As a clash between child-rearing responsibilities and the grueling work weeks of traditional law firms continues to drive women lawyers out of private practice, local law firms are emerging with structures that allow for working moms’ scheduling needs.
As such, they are poised to attract talent that their competitors can’t retain.
Both Valkyrie Law Group LLP and Heritage Law have created virtual structures through cloud computing technology.
With access to firm data and applications from anywhere with an Internet connection, each firm’s lawyers are able to design their own working day and work predominantly from home – both key advantages to working mothers and, increasingly, working fathers as well.
“You could literally go to Hawaii and be completely in business, as long as you had an Internet connection,” Heritage Law founder Nicole Garton-Jones said.
She noted, however, that Heritage’s practice areas of family law and wills and estate planning require physical office space for client meetings, unlike Valkyrie, which is entirely virtual thanks to a practice area that suits the model: local government law.
Valkyrie co-founder Sandra Carter said that with B.C. municipalities as the firm’s clients, and client meetings occurring at clients’ offices, the virtual model was a natural choice for the firm which opened in 2009.
Garton-Jones, on the other hand, launched the business – and its virtual framework – in 2005 “out of necessity”: she was pregnant.
At traditional law firms, she said, women hit child-rearing ages while in the intense run-up to achieving a partnership in the firm.
The pressure during those years, she said, is intense as firms have an “up or out” mentality: make partner or leave.
“If you have a two-year-old and you’ve got to bill 1850 hours and you’ve got to do another 400 hours of business development, you’re basically working 60 to 70 hours a week,” she said. “That’s really difficult if you’ve got really little children.”
According to 2009 figures from the Law Society of BC, at least as many women as men enter the legal profession in B.C., but only 34% of all practising lawyers in the province are women.
In opposition to many firms, Heritage and Valkyrie have had little trouble attracting and retaining female lawyers, working moms included. All of Heritage’s lawyers are currently working moms, and Valkyrie’s roster includes both working working moms and a working dad.
Linda Robertson of Women’s Strategies Group is a lawyer and consultant who advises law firms on strategies for retaining and advancing women in private practice.
“All fourteen of the [Law Society Gold Medal Award] medallists from the UBC and UVic have been women for the last seven years,” she said, commenting that firms that don’t adjust their approaches to accommodate women’s needs risk missing out on top talent.
She added that women aren’t leaving the legal profession and “going home to become mommies;” they’re leaving private practice for in-house legal jobs in government and corporations, where working hours are more predictable.
To give talented women lawyers reasons not to abandon private-practice jobs, she said, firms should offer not just flexibility on work hours, but also flexibility on work place, as both Heritage and Valkyrie do. Beyond that, she said, firms should look at ways of supporting women as they leave for and return from maternity leave.
“A lot of women go off on maternity leave and they can’t get back; it’s so overwhelming to rebuild their practice when they’ve been away.”
Additionally, she said, firms can make themselves more attractive to women lawyers by providing good mentorship opportunities and helping women with business development by holding events with more appeal for women clients, rather than more male-targeted events.
“Have more than just hockey tickets available,” she said wryly.
But Robertson emphasized that of all the options available to firms, finding ways to create flexibility on work hours and location tops the list. And she added that increasingly, this isn’t a gender issue; it’s a generational issue.
With men and women often holding equally demanding jobs, she said, men can no longer count on a wife who can drop everything and stay home with a sick child.
“The wife might be saying, ‘Sorry dear, I’m in the OR tomorrow doing surgery, you’re going to have to figure it out,’” she quipped.
As a result, she said, men are starting to ask for the same kind of flexibility on work schedule and location that women have long been asking for. Consequently, she said, law firms that don’t find ways to accommodate the new reality risk losing talent across the board.
“I don’t think it’s any longer just the women who are going to be walking away from the firm,” she said. “It’s also the bright young men.” •