Infobit: Since 1985, law schools have been graduating classes of new lawyers that are 40% or more female. Yet in 1996, only 14.2% of law firm partners were women, and in 2005, only 17.2% were women. (Note: this figure is for all partners; the number of equity partners is lower.) Source: Catalyst. At this rate of increase, women should make up half of law firm partners by the year 2115.

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Reprinted by permission from Raising The Bar (Women's Bar Association of the District of Columbia, Summer 2000)

The Project for Attorney Retention, a program to help law firms recruit and retain attorneys by offering meaningful reduced-hours schedules, opened its virtual doors on June 1. The Project is funded by a grant from the Sloan foundation and is supported by the WBA and the American University Washington College of Law. Its goal is to create a set of recommendations for D.C. law firms that will allow attorneys to have satisfying lives outside of the office while still succeeding professionally.

Joan Williams, co-director of PAR and author of Unbending Gender: Why Work and Family Conflict and What to do about It (Oxford University Press, 2000), says that the high attrition rates at law firms are having an enormously detrimental effect on the firms' bottom lines. She points to evidence that attorneys are leaving primarily due to their inability or unwillingness to work the long hours demanded by law firms, despite the fact that many law firms have part-time policies. Most part-time policies as they exist currently, she says, do not allow attorneys to work fewer hours and still advance professionally. Part-timers are viewed as less committed to the law or to their firms, often receive less desirable work and less client contact, and typically miss out on business development opportunities. In many firms, attorneys will not work part-time because to do so is viewed as career suicide.

Cynthia Calvert, Williams's co-director, observes that there is nothing inherent in the practice of law that makes it impossible to work a reduced-hours schedule. Attorneys typically have more than one client, she notes, and thus are not available to each client 24/7 even if the attorneys work full-time. Attorneys travel for meetings, depositions, or conferences, and are not available if in trial. Moreover, as attorneys near retirement, they frequently cut back on the number of cases they have and work fewer hours. In reality, she notes, lawyers already have the models for working reduced hours and firms need to adjust their cultures to permit more attorneys to work fewer hours without being penalized.

Williams has noticed, while she has been traveling around the country and talking with attorneys who work in law firms and law firm administrators, that there is a clear difference between the way law firms view their part-time policies and they way attorneys in the firms view the same part-time policies. She has also noticed that attorneys, particularly male attorneys, tend not to tell law firms if their reason for leaving their law firms is because of scheduling issues. One of the first objectives of the PAR project, therefore, is to gather information about how D.C. law firms' present part-time policies are working, and to serve as a conduit for information about why D.C. attorneys are leaving their law firms. The PAR project will then discuss with law firm managers the business needs and objectives of D.C. law firms and obstacles the firms see to providing better reduced-hours programs that more attorneys will use. Finally, the PAR project will draft a comprehensive set of recommendations for reduced-hours programs and follow up with firms to see if the recommendations are being implemented.

Your help is needed with the first phase of the project. The co-directors request that you send them your comments and experiences about law firm part-time schedules and attrition at law firms, and that you ask your colleagues to do the same. The PAR project has a website, www.PARDC.org, which includes a survey and an area for comments. Alternatively, you can reach the PAR project by phone ((202)xxxx, shared with the Gender, Work and Family Project), mail (PAR, c/o Gender, Work and Family Project, American University, 4801 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20016), or email (PAR@PARDC.org) and request a short survey form to fill out. Your comments will be kept confidential unless you expressly authorize their disclosure.

Look for programs this fall sponsored by PAR about reduced-hours policies, and reports on the project's progress.