Sharon Caffrey, Duane Morris; Lesli Esposito, DLA Piper; Mary Beth H. Gray, Kleinbard LLC; Alexis C. Handrich, Pond Lehocky Stern Giordano; Donna L. Kreiser, McNees Wallace & Nurick; Suzanne Mayes, Cozen O'Connor; Lori Miller, Goldberg Miller & Rubin; Carolyn Mirabile, Weber Gallagher Simpson Stapleton Fires & Newby; Lakeisha R. Robinson, formerly of Burns White, currently at Reilly McDevitt & Henrich; Amy L. Rosenberger, Willig Williams & Davidson; Casey Ryan, Reed Smith (moderator)

The editorial staff of The Legal has always been aware that the hiring and retention of female attorneys is an ongoing issue in the legal community. In an effort to discuss some of the specific problems facing female attorneys and present potential solutions to those problems, we invited 10 practitioners to talk about how to bolster the role of women in the law.

This year, the panelists tackled career advancement and the path to partnership, the importance of finding the right mentors, the ever-present dilemma of work flexibility and work-life balance and the issue of gender-pay equality in law firms.

Casey Ryan of Reed Smith, global head of legal personnel and a member of the firm's senior management team, moderated the discussion. Editors selected the panelists from a number of volunteers. The transcript has been lightly edited for space and clarification. Excerpts from the discussion follow:

CASEY RYAN: This panel, is well, composed and includes partners, firm leaders and associates. The topics suggested by the panel reflect not only the issues of the day, but also core issues that go to the heart of a woman's success at a law firm. The first topic that I'd like to discuss is career advancement and the path to partnership.

LORI MILLER:  One of the key factors is recognizing good talent from a first-year associate, and working with them and mentoring them in the beginning years of their career and letting them know that they do have a path to partnership, whatever stages they are going to go through in life. It might be that they start out and they are single, and they are just coming out of law school, and then they get married. Then they want to have children, and letting them know if you work hard now, and you learn your field, you become an expert, you take on responsibility, you know, you have a home at this firm, and we are going to work with you to do whatever we can to keep you. I think that is the key to starting very early, and letting them know there is a path that they can take.

RYAN:  We talked a lot about mentorship, right, and then there is the informal and formal, right? So the formal being the assigned mentor that you get from the firm or the practice group, and the informal is just the organic person that resonates with you. What do you think about the most successful of the two, what you have seen?

The Women in Law Roundtable Discussion, held in The Legal Intelligencer's office in Philadelphia on July 25, 2018. Pictured: Amy L. Rosenberger, with Willig Williams & Davidson. (Photo by Joe Warner)

AMY ROSENBERGER: I have only had experience with the latter. It is sort of a combo of, you know, someone, a new associate comes in. You have someone who is sort of their assigned gatekeeper. You know, they work with maybe different partners on different clients. But for me, I see that role as not just sort of managing, making sure the person's workload is manageable and managed, but training them in how we work as a firm, how to be a good lawyer, how to be successful and looking for opportunities, not just—I mean so much at the beginning is focused on what you were saying, working hard, becoming a good lawyer, but also starting at the very beginning and developing a personal relationship with that person where you can help work with them to figure out where do they plug in on the other elements that are a key to the success, which is finding opportunities for service to the firm, and finding opportunities for exposure externally, whether that, you know, if they're someone who is going to be good for writing articles for the legal world, or doing speaking engagements, or training with clients, or whatever it may be, taking them along on client pitch meetings, sort of paying attention to all of those things from early on.

I actually personally think that women are well suited to identify one's fit within, just because the way we relate to the world, within those realms, and what is going to be a good fit with the other person. This is also true with mentoring men, too. But to address the issues you raised, it is critical I think to really use those kinds of opportunities with women who come in, junior women.

