Editorial Note: Unlike most of the other essays published here, this piece was not written for Work Stew. Amy Gutman wrote this as a post for her blog Plan B Nation, and it debuted there earlier this week. Amy’s observations struck me as excellent fuel for the ‘Follow Your Heart vs. Do the Math’ debate unfolding here, so—when asked—Amy graciously gave me permission to re-publish her post for Work Stew’s readers.

By Amy Gutman

In July 2010, amidst con­tin­ued fall-out from the Great Reces­sion, the New York Times published a front-page story about an unem­ployed col­lege grad­u­ate liv­ing with his par­ents in a Boston sub­urb who’d just turned down a $40,000-a-year job as an insur­ance claims adjustor.

“I am absolutely cer­tain that my job hunt will even­tu­ally pay off,” said 24-year-old Scott Nichol­son, a Col­gate Uni­ver­sity hon­ors grad­u­ate with a degree in polit­i­cal sci­ence, explain­ing his deci­sion to hold out for some­thing bet­ter even after two years of fruit­less searching.

The piece quickly became noto­ri­ous, set­ting off a tsunami of online comments—1,487 at last count—the vast major­ity express­ing out­rage at what read­ers per­ceived as an absurd sense of enti­tle­ment enabled by a too-indulgent family.

“Turn­ing down a job for $40,000 a year after grad­u­at­ing from a sec­ond tier (at best) school because he is too good for the posi­tion? The kid deserves what­ever hard­ship he endures,” was one typ­i­cally harsh response.

I recently thought back to this article—and the heated debate that ensued—when I got a call from a friend who heads up a big depart­ment of a big orga­ni­za­tion. She’d read some of my posts about the chal­lenges of look­ing for work after the Great Reces­sion and wanted to share her own quite dif­fer­ent perspective.

“I can’t give jobs away!” he (or she—I promised anonymity) insisted. “Nobody knows how to work any­more. They’ll say ‘I might have to miss yoga today, and that’s not okay.’”

I have to say I found this fas­ci­nat­ing. And while it was (and is) hard for me to believe that the sit­u­a­tion for employ­ers is really quite so bleak, I did start to notice other signs of sim­i­lar frus­tra­tion. For exam­ple this plain­tive tweet from a local tech entre­pre­neur, for­merly of Microsoft: “Why do so few job appli­cants bother to fol­low up? And some of the best cover let­ters don’t even show up for interviews.”

The more I thought about it, the more con­vinced I became that such behav­iors, along with the result­ing frus­tra­tion, can be traced to a pro­found con­fu­sion about what work is and is not, as well as what it should be—a con­fu­sion now thrown into relief by the stres­sor of hard times.

It’s not news that the so-called millennials—the cohort now enter­ing the workforce—grew up with extra­or­di­nary expec­ta­tions fueled by Baby Boomer par­ents who encour­aged them to dream big. Fur­ther feed­ing such atti­tudes was the Oprah-fication of Amer­i­can pop­u­lar cul­ture along with self-help clas­sics such as Do What You Love and the Money Will Fol­low and the mega-bestseller The Secret, which posits a “law of attrac­tion” that allows each of us to “man­i­fest” our desires. Even the pop­u­lar maxim that “any­one can be pres­i­dent” (never mind the nation’s declin­ing place on social mobil­ity mea­sures) can be traced to this cul­tural strand.

At the same time, our nation is deeply rooted in the Puri­tan work ethic, with its empha­sis on fru­gal­ity, dis­ci­pline, and self-reliance. Such teach­ings have been with us from early days, find­ing expres­sion in the best-selling writ­ings of Ben­jamin Franklin up on through present-day polit­i­cal rhetoric. (Think Mitt Romney’s tire­less if prob­lem­atic claims of being a self-made man.)

Fol­low your dreams, what­ever it takes.  Pay your own way, what­ever it takes.

That mil­len­ni­als are strug­gling should come as no sur­prise, given these exact­ing and often con­flict­ing cul­tural expec­ta­tions. Those of us who came of age in the Boom Years may have man­aged to bridge the two. But when money is scarce and jobs are few (Hello, New Nor­mal!), this is no easy feat.

So what’s a mil­len­nial sup­posed to do? Pre­sented with con­flict­ing absolutes, how are they sup­posed to choose?

