ILLUSTRATION: SANDRA DIONISI

“We found you can do any area of law on a part-time basis — if you keep an open mind.”
—Cynthia Calvert

SUMMER 2005 | Trends

Dancing on the Glass Ceiling

By Jeri Zeder

FORGET ABOUT ADVANCEMENT. Forget about plum assignments. Forget about partnership. If you’re a lawyer and you work part time, that’s how it is. Get used to it.  That’s a stark way to put it, and more extreme than some professionals would say is fair. Steve Seckler ’88, managing director of the Boston office of BCG Attorney Search, puts it more diplomatically. “If your number one priority is your family, then your number one priority can’t be your career,” he says. “You won’t be able to get the best work and be staffed on all the best deals. But with some persistence and creativity, it is still possible to get challenging and meaningful work and continue to develop in your career. You simply need to understand that your career will advance at a slower pace.”

It’s that “persistence and creativity” piece that describes the trailblazing of Patty Campbell Malone ’93 and Lisa Billowitz ’95, two graduates who found ways to do something unusual — develop part-time appellate practices that give them work-life balance that works. Both women have spent time in large law firms and both have extensive appellate experience: Malone clerked and served as staff attorney for four years at the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court; Billowitz spent five years clerking for the First Circuit Court of Appeals.

When Malone was pregnant with her third child, she left her job at the Massachusetts Department of Revenue to stay at home and started taking in legal work on a contract basis. With the help of her husband, Thomas Campbell ’93, she picked up appellate cases from an attorney on maternity leave from his firm, Brody Hardoon Perkins & Kesten. During this time, Malone was meeting lots of moms in similar straits: staying at home and missing the practice of law. They were an impressive group, with experience as state and federal judicial clerks, corporate in-house counselors and large law firm partners. “They were an incredible untapped resource,” Malone says. A concept came to her: why not pool all these women and, as a group, approach solo and small practitioners to contract work out to them?

Through networking, Malone eventually met Somerville attorney David Lewis, told him her idea and the two formed the law firm of Lewis & Malone. The firm, which provides appellate and litigation services to solo practitioners and small law firms, is essentially a group of independent lawyers — mostly stay-at-home moms — who work on a contract, rather than on-staff, basis. Malone puts in about 20 hours a week, up to 50 hours when deadlines loom. The arrangement lends her enormous flexibility. She works at home, is connected through email, cell phone, Internet, fax and scanner, and doesn’t have to worry about face time. She’s very happy.

That doesn’t mean there aren’t challenges, however. When a small law firm needs assistance, the typical mindset is to hire staff. It hasn’t been easy, she says, to sell the idea that instead of hiring, firms can contract out.

But if getting work has been tough, finding lawyers to provide services has been a relative cinch. “We’ve had so many women send us resumes or say they want to work for us,” says Malone. “I’ve met numerous women who can’t practice in the traditional sense anymore. We offer a different option.”

BUILDING A BETTER MODEL

Like Malone, Lisa Billowitz wanted to develop a part-time appellate practice. When she became a mother, Billowitz thought about doing freelance brief writing — she noticed a need for such services when she worked at the federal appeals court — but had no models to follow. Then she read an article in The Boston Globe about a lawyer who was doing brief writing for small firms. She called him up, met him at Starbucks, and he advised her to find a solo practitioner or small firm that loves to be in the courtroom and doesn’t like writing briefs. Billowitz did some research and found an appellate niche in criminal defense work.

Billowitz is now of counsel to Randy Gioia, a solo criminal defense lawyer she met through a prosecutor friend. Billowitz, who puts in 15 to 18 hours a week, says the work-life balance is perfect: interesting cases plus time for family. “I simply have to meet a deadline. I’m not subject to other people’s idiosyncrasies. I don’t worry about partners who are procrastinators. I’m not subject to other people’s schedules. I’m just trusted to produce the product. I feel incredibly, incredibly fortunate.”

It takes quite a bit of creativity, entrepreneurial initiative and spousal support to achieve what Malone and Billowitz have. They are pioneers in developing nontraditional employment options for lawyers who seek a better work-life fit. But their example raises an issue and poses a question: employers are clearly squandering valuable legal talent by not providing meaningful part-time alternatives. What can be done about that?

That’s a question researchers Joan Williams and Cynthia Calvert are tackling. Williams is a professor at American University’s Washington College of Law; Calvert is a Washington, DC, solo employment lawyer. Together, they are directors of the Project for Attorney Retention (www.pardc.org) and authors of Solving the Part-Time Puzzle: The Law Firm’s Guide to Balanced Hours (NALP, 2004).

Part-time programs don’t work, Williams and Calvert assert. They are undermined by communication gaps, bloated 40-hour-a-week “part-time” schedules, stigmatization and reduced opportunities for career advancement, including partnerships. They result in a high, unprofitable rate of attorney attrition. Williams and Calvert advocate instead for “balanced hours,” which Calvert describes as “a business initiative designed to improve recruiting, retention and client service.”

Balanced hours programs focus on the business needs of the firm. Client service and firm profitability set the para-meters within which attorneys negotiate for reduced hours. Compensation, benefits and career advancement timelines are proportional to time put in. There’s no assumption that certain practice areas, such as litigation, are not conducive to part-time work. “We found you can do any area of law on a part-time basis — if you keep an open mind,” says Calvert.

Williams and Calvert have identified a handful of law firms that use a balanced hours approach, including, in Boston, Sullivan Weinstein & McQuay. But even assuming law firms want to move in this direction, change will not happen overnight. The examples of Malone and Billowitz suggest that, with a lot of outside-the-box thinking and a little bit of chutzpah, lawyers can achieve a work-life balance on their own terms, in their own way.

Jeri Zeder is a freelance writer in Lexington, Massachusetts, and regular contributor to Northeastern Law Magazine.