RYAN:  Are there ways thatl aw firms could be better, stronger about making sure that that happens? We talked about it, right, but there are people who will fall through, right, or don't find their natural organic mentor, or don't have the person who is going to be not only their mentor, but their sponsor. You know, the difference being the sponsor is the advocate. You know, someone who is going to go to the firm and say they are great, or they have leadership potential, or they are going to be great on the client front. What are you seeing at your firms that are most effective about making sure that that connection is happening?

CAROLYN MIRABILE: Our office has a diversity committee. I am actually co-chair of the diversity committee, and we really in the last year have worked very hard in trying to engage the managing partners of the firm, which primarily are men, and equity partners, to really start bringing either women or other attorneys of diverse backgrounds to appointments with important clients to keep telling them about the business of diversity, as well as engaging and including people. And I think that I always say in my office, women are the worst people in promoting other women. I hate to say that, but we are. Sometimes we don't promote ourselves or within because I always—if a man goes on an interview, they will say oh, yeah, I can do that, even if they have never done it. Whereas, we are way more honest, and we will say I am not sure if I can do that. We don't promote ourselves, so I think we do have to engage the upper management. And when we would have diversity meetings, I would literally email all the equity partners personally  one by one, and if I saw them, I would say we are having this diversity meeting, you need to be there because if you are going to promote diversity in the firm, they want to see it coming from the top. That's how you are getting more people to come to the meetings. Then when they have an important client meeting or they're traveling somewhere, bring a female or bring someone of a diverse background to start getting them introduced. Just like  you would bring another guy, you have to include everybody. It is hard. You have to be verbal about it. You have to not be afraid to speak up.

DONNA KREISER: We provide our associates an opportunity to evaluate their mentors. It is part of their self-association, a self-evaluation that they do each year. We just completed that process, and they're pretty honest about whether or not their mentors are meeting their needs. We have made changes in mentors as a result of the feedback that we get from associates. Ninety percent of the time the feedback is excellent, but there are times when the relationship isn't working, and so we are deliberate and proactive about making sure they have mentors that are working well for them and with them.

SHARON CAFFREY: I think that the one problem, going back to your initial question, the formal mentoring, is that not everybody is suited to be a mentor, and not every relationship is going to gel. So to me, it is the informal mentoring that is the most important. And it has to happen organically. It has to be with somebody they work with, to bring along a junior associate, or a senior associate to make them partner.

One of the things that I think has worked for the women who have been really successful and risen to partnership at Duane Morris at least, is that they have had that sponsor. They have that person in their corner giving them opportunities, telling them you can take this deposition. You can do this witness at trial. You know, I still remember giving a witness to a young partner who had not cross examined anybody at trial and sitting on my hands saying you can't react. You can't react. Don't do it. She has got to learn, but they learn. But you have to get the clients to buy into that. That's another important piece of it, but I think that to me, the formal mentoring is good so that people don't fall through the cracks. But it is never going to be the same as that organic relationship where somebody feels vested in you.

RYAN: You hit on a really important point, which is a common denominator of a successful woman in law, that in my experience, a lot of them, will be able to point to one or two highly influential mentors who helped them to get the opportunity they needed to advance to the next level. And so the value of it speaks for itself when you look at the success rate, right?

Another thing that firms just started doing, and we just started doing, is reverse mentoring, and I don't know if  any of you are doing this, but it is where an associate is the mentor, and a member of management is the mentee. And it is fascinating. I have a mentor who is a member of the LGBT community, and I meet with him once a month, and he tells me what it is like to be a member of the LGBT community and his experiences with clients, what his experiences in the law firm, what his experiences in business development, and it goes beyond that, of course. But he's mentoring me, and that is really the paradigm of it, and it is fascinating, and the entire global leadership team has got a mentor from the associate or counsel ranks. It has been fascinating. We are only a few months in, but in terms of ideas that you might want to take back, it has been a really highly successful one.

MILLER: How often do you meet?

RYAN: Once a month.

MILLER: For how long?

RYAN: A half an hour, an hour. Sometimes in person, sometimes by phone, but it is a perspective I would not otherwise have.