This is pre­cisely the sort of dilemma con­sid­ered by Har­vard psy­chol­o­gist Robert Kegan in In Over Our Heads: The Men­tal Demands of Mod­ern Life. As Kegan sees it, we live in an age where demands are many and often at odds, and guide­lines for choos­ing between them are scarce. At the same time, rel­a­tively few of us are suf­fi­ciently grounded in our own beliefs to stand up to social pres­sures and chart an inde­pen­dent course—to be what Kegan calls “self author­ing.” That’s not such a big prob­lem when society’s expec­ta­tions are con­sis­tent. But when a cul­ture makes the sort of con­flict­ing demands that ours rou­tinely does, things can turn ugly very quickly.

Which is where many mil­len­ni­als find them­selves right now: Want­ing to do the Right Thing but with­out a way to decide what that right thing is. Where is the line between self-confidence and enti­tle­ment? Where is the line between admirable risk-taking and fool­ish behav­ior? Where is the line between being respon­si­ble and giv­ing up?

Depend­ing on whom a mil­len­nial asks, they’re likely to get dif­fer­ent answers, and regard­less of which one they choose, they’re likely to find them­selves at odds with some­one whose opin­ion they value. There may not be much that we can do right now to change this cul­tural con­text. What we can do is to acknowl­edge that Scott Nichol­son and other mil­len­ni­als have good rea­son to feel dazed and confused.

Amy Gutman is a writer and lawyer with eclectic interests and a resume to match. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Salon, and the Chicago Tribune, among other venues. She is also the author of two suspense novels, both published by Little, Brown. She lives and looks for work in Plan B Nation.

By John F. McMullen

When you come to the fork in the road, take it.
—L.P. Berra

In Steve Jobs’ great graduation speech at Stanford University in 2005, he spent a good amount of time speaking about “connecting the dots”—seeing how incidents in a life tie together to determine the course of that life—but only when we look backwards to note them. As Steve said, “You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards.” Writing this article gives me the chance to look back and connect them, to examine the forks and the paths I took.

I started off in college as a Philosophy major and spent a year at it before realizing that career paths for philosophers were rather limited. I then switched to something much more practical—English Literature. Changing majors cost me a year, putting me on the “5 Year Plan” and involving me with a whole different group of classmates, soon friends, than those I began with.

In the last semester of my new Senior Year, one of these new friends asked me if I was going to take the “Federal Service Entrance Exam” that was going to be given on campus. After I told him that I had no interest in working for the government, he began arguing that it would give me something to fall back on and it was in my best interests to take it—and, besides, he needed me to drive him up to campus on the Saturday for the test—so I reluctantly agreed.

It was only natural, however, given the fact that I lived in a New York City Irish neighborhood, that I would close a local bar and stay out talking until 5 a.m. the night before the test. At that time and being exhausted, I would have blown off the whole thing had I not promised to drive my friend to the test. Instead, I went home and slept on the floor for an hour to make sure I was up to playing chauffeur.

It turned out that I did very well on the test and was high enough on the list that I kept getting bothered with letters and calls about becoming a “Border Guard,” an “IRS Auditor,” and many other positions in which I had no interest. One day, however, bored with my insurance company job and tired of law school, I responded to a call concerning a new “Department of Defense Pilot Management Training Program.” The description piqued my interest when the recruiter explained that the selection process was very competitive—only four would be picked from hundreds for the first group—and that those selected would spend six months “walking around” this Department of the Army facility and would, subject to approval, have the opportunity to select the area in which they wished to work.

I landed the job and, at the end of six months, chose what was then called “Electronic Data Processing.” Why? I had never seen a computer before, knew nothing about them, and had never aspired to know anything about them, let alone work with them. The tipping point was that the smartest people I had met were the people working with the computers—and my 50 year career in technology was launched!

After two years with the government, I moved to a large Wall Street firm and, in the course of eight years, had moved up the ladder to be an officer of the firm, responsible for all of its data processing activities. The joy ride ended soon thereafter when I came out on the wrong side of a management conflict and was forced out. I was, however, able to join a former co-worker who had set up his own computer services firm and, after a year, we were able to sell the company to a subsidiary of Control Data, joining with two other subsidiaries to form a much larger entity with hundreds of clients.

The new firm not only gave me a position with a much higher Wall Street presence; my duties also forced me to give up a stammer I’d had since childhood. Even more important was a presentation that I made to a three-person team from a large firm, Bache and Co., evaluating new brokerage systems. The team chose not to do business with us but, about two years later, another client at the firm of Morgan Stanley, called to ask if I knew Barbara, the female member of the Bache team—she had applied for a job at Morgan Stanley. I certainly did remember her!—and gave her a great recommendation and, whatever factor that played in the decision, she was hired.

Shortly thereafter, I also joined Morgan Stanley and, within a few months, I had asked Barbara to marry me. At that time at Morgan Stanley, it would have been frowned upon for us to work together so we hid the relationship—and that lasted for about a year. Once the relationship did come to light one of us would have had to leave the firm—so we both decided to leave and form our own business, a consulting firm focused on the management of financial systems running on large “mainframe computers.”

