Companies Push for Flexible Schedules to Boost Women Attorneys

Law.com
Karen Sloan
The National Law Journal
December 03, 2009

Law firms hoping to snag Del Monte's legal business are facing added scrutiny these days.
The food giant earlier this year began questioning firms about their part-time and flexible work policies, making it clear that it wants at least some part-time attorneys handling the company's matters and that it will track those attorneys' progress through the law firm ranks. The message, said Del Monte Foods Co. General Counsel James Potter, is that firms should tout part-timers as a selling point, not as a dirty secret.
Del Monte is one of a dozen major corporations involved in an initiative to boost the number of women and minorities in top law firm positions by adding part-time and flexible working schedules to the list of things they require of outside counsel. The initiative, spearheaded by the Project for Attorney Retention (PAR) and dubbed the Diversity & Flexibility Connection, seeks to help legal departments and law firms support flexible working schedules and ensure that part-time attorneys -- mostly women -- have meaningful work and important roles within their firms. The hope is that greater work flexibility and acceptance of part-time schedules will help stem the tide of women and minorities leaving law firms. In turn, greater retention will create a larger pool of women and minorities to promote to partnership.
"Honestly, I was just struck by the fact that I'd been staring at the statistics of women and minority women in partnership positions, and I had never made the connection that the reason those numbers have plateaued is because of career and life balance challenges," Potter said. "It's completely logical. You're never going to fully accomplish diversity without flexible work schedules."DISAPPEARING WOMEN
The legal industry has been wringing its hands for years about the lack of women in top-level positions. Women account for more than 45 percent of law firm associates but only 19 percent of partners, according to the National Association for Law Placement (NALP). Women make up more than half of all minority associates, yet only 2 percent of partners are minority women. The National Law Journal's 2009 survey of the nation's 250 largest firms found similar results, with women making up 45 percent of associates and 17 percent of partners. [For more on the NLJ 250 data, see "Bad times could have been worse for women." (paid subscription required)]

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