond what they think they have on paper to try to understand how it’s working. That’s where it’s most critical. What are we doing to protect the voices of people who come forward? What are we doing by way of appropriate discipline? Are we addressing people who have huge stature in the organization? Are we fearful of the repercussions? There are so many questions that need to be asked that are not asked because there’s a policy in place.

Rather than, “We have a policy set,” and then just walk away and never revisit it, it’s worth checking out how is it working and asking those questions.

Even more importantly, in setting those policies, you need to solicit input from the people who are impacted by these policies. It’s because many times, when policies are set, it is leaders who are talking to themselves. They’re imposing those policies and have no idea whether they will be effective or not because the second important thing is of course having metrics, which you knew I would say.

It’s keeping the data in terms of what’s happening. Is there a partner who there is an issue with? Especially on all of these issues in terms of how women are treated, their assignments, their business development opportunities, their promotion, and all of these. You don’t know if policies are effective unless you have metrics and unless you’ve taken the time to either survey or solicit input from the individuals who are affected by these policies. You can’t change what you don’t know.

You don’t know if policies are effective unless you have metrics and have done a survey from the individuals affected about their experiences. You cannot change what you don’t know.

Related to all of that, Bobbi and I have worked on things together for a long time in the ABA. We both agree that every report and set of recommendations, it’s not rocket science. It’s hard work, but the answers are there. When people say, “What’s the answer? What do you do?” It’s like, “Which report to show you? Which recommendations from which study and which task force would you like to look at,” because they’re all pretty similar and they all tell you what needs to be done.

One of the things that I lament is that I think we are where we are because all the easy stuff has been done. We’ve got a women’s initiative but we have whatever. They haven’t done the hard work. As Bobbi said, putting the metrics in place, holding people accountable, working those metrics, and combining your firm’s strategy with the strategy of the EI efforts. All the things that, again, are in the reports. They’re in the studies, but it means commitment and actual work.

As I said while we were talking is that change is like going to heaven. Everybody wants to go there but no one wants to die. I want to reiterate what Lauren said. This is not rocket science. If you look at our recommendations from all of these reports, they remain the same. One of the first recommendations is you need leadership at the top who will do the things that will make a difference and where there is accountability if there is a failure to meet certain goals and benchmarks. Until that’s done or that commitment is there, I’m not sure you’ll see the needle moving.

The data help in showing the different perspectives. Hopefully, it can create some of those a-ha moments for some leaders who maybe hadn’t been as committed to that but now can see like, “I didn’t ask those questions. I didn’t look at it that way. We need to pursue this seriously.” As we also discussed, women leaders, and women taking over the role of managing partners in law firms and using their time there in that position to do some good for women overall in the firm.

That’s what we’re hoping for. My runway is getting shorter. I’m hoping that some change happen because there’s been a lot of talk. I know organizations do want to change but again, there are ways to effectuate that change if change is wanted in the organization.

The legal profession generally tends to be slow to change any of its templates for things. That’s another aspect that makes it difficult and it could be hard to acknowledge. We thought we had this whole thing down. We didn’t ask whether we did and now that we have, we found out that it’s not functioning as well as we thought our initiatives and things like that. That can be hard to accept that and move on from that.

MC, that is exactly what I and Lauren did.

There’s a delay associated with that, for sure.

I think this is one of the reasons I’m so gung ho for newer attorneys of all types, but particularly women to be certain that they don’t stay in their office or hallway after the first year or two of practice. They need to get out there and get to know people because it is a long runway to develop clients and referrals. Also, it’s much better to start that. To be known outside your particular work environment is important. It’s also important to give back.

That kind of work serves both purposes and gives you that opportunity. If you’re thinking about doing that ten years out, there’s a whole other delay associated with that. To the extent that you have some control over people knowing you and liking you or maybe wanting to refer work to you later, you should get out there. That also goes counter to what the natural instinct of law firms is, which is, “We want you to put your head down and bill a bunch of hours.” In the beginning, particularly, that’s the financial proposition, but for your long-term success, the other is important.

JoAnne Epps and I are teaching a course at Temple Law School on Gender Equity and Gender Equality and Leadership. That was one segment we did because we think law schools should be talking about the development of these types of skills in law school and that people need to know what it is when they go out into practice. It’s because as you say, MC, rainmaking is all about relationship building and that may take a few years. It may take a few months, but at the beginning, it’s going to probably take more time and you need to see those contacts so that you can build on those relationships later.

Rainmaking is all about relationship building. That may take a few years or months, but it sure takes a lot of time.

I’m glad you’re mentioning that in your law school class. That’s another great initiative that you’re doing, Bobbi.

We framed this course about everything we wish we had learned in law school about practicing.

A lot of law school career services offices have forwarded this show on to their law students and I’ve asked some more of them to do that. First, they were like, “Some of our law graduates are featured on here,” but I was like, “This is a great resource for people who are navigating the profession, deciding what it is they might like to do, and get some inspiration from women who are leading in that regard.” That’s been good too. It’s a side part of your in-person teaching, Bobbi.