Prior to our leaving, however, we were about to get on the elevator to go to lunch when a co-worker stepped up and said, “Before you leave, you should take a look at the little computer that Ben Rosen (the firm’s electronics analyst) has on his desk.” So, off we went and saw our first Apple II. It didn’t do much but I said “I should get one of those to fool around with.” And I did.

Within three months, Ben Rosen had gotten ahold of the first electronic spreadsheet, “Visicalc,” and written about it—and the real microcomputer revolution was launched—and we were well positioned. Barbara soon established a reputation as the best corporate trainer in the area while I was the “big picture” guy—and our business boomed.

Barbara was asked to write about Visicalc for a magazine and we were off into writing—a path that led to books, 1,500 articles and columns; we became involved with computer clubs and wound up as officers of the two largest ones in New York, which, in turn, led us into teaching—really, these activities began simply as “trying to give something back.”

Our partnership began 34 years ago and it has been wonderful—we both work very hard and have always enjoyed what we do. The work has always been challenging, rewarding, and interesting—and it continues to be.

So I connect my dots—Philosophy to English Literature—getting convinced to take the FSEE—getting up in the morning to drive a friend to the test—finally applying for a government job—choosing the world of technology when I knew nothing about it—going to work for a large Wall Street firm, doing very well, and getting fired—joining a firm that forced me to lose the stammer and that eventually led me first to Barbara, then to Morgan Stanley, and back to Barbara—deciding to form our own firm—seeing and buying an early Apple II—expanding into writing and teaching—and, in retrospect, it all makes perfect sense.

John F. McMullen has been involved in technology for over 40 years and has written extensively for major publications. He may be found on Facebook and his current non-technical writing, a novel “The Inwood Book” and “New & Collected Poems by johnmac the bard,” are available on Amazon. He is a professor at Purchase College and has previously taught at Monroe College, Marist College and the New School for Social Research.

Photo provided by John F. McMullen.

By Robert Clark Young

Do you want to hear the truth about status, wealth, and work in America? The plutocrats really do own the government and the markets, and the rich really are exploiting the rest of us. You probably already know this. But did you know that, according to the law, exploiting us is their job?

I found this out when I tried to play in their private casino.

Since 2008, when my parents both had serious strokes, I have worked full-time and without pay as their caregiver. I also contribute to their financial support. Because caring for them is expensive, I’m always looking for ways to increase my income, so that my parents can continue to live in dignity and freedom in their own home.

A few weeks ago, I read an article about Facebook going public in 2012. This is the most anticipated IPO—initial public offering—of the year, a brilliant star outside the black hole of current market pessimism.

I also learned that some people were already buying and selling Facebook shares—before the IPO. These shares were coming from Facebook employees. The company has compensated some workers with equity, while other employees have been allowed to buy shares for as little as $6.

According to many analysts, the stock was good for a quick pop at the IPO. I decided that I, too, would like to own some Facebook stock before it went public. Well, wouldn’t you?

Two of the exchanges that deal in privately held companies are SecondMarket and SharesPost. I found their websites and entered my contact information.

A week later, a broker from SharesPost called me. I was at Wal-Mart, looking for a deal on adult diapers, but I angled my words into my cellphone as though I were an old market pro: “I’m interested in picking up some Facebook stock before the IPO.”

“That sounds like a great move. Can I ask you a few questions first to determine if you’re an accredited investor?”

“An accredited investor? What’s that?”

“Do you have assets totaling at least one million dollars, or, if single, a yearly income of at least $200,000, or $300,000 if married?”

“Uh—no.”

“Then you won’t be allowed to trade with us, Mr. Young. Those are the SEC rules.”

“Really? Why do they have rules like that?”

Here the broker, thrown off script, hesitated. “Well—for two reasons, really. One, the SEC wants to make sure investors can afford a loss, since, as you probably already know, markets can go up or down. And two, accredited investors are more—well, we like to think, sophisticated about the market. They’re easier for us to work with. They’re more likely to think of investing as their job, as their work.”

“Investing isn’t my work,” I said, “but I thought anybody in this country was allowed to buy and sell stock, no matter how rich you are.”

He laughed. “I think you have the wrong country.”

We thanked each other and hung up.

I was shocked. Back in 1996, when my broker got me into an airline stock that quickly erased $20,000 from my portfolio, I don’t remember the federal government stepping in to make sure I could afford the loss, even though it represented more than half my yearly salary as a college English instructor. On that occasion, the SEC had remained completely silent about my lack of market sophistication.

