Law firms' flexibility now prized

By Stephanie Basalyga
The Daily Record Newswire
 
In a recent survey conducted at Yale Law School, 67 percent of students polled rated strong commitments to family friendliness and work-life balance as “important” or “extremely important” factors in their considerations of which firms to interview with or to work for.

The days of attorneys being expected to tote up impressive billable hours and take on extra responsibilities haven’t gone away, but a change in firms’ policies relating to how, when and where their attorneys and staff are allowed to work is taking place across the country.

Breaking with tradition – from allowing attorneys to work remotely to promoting an increasing number of women to high-level positions – can often give law firms in Portland, Ore., an edge over those in other parts of the country. Portland tends to run behind metropolitan areas in the rest of the country when it comes to salaries for attorneys, but many lawyers say they’re willing to take a pay cut because of the quality of life in Portland, said Guy Walden, executive director of the Multnomah Bar Association.

Buchanan, Angeli, Altschul, & Sullivan, a Portland-based firm with nine attorneys, has had family-friendly policies in place since it was formed more than eight years ago. That approach fit perfectly with the path that firm partner Dana Sullivan decided she wanted her law career to follow. On a weekday afternoon, Sullivan can be found dropping her daughter off for a horseback riding lesson and then heading to a nearby coffee shop, where she sets up her laptop to email clients and work on cases until it’s time to pick up her daughter.

“Technology has enabled firms to be more flexible (regarding) where (their lawyers) work and when they work and how they work,” Sullivan said.

Trying to turn around tradition to ensure that more women are promoted to high-level positions in firms and allow attorneys and staff members to continue to climb the legal ladder while caring for aging parents or children can be more difficult for a firm with thousands of people in offices spread across the country. The global firm of K&L Gates, however, is proof that it can be done.

The firm, which has approximately 2,000 attorneys, recently was recognized as one of the top 10 most family-friendly firms in the country in a recent survey conducted by Yale Law Women.

That reputation in part drew Stephanie McCleery to K&L Gates’ Portland office, where she is now a partner. Her flexible schedule, along with an “amazing” assistant named Lisa Lombard, allows her to work from home when it matters most, like evening bedtimes for her two children.

Like Sullivan, McCleery thinks technology has helped fuel the move toward changing policies at firms. She also points to the growing number of millennials now entering the legal profession; that group tends to differ from previous generations in terms of priorities.

“There’s absolutely a different feeling now,” she said. “There was sort of a meat grinder feeling back (when I was starting out). You just turned through first- and second-year associates – it was a steady stream.

“(The millennial) generation cares about (about life-work balance). There are a lot less ‘achievement monkeys’ than in my generation. Billable hours, the idea is still going to be a huge issue for firms; it’s the only way you’re going to be able to build your business. But I think the idea of pushing your associates … to the point of breaking is different than in, say, 2005.”