I will definitely forward it.

I’d like to think about what’s next. I do think we have agency individually to do things and to think about these things without entire institutions changing around us, even though that might still need to happen. However, what do you think is next in terms of the work you are doing or where the biggest next need is in studying something in the profession? I’ll leave that open-ended.

Stay tuned because Stephanie and I have a new report for the ABA that’s sponsored by the Commission on Women on the impact of motherhood on the career trajectories of women lawyers. That should be out hopefully, at the annual or a little bit thereafter but I think it’s going to be fascinating. There’s never been a national study of how women lawyers are affected by having children. We had almost over 8,000 respondents. It’s one of the largest databases we’ve ever worked with.

That’s amazing. That’s significant.

It shows interest around this issue. I think the issues around access to childcare, the continuation of hybrid and remote work, and how those who avail themselves of those opportunities are treated will become important as we continue to segue into the new normal. Also, in terms of what happened pre-pandemic in terms of who took parental leave, which was 96% women, will that still happen with remote and flexible work?

It doesn’t appear so. It appears there is a generational divide with younger lawyers wanting to work remotely and have autonomy for their schedules. I think that’s something that’s going to be interesting to keep our eye on and also normalize parental responsibility. For women to advance, they do need affordable and available childcare. They need responsibilities at home for childcare and for the house to be shared equally with their spouse, partner, relative, or whoever else is helping them out.

Until that happens and is normalized that men take parental leave as much as women, men take part-time status as much as women, and they’re helping out at home more than what they say they’re doing, then you’re not going to be able to see women continue to thrive in long-term careers. I think that this issue around childcare and the pandemic drove that is an issue that has to be front and center now.

It’s interesting too. When I wrote Ending the Gauntlet in 2006, because it’s a book for lawyers, there were maybe 400-plus footnotes. It was a long book. It was a lot of footnotes and I said, “It could probably have been reduced to one page in terms of facilitating women’s success or one word in that would’ve been flexibility.” I think Bobbi is correct in pointing out that right now, we have to be applying to both young men and young women as they build careers in an increasingly complicated working world.

The thing I would add about Bobbi’s data and the work that she’s doing in terms of thinking about advice points or what people can take away. I think it’s critical for people to know their own power. That means young people as well, early career people, or everybody has leverage and power. You have to understand what it is. If you are competent and do good work, trust your judgment. There’s a power in that and you have to think about how you can leverage that with your voice.

It is critical for people to know their own power. If you are competent at your job or people trust your judgment, there is a power in that. Learn how to leverage your power with your voice.

It’s not going to be the same answer for everybody but then, it gets back to the point about how you can collectively leverage your voices to be able to make change. What we’re seeing, and this is where I always think about how these pieces of my life have come together with respect to Lawyers Defending American Democracy, this book, thinking about these issues and working after such a long time is that at the end of it all, what we’ve got as our voice is the ability to make a change and to try to move the needle on so many of these important issues.

We have to start using it and encouraging all generations to use it and think about how to make a difference. I’m a huge fan of David Hogg who is a Parkland survivor. He is graduating from Harvard and he created March For Our Lives. One of the things that he always says is that he hates being told by older generations, “Thank God for you, kids, because you are going to make the change. You are going to be the difference.”

His point is that they are going to make the change and they will be the difference, but they shouldn’t be doing it alone. It should be a multi-generational engagement. We all have a stake in kids being able to go to school safely and in women being able to be successful in their careers. All these issues, we all have a stake in how it comes out. We have to be mindful of how we can encourage everyone to understand where they have the power to use their voice and speak up and how to do it effectively and push change far more aggressively than we’ve been doing it.

That’s so well said, Lauren, because everyone can be a change agent. Even when you’re in law school, you can help someone and put them on a program. You can help somebody else write an article. You can start thinking about the types of issues where, as Lauren said, you can exercise power, but the point is to be thinking about how you can effectuate change. That was a great message for this show.

That’s a great way to close because it encapsulates. Everybody has a role to play and everybody can play a role. For those who are newer in the profession, do not forget that they have the power to do something, but also, everyone coming together can make much more of a difference and a more holistic answer to the questions.

Thank you to both of you for continuing to ask and pursue the questions. Also, to continue providing recommendations, data, and stories. In your case, Lauren, your book of the judges’ stories and their paths to the bench and to change in the law also. Thank you so much for sharing all of your work and knowledge over collectively a great brain thrust on these issues. I appreciate you joining and having this discussion.

Thank you so much for having us.

Also, for shining a spotlight. These shows are really effective and important. You always have something new and insightful on them. Thank you for the opportunity to bring our controlled rage to this.

Your work is powerful. Thank you, both of you, Bobbi and Lauren.

Thank you.

Thank you. Be well.

Third Boxcar LLC
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