I also knew that if I bought Facebook at the IPO, the SEC wouldn’t care if my shares plunged 50% in the first month. Under those circumstances, nobody in the government would be interested in “protecting” me by yanking the stock certificates out of my hands.

So the rules about “accredited investors” must exist for other purposes. What could they be?

First, I wanted to find out if the law actually creates a special class of investor, a person who is somehow better than the rest of us, a wealthy citizen whose “work” it is to fatten his portfolio with hot stocks before the general public is allowed to own them. Had the government in fact established such a category of “accredited investors”?

It was a lot of dry reading, I can tell you. But I eventually found SEC Rule 501, Regulation D, paragraph 6. An “accredited investor” is “a natural person who has individual net worth, or joint net worth with the person’s spouse, that exceeds $1 million.”

So it was true.

But remember, this is America. It would be unfair, undemocratic, and against our most deeply held beliefs to limit this game to millionaires. And so paragraph 7 expands the American spirit of opportunity to “a natural person with income exceeding $200,000 in each of the two most recent years or joint income with a spouse exceeding $300,000.”

The boys at the SEC could not be more explicit if they were to write, “There are opportunities and benefits that shall be available only to the rich.”

I was balancing my checkbook when my girlfriend asked, “How’s the Facebook deal going?”

“It’s against the law for me to buy any. I have to wait till the IPO.”

“But you said some people were already buying and selling shares.”

“Yeah. You have to be literally a millionaire or a very high income person to do it.”

“Oh, come on.”

“Seriously. I talked to a broker and I looked it up. It’s the law. I guess these rich bastards bought some politicians to get it passed. The government lets them buy up shares of privately held companies super cheaply. Then, when the IPO rolls around, these guys turn around and dump the shares on the hoi polloi at inflated prices. I guess it’s one of the secret ways the rich keep getting richer.”

“Are you kidding me? What’s the justification for a thing like that?”

“The government considers that investing is a rich person’s work.”

“You mean, it’s their job to screw us?”

“You have to admit, they have all the qualifications.”

As I sat there thumbing through my bills, I thought of how wonderful it must feel to be a U.S. government-approved wealthy person, how personally fulfilling it must be to do the “work” that only the rich are qualified to do.

It’s a private casino, with the numbered wheels and the spinning cherries and the tumbling dice all weighted against us, those of us in the bottom 99%.

But why question it? We are, after all, “a nation of laws, not of men.”

Robert Clark Young has written for the Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, New York Press, and for many of the leading literary journals in the country. He is seeking a publisher for his new book, THE SURVIVOR: How to Deal with Your Aging Parents, While Enriching Your Own Life. Visit his other work here. 

Photo provided by Robert Clark Young.

By Gopi Kallayil

Small is truly beautiful. A single email winged its way from the Dalai Lama’s office to my Google colleague Shailesh in India and then on to Vic in the U.S. and Marvin in Korea before landing finally in my inbox. It expressed an interest that the Office of the Dalai Lama had in the product I am working on—Google+—and it started me noodling some ideas on a piece of paper. One of them was to put together The Dalai Lama with Archbishop Desmond Tutu in a Google+ Hangout and allow thousands of people to view it live on the Internet. I told a few colleagues about this random and crazy idea and left it at that.

Five days later, a Googler from South Africa, Jonathan, called me at home at one in the morning. I had never met him before and yet he made the following request: “The Arch’s (Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s) birthday is coming up this Saturday and his friend the Dalai Lama was to be the main guest, delivering a talk on peace and compassion. He has applied for a visa but hasn’t been granted one yet, so the Arch’s office has asked if we could use technology to find a solution?”

Jonathan had found me pretty much at random by searching the internal directory and deciding on intuition that I was the person to call. He apologized profusely for calling so late out of the blue, but I told him it was moments like this that make working at Google so truly special. Jonathan has since told me that my actual words in that conversation were: “Around here, the impossible takes one or two days. The miracles take a little longer—like maybe three.”

So, a mere seven days after I put my original intention down on paper, The Dalai Lama stepped in front of a Google+ Hangouts window on a computer in his house in Dharamsala, India. Half a world away, Archbishop Desmond Tutu stepped in front of another Google+ Hangouts window on a computer at The University of the Western Cape, in Cape Town, South Africa. He waved at his dear friend and spiritual brother and chuckled, “I can see you clearly.” The rest is now history.

Why those two independent requests, originating from the offices of two Nobel Peace Laureates 6,000 miles apart, ended up in my inbox is a great mystery. What emerged from this is a marvelous event on a global scale, but the back story to my involvement is also mystical to me.

