So much for sisterhood.
Women juggling kids and careers in private practice might expect some sympathy, maybe even a little slack, from female clients. After all, the thinking goes, they can relate.
Or not.
Last week, a panel of in-house counsel at a National Association of Women Lawyers event in Los Angeles told the crowd to keep their personal lives out of the equation: Clients should come first.
"If there's a family crisis or something with the kids or other clients, we don't care about it -- get the job done," Linda Louie, general counsel for the National Hot Rod Association, told an audience of about 100 women Wednesday. "You are a commodity to us -- show me how you can solve a problem."
Panelist Elizabeth Atlee, a senior counsel for BP American Inc., doesn't have a problem with lawyers leading balanced lives -- so long as that's not an excuse to blow off client demands.
Don't answer the phone if you're putting kids to bed, Atlee told the audience, but call back with your full attention as soon as you've done so -- and skip the blow-by-blow: "I don't want to hear about your kids," she said. "I'll tell you if I do -- don't tell me."
Though those sentiments may sound extreme, Joan Williams, director of the Center for WorkLife Law at Hastings College of the Law, said it's not all that unusual.
"There's a generation gap between baby boomers who played by the old rules and Gen X men and women who want to establish new rules," Williams said. "When women my age entered law, if we had done anything different than men, we would have been out so fast our heads would have been spinning."
|