The Women in Law Roundtable Discussion, held in The Legal Intelligencer's office in Philadelphia on July 25, 2018. Pictured: Lakeisha R. Robinson, formerly with Burns White, now at Reilly McDevitt & Henrich. (Photo by Joe Warner)

LAKEISHA ROBINSON: What prompted you to do it?

RYAN: It was actually a Client who was doing it, who was raving about it, and it just sounded like such a good idea that we would try it, and we did, and it has been a hit.

SUZANNE MAYES: Are the associates kind of identified as your high potential associates, because you couldn't do it for all presumably?

RYAN: Right, we asked all the associates who wanted to participate, and we were able to—

MAYES: Match them.

RYAN: —meet the need. Yes. And I think the next iteration of it will be broader, and more people will do it, but it has been a really good thing.

MAYES: Interesting.

RYAN: In terms of issues that you all wanted to talk about, which are good ones, is path to partnership and work-life balance, and, again, that term is becoming, I think in some circles, it is falling out of favor because people think it is not an apt description of what the real issue is, but it is, so accept the term for a moment. Work-life balance is the correct term. Again, what advice are you giving to associates about how to—I mean I am looking at a table full of women who have sort of cracked the code on being able to do a successful work-life balance. What advice are you giving to your associates on that front?

MAYES:  I will jump in. So when folks ask me, I typically tell them that I don't really think that there is balance, to your first point. It is more about integration of work and career, career and family and trying to figure out what works, and the other thing I tell folks is it is a very personal balance, so that you can't just mimic what you see in terms of women that are 10 or 15 years ahead of you because it can be dictated by things like what the significant other does, number of children, whether the children have any special needs, if there are older parents that need tending to.

I think that a lot of younger women tend to think there is a holy grail, and if they can just identify it, then they can follow it. So I think the first part of success is understanding that there are lots of options, and that you do yourself a disservice if you think there is only one, and what they should really do is educate  themselves by talking to as many women as they can about what works for them, and then pick and choose things that sound like they would be workable in your own circumstances. There are tweaks. I have got one just out of college and one in college, and I still enjoy talking to women with families because I will hear something that I have never thought about or done. And with just a little bit of incorporation of that aspect, you can increase the quality of your life, whether that's in the office or out of the office.

LESLI ESPOSITO: I agree with everything you said, and particularly the part about it being personal because I find—to your point—when I talk to a lot of female associates, some will say at one point in my career I was part-time. At one point in my career I was flextime. At one point I was full-time. You know, they will say which one works best, and there is a reason I was all of those different things. It was because different setups worked for me at different points in my life due to different needs.

I find that when I talk to folks in other practice groups, I also find that different things work depending on your personal circumstance, but also your practice group. I do a lot of litigation, so for me, even when I was 75 percent time, I was never, you know, off every Friday because that, for me, didn't work in litigation. You didn't know what the needs were going to be, so there could be a month where I was in the office every day. And then the next month, maybe I worked, you know, a Monday, Tuesday, and then Wednesday, Thursday, Friday my kid's school was closed, and I spent the time with them, and so for me I found flexibility to be key, but I do agree with you, I think being open-minded about it and educating yourself on the different options available at your firm. I think for firms to be open-minded and realizing that, you know, maybe there needs to be some flexibility on the different options available for people, I think is important.

ROBINSON: I agree with both of what you are saying, and I think that when I made the transition from public to private law, the decision was based solely on my change in circumstance. I went from a single parent of a toddler to married  with three kids, to be able to do private practice. So it definitely is circumstantial, and I was able to make the transition, but what I looked for was a firm that was not only talking about work-life balance, but actually implementing work-life balance. Like I can do work at home if I need to, and there is no stigma attached to that, or there is no issue if I need to do that. So it is very important, even with the previous topic, mentorship, to having actual policies, and actually applying the policy. I find when you are in an environment, and there is a policy,but it is not being followed, it makes life and work frustrating and difficult, so I agree with both of your points.