Thirteen years ago, I wrote a list of goals for my life that included a desire to meet the Dalai Lama in person. Over the years, things started coming together. I walked into the back of a bookstore and saw a poster announcing that he was speaking nearby the following week. I then heard him speak several times—almost by chance—in places as far apart as Sydney and San Francisco, and most recently, in October 2010, at Stanford University. But as I returned to the Google office from that talk, it struck me that I had not done much about my goal to meet him in person and did not know where to start. Perhaps a good first step would be simply to ask someone?

The first person I ran into was Meng, a famous Google engineer with some affiliation with meditation research and projects that I know are of interest to the Dalai Lama. I told him that I wanted to meet the Dalai Lama in person. Deadpan, he replied, “Sure, that can be arranged, what are you doing two weeks from now? Can you be in Dharamsala in India? My friend Lama Tenzin is setting up a meeting for some others and I can ask him…” Two weeks later I was on a plane to Dharamsala. Sometimes when you ask the universe, it opens a door and you must walk through it.

Right up until a few hours before the meeting, I did not know if it would happen; I had not heard from Lama Tenzin, who was also traveling from the U.S. to Dharamsala and was out of contact. But this is exactly the kind of thing I am willing to travel 36 hours half way around the world for: just to show up and knock on a door in the hope that it might open.

After three days of hanging around the Dalai Lama’s monastery in Dharamsala, I received confirmation that I would meet him. I was fortunate to experience a 45-minute audience with His Holiness, during which he discussed a wide-ranging set of topics from compassion to human values to happiness to neuroplasticity and mental training. It will always be one of the most cherished memories of my life.

It was so moving and his humanity so touching that when I said good-bye and thank you there were tears in my eyes. He gave me a “Katta” (a white cloth with Tibetan chants inscribed) as a blessing that I brought back with me and hung above my desk so that it would rain blessings on the entire Google+ team. It worked.

Zooming forward to October 5, 2011, the morning after my phone call from Jonathan in South Africa, I sat discussing a possible solution with Loren, the Product Manager for Google+ Hangouts, in our usual place under the Katta. Five hours later, Loren was on a 33-hour journey to South Africa. What was remarkable, I found out later, was that Loren had never before traveled outside the country. He got a passport just a few months earlier, thinking it may be a good idea to start traveling internationally. A dozen of us from Google in four different countries around the world swung into action—we had just 60 hours to make it happen.

As Jonathan described it, “It wasn’t even a full day since the initial discussion with the Archbishop’s office and the project plan was in place…Googlers were moving around the globe to make this happen. Dan from the Stockholm office was traveling to join Loren in Cape Town. In New Delhi, Guneet Singh had mobilized the India team, and Ashish had driven 12 hours across India to the Dalai Lama’s house in the Himalayas. The velocity of this team was astonishing. I was already getting a strong sense of what is possible when a group of passionate Googlers put their minds to something.”

“The best part for me was seeing how these were just two old friends who really wanted to spend a birthday together. We allowed them to reminisce about old times, poke fun at each other, and share a good hearty laugh. Directly after the event, I spoke to the Archbishop and with great emotion in his voice he looked at me said, ‘Thank you so much for making this happen; it was so very special to me.’”

Similarly, in India my colleague Ashish relayed to us: “In my very brief chat with The Dalai Lama, I found him really pleased to see his friend over the hangout. For me, the Google moment was when he bowed down and said, ‘Thank you very much for all your help.’ I felt really great and proud to be representing Google there.”

Leading up to the event was high pressure for everyone as unexpected problems cropped up. There was a power failure 15 minutes before the Hangout, after which a South African Secret Service Agent was dispatched to guard the site’s switchboard. As it happened, the main undersea Internet cable to South Africa was cut just 20 minutes after the event had finished.

But the Hangout itself was flawless. From their offices, living rooms, and bedrooms, thousands of people on Google+ watched this historic dialogue unfold live. The previous thirteen Dalai Lama’s had hardly traveled beyond Tibet. And now here was the 14th Dalai Lama chatting with Desmond Tutu, and it felt like it was happening in your house.

In a mere seven days, a crazy idea I put on a piece of paper had transformed itself from intention to manifestation. It makes me think: what else might be achieved?

Note: the author works for Google, but the opinions expressed here are his own and not Google’s. Highlights of the Dalai Lama-Archbishop Desmond Tutu Hangout can be watched here.

Photos provided by Gopi Kallayil.

