By Ali McNally, LAW WEEK COLORADO
DENVER — A reduction in office hours doesn’t always mean a reduction in success.
Lawyers and their law firms can flourish with successful “balanced-hours” programs, challenging the stigma that part-time arrangements are what the study’s authors call “bullets to the hearts of lawyers’ careers,” a recent study in Denver and two other cities has found.
“I work with part-time partners here and a lot of the things that they talk about in the study were true for the people I work with. They are flexible. They try not to have a four-day work week. They are always available,” said Vicki Johnson, president of the Colorado Women’s Bar Association. “Frankly I don’t think their clients notice that they are part-time. That’s why I challenge the stigma.”
The study by the Project for Attorney Retention, or PAR, was paid for in part by the Denver-based CWBA Foundation, which is affiliated with the Colorado women’s bar. PAR interviewed by phone 109 lawyers in San Francisco, Washington, D.C., and Denver. The group found that part-time partners generated significant revenue, held leadership positions and spent just as much time on business development as full-time partners.
Pay differences spawned study
PAR’s study originated in response to statistics reporting a large disparity between men’s and women’s salaries. Both men and women were interviewed.
That salary disparity came from women leaving the practice of law for better quality of life, said Beth Doherty Quinn, a CWBA foundation board member who helped bring Denver into the study. The foundation donated $5,000 to the project.
For example, statistics from the American Bar Association boast a 47 percent female enrollment in J.D. programs in 2008 but only 17 percent of partners are women.
“For many women, but certainly not all women, work-life balance issues create a larger problem than it does for most men,” Quinn said. “You were losing women lawyers all along the pipeline. You were losing them mid-career, and you were losing them late-career. The lack of work-life balance is why you have lower participation in partnership among women. We’d like to see that participation increase.”
Quinn, who went part-time at the Denver law firm Baird & Kiovsky after having her first child, said reducing her time at the office allowed her to keep practicing law and have more time with her family. Client relations haven’t been affected, she said.
“In my experience, clients either don’t know or don’t care particularly [about my part-time status] because we check our e-mail and can make ourselves pretty available,” she said.
Reluctance to get ‘off track’
Researchers also interviewed 31 minority partners and found many were reluctant to take advantage of their firm’s balanced hours options because of the additional difficulties of being a lawyer of color.
One participant told the researchers, “Getting off track just wasn’t appealing to me. Going for the brass ring was appealing to me. And reduced hours would have taken me off track.”
Quinn responded, “I definitely can see that they don’t want be the first to become the part-time person. I would say that is a legit reason. But more importantly, there may not be that mentor there who would come up to that next level.”
While working out a part-time option at a firm may make everyone happy, there are also challenges.
Difficulties for firms
Law firm consultant Pete Peterson of Maxfield Peterson in Grand Junction thinks law firms should do what they can to “keep their best talent.” However, he said that firms must also recognize the difficulties in working out a fair, balanced hours system.
“The challenges are the structuring and financial aspects — salary, bonuses and compensation. We can work a lot of that out, but how can you do a bonus on a part-time basis?” he said. “How would you develop a set of criteria for a part-time partner track or a full-time partner track?”
Additionally, said Peterson, some generational barriers come into play when baby boomers reach retirement.
“We have 400,000 lawyers looking at retirement right now. Think of what that’s going to do to the industry,” he said. “A good percentage of them will still practice law after retirement. Firms are going to have to have some flexible policy to deal with that, too.”
PAR is an initiative of The Center for WorkLife Law of the University of California Hastings College of the Law. It’s financed by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and other grantors.
FIRM SUGGESTIONS
More than half of the respondents to the Project for Attorney Retention study were part-time equity partners. Almost all said a good part-time policy was important to keeping them at the firm. PAR recommendations:
- Provide a written policy for part-time partners. This will ensure an even-handed application of the policy to all lawyers and send a message that adopting a reduced-hours schedule will not hurt someone’s career.
- Support flexible schedules by eliminating requirements of office time and by measuring billable hours contributions annually. Many part-time lawyers said autonomy over their schedule was the best way to manage unexpected workloads.
- Eliminate stigma of adopting reduced hours by actively supporting diversity and demonstrating clear support of the program.
- Recognize part-time partners’ contributions fairly by providing equal pay and compensation for any hours worked outside of the commitments.
- Encourage business development for part-time partners. Business is important to part-timers because it helps to increase leverage with their full-time peers. One option is to adopt a team approach to clients and a broad credit-allocation to client matters.
- Increase loyalty by encouraging part-time partners’ leadership. Including part-time attorneys in firm governance conveys the commitment and success of their part-time peers.