By Marcy Schwab

Throwing a 40^th anniversary party for my parents sounds like a great idea, right? Well, my mother had other ideas. My father was quite pleased with the thought and relished in his two daughters’ interest in celebrating the big milestone. “Why wait?” my dad said, “it’s terrific to rejoice in such a wonderful event. Don’t let the important days pass without celebrating.” He engaged in planning conversations and provided opinions. He was clearly excited. My mother, on the other hand, wanted absolutely nothing to do with it. “Wait until our 50^th, what’s the big deal about doing it now?” she would say. “Don’t worry yourself with it; you are both so busy and there’s no need to make a fuss,” she continued. We joked that my father would be invited as “Mr. James F. Schwab and Guest.” My father could then decide with whom he would attend.

It was late 2007 when the discussions of the party started. My parents, both 61 then and in very good health, were married on a lovely day in the month of August, 1968 when they were just 22 years old. My father was born just one week after my mother. They met at State College, PA during their freshman year of college in 1964. They adored each other and shared a love that was enviable.

The party was planned for the beginning of September. Tents were rented, the caterer booked, the guests invited. More than 100 people, and even my mom, celebrated a most joyful occasion. We have beautiful memories and pictures of the day that just radiate with happiness. Our family and friends came from near and far to share in the moment.

Just a week after the party my parents went away for two weeks to Barcelona for a combined business trip and vacation. Upon their arrival home, Dad went right back to work for a few days before the two of them had another weekend trip on the calendar. They were off to State College, PA for his annual fraternity reunion. He called me on Friday while waiting for my mom to arrive to pick him up. He wasn’t feeling well, he said. “I’m achy, and I have a fever,” was how he described it. To me, it sounded like a mild flu. My dad, not a very effusive person by nature, spent an hour talking with me about little things here and there. It was highly enjoyable to get so much of his time on the phone. I said “I love you” and then “Good-bye” and we hung up.

Two days later, on Sunday morning, September 28^th, 2008 at 10:28 a.m, while I was making a family recipe for the fast approaching Jewish holidays, I received a call from an unrecognized number in State College. My mom was on the phone, telling me that my dad had suffered a massive seizure that morning. It was the day before my 37^th birthday.

We scrambled around, got the kids in the car for the unexpected trip and made our way to Central Pennsylvania. It turns out, after five days in Intensive Care and a bumpy ambulance ride to Johns Hopkins, that my dad was diagnosed with an incurable Glioblastoma, a stage IV brain cancer. It is the same type of brain cancer suffered by Ted Kennedy. While he eventually regained consciousness and lived another 8 months until June of the following year, that last conversation on the Friday before “the incident” was the last real conversation I ever had with my dad. He was exactly a month shy of his 63^rd birthday on the day he died. More than 500 people attended his funeral.

My dad had always been a steadying force in my life. He was usually the voice of practical reason where my mother was more the voice of the heart. He had a unique way of looking at the world, helping me distill situations into simple questions yet never providing any answers. He helped me think through things and was well versed on many topics. We often talked about mundane subjects like how the Orioles were playing (often quite badly) and how my days at my job were going (usually pretty well). But when it came to the tough stuff, my dad was The Man. He was a person who lived in the here and now. He was very practical and sought the best outcome given that time and that place. What was I going to do without his wise ways?

While he was sick, in March 2008, I learned that my position at work was being eliminated as of September. I had the option to move internally and the option to “take a package.” I had been with the company for well over 11 years, since the age of 26. Here I was, dealing with probably the hardest professional situation I had ever faced, and my dad was not there to help me through it. On top of it all, I was in the midst of a lengthy grieving process as was most of my support network. My mother wanted to be helpful, but this topic was not historically her domain, nor did she have the mental bandwidth to engage very deeply. My husband was very helpful, of course, but I missed Dad. It had always been my dad who could ask me just the right questions so that I could figure it all out. So, I was grieving both his loss and the potential loss of my identity as a working professional.

Fortunately, I had a bit of time to make a decision. So, what was I to do? For a while I felt depressed and frustrated, which I recognized were all ordinary parts of both grieving processes. I wanted to change the situation rather than deal with it, but that was obviously not possible, in either case. I let myself wallow in indecision for a while, which was a huge step for me. I am an action-oriented person and not a wallower by nature. The mere act of letting myself *not make a decision* was a great move. It provided time for me to just let it be.

When I was ready to think about the decisions ahead, I looked to my dad. No, I could not talk to him, but he was the voice in my head. I thought to myself, “what questions would Dad ask me?” So, I asked them of myself. Essentially I played out the whole conversation, one question and answer at a time:

• “What are my priorities?”
• “What matters to me?”
• “What are my goals for the next year?”
• “What are my goals for the next 5 years?”
• “Am I really identified by the company for whom I work or am I ‘me’ wherever I go?”
• “How do I feel?”

Perhaps most importantly, I thought about the questions he would often ask that helped me remember that I’m confident, capable, and valuable.

• “Are you going to be okay wherever you are?” Yes.
• “Will you find a way, no matter the outcome?” Yes.
• “Do you know how to leverage your network and resources to get what you want?” Yes.
• “Have I taught you well?” YES.

After much thought and debate, I decided to leave the company in which I had worked for so long and take my time in looking for my next role. What a grand opportunity to focus on what matters: my family, my happiness, and really figuring out my goals for the future. Alas, a call from a headhunter sped up the process, and I started working again after only six weeks. I am quite happy with my new situation. Though the work is similar, my new company is rather different from my last. I work from home quite a lot now, giving me the opportunity to see my kids most days when they return from school. Though similarly intellectually rigorous, the environment is far friendlier and values my contributions in much kinder ways. I feel inspired and valuable. I have been able to play a role in multiple areas of the company, and I am able to use my skills and talents to make a difference.

I look at my situation today and celebrate where I am. The result was worth enduring the journey. Dad wanted to celebrate “the today” and not wait, and I have learned from him to do the same. The feeling of loss is still one of the toughest things in my life. But, I have conversations with Dad all of the time. He is the voice in my head.

Photo provided by Marcy Schwab.

By Alison Umminger

Most of us grow up thinking, much like Marlon Brando in On The Waterfront, that we have the potential to be Contenders, those proverbial “somebodies” in the fields of our choice. Raised, as good Americans, on the Horatio Alger myth—coupled with weekly doses of American Idol and its ilk—we think that “next big thing” status could potentially apply to us. Needless to say, for most of us, this is probably not the case. But this is not a fun or pretty thought, so we put it aside and live aspirationally rather than in reality. One need only look at our foreclosure rates to see how this plays out in the financial realm, but what about our far less quantifiable ambitions? How does one accept that life, as it is wont to do, has foreclosed on one’s dream?

I am going to use the following as the premise for the rest of this essay (and it’s not a favored mantra, so bear with me): what if one is not as awesome as one would like to believe? A friend was telling me recently that American students are low in global scores in virtually every area except for, no breath holding here, self-esteem. All empirical evidence to the contrary, we secretly believe that we are amazing. I confess, I felt this way about myself once. I wrote a nifty novel that my agent thought was great and my friends said was brilliant. Sixty editors disagreed. I’m going to spare you the catalogue of near misses and discussions of marketplace and just sum up what this meant for me. I had a dream. It didn’t work out.

So I tried dream number two, which was to make some money. If I couldn’t be Ernest Hemingway, I could at least be Danielle Steele, right? My best grad-school buddy and I wrote two chick-lit novels that we thought were super-commercial, but still smart, and would naturally make us millions of dollars because we were “selling out.” A little note about “selling out”—be sure that there are buyers! Although those novels made it to print, what we made was more like six months rent—not millions.

So while I am not going to be so melodramatic as to call myself a failure, I certainly wasn’t the great success story I had once imagined. So what? What next? If one is not amazing, what does one become?

First, I became alienated from my work. By becoming so focused on writing as a product, I lost my faith along the way in writing as a process, as something that gave my soul some breathing room and helped me to know the world better and care more deeply about it. I couldn’t sit down and look at a blank page without the nagging sense of despair that it just wasn’t worth it; if I couldn’t reach a wider audience, there wasn’t really a point. This is not an uncommon place to be for a blocked writer, but it certainly isn’t a very healthy one.

Then life threw me a curve ball. There is nothing better to cure an existential problem than an actual one. My husband and I started trying to have a baby, and we had trouble.  In the course of one year, I had two D&Cs, a laparoscopic surgery on my ovaries, and a miscarriage at eight weeks after seeing the baby’s heartbeat. It’s not as much as many women endure trying to have a child, but it felt like plenty to me. I became severely depressed. I couldn’t see an end to my struggles with fertility, and I needed something to get my mind off of me. So I started working on something that my inner art-snob knew wasn’t going to win any prizes, and my inner sell-out knew probably wouldn’t make any money: romantic comedy screenplays. Why? Because I liked them. Because unlike most literature, or indeed many aspects of life, they have happy endings. I enrolled in a screenwriting class and started writing my first manuscript. Was it great art? No. Was it fun? Yes. Did it get me out of my head? Yes. Was I proud of it as something that I had worked hard on and enjoyed writing. Yes.

In the wonderful old movie Sullivan’s Travels, a director of comedies longs to make great art, a film that will paint “a true canvas of the suffering of humanity.” Much like Aristotle, he believes that tragedy is the greater art form and comedy a mere diversion. He aspires to better. This certainly mirrored the attitude that I encountered in my M.F.A. program. One aspired to create “great art” and wrote comedy (if one deigned) under a pen name to preserve one’s reputation. When my first chick lit novel was accepted, my advisor at the time, rather than congratulating me, gave me a wary look and said, “Well, you know you’ll never get tenure with that book.” It might have been a book, but it wasn’t a “real” book.

Sullivan’s Travels closes with a scene where Sullivan, having sought out suffering and found it, watches one of his comedies with a band of the truly downtrodden. For a moment, this collective is able to put aside their troubles and laugh, which Sullivan now realizes is no small accomplishment. This scene resonates with me. Maybe there’s something youthful and naive about courting art as tragedy—particularly if life hasn’t send much genuine pain your way.

In the same way, there’s probably something equally destructive about believing in your own “awesome,” rather than making friends with your “just okay.” The nice thing about embracing one’s own averageness, about giving up on being great, is that you get to decide who you are when all expectations are set aside. You get to like what you do without an inner biographer looking over your shoulder. Life has far more near misses than direct hits, yet we have a tendency to treat these as failures rather than as the real meat of most of our lives. Success is wonderful, and don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t mind having a little, but until then I’m happy letting characters “meet cute” and end well.

Photo provided by Alison Umminger.

By K.T. Garner

A juvenile black bear looks out from the shelter of trees at the row of campsites. His nose twitches as he catches the aroma of cooking hamburgers on the breeze, and he walks closer, his head tossing from side to side to pinpoint the exact campsite from which this delectable odor is emanating. Ah, yes, he thinks. Site 18. He broke into their cooler yesterday. Such generous humans, to leave food out like that.

He hesitates behind the tent. The humans are there, but he has learned that they pose little threat, so he proceeds. The humans make high-pitched sounds and back away from the sizzling hamburgers on the fire. Excellent, the bear thinks. Medium rare, just the way he likes them.

This was usually the place where I came in. I held the title of “Night Ranger,” which is not to be confused with an actual police officer. Basically, I was an outdoor security guard.

The “outdoor” part of that job description was the main reason I applied for it. I had spent years sitting behind a desk answering phones, and I was determined to find a job that would allow me to work outside. Ever since I was a child, I have loved immersing myself in nature and observing it. I’d go on camping trips every summer and run wild through the woods. Even at home, I would spend nearly all of my free time outdoors. In college, I volunteered as a student trail guide for the Outdoor Recreation Club and went camping and hiking every weekend I could. So when I got the opportunity to be paid to be outside, I took it.

Which is not to say that this job came naturally to me. Trying to get people to comply with rules and regulations was not one of my innate skills. Although I was in uniform and I did my best to convince the patrons of my campground that I was the ultimate authority, most people weren’t too impressed when I showed up on their site at night, asking them to please stop singing “The Joker” and informing them that, incidentally, two in the morning is not an appropriate time to play bongo drums.

However, people were usually pretty impressed when I showed up in response to a report of a bear at a campsite. Little did the campers know when they rented a spot in our campground that they would get dinner and a show. The bear handling procedure that I developed after careful study and by trial and error was to leap out of my vehicle and launch myself after the animal. As I bounded into the forest shouting nonsense, I even got applause once or twice.

The bears were actually the easy part of my job. On a typical weekend, my two partners and I were in charge of over a thousand people. Our job, which I half-seriously referred to as “underpaid babysitting,” included patrolling the campground on foot at night and ensuring that no one was breaking the law or campground policies, and if they were, that they would be brought to justice.

That was the idea, anyway.

The reality was quite different. During my time as a Night Ranger, I met wonderful people whose love of nature matched my own, but I was also called every derogatory name in existence and a few that were specially made up for the occasion by irate, mostly inebriated patrons. I witnessed behavior that made me ashamed of my species: lying, stealing, domestic abuse… The terrible things that human beings do to one another are magnified when there are so many people in one place.

I realized early on that I had to put on an act. Most people were not intimidated by someone in my position, so I had to figure out how to shape my body language and tone to convey authority. Week after week, the same issues arose, and I became adept at picking out the people who were destined to become my “problem children” for the duration of their stay. I had to move beyond my comfort zone and become the “bad guy.” I had to put myself into situations where I would be mocked, screamed at, and cursed. And then there was the paperwork.

However, working the night shift also gave me opportunities that I never would have imagined before I got the job. I learned how to do sound police work; I learned to think like a cop. I had been terrified of the dark for many years before working as a Night Ranger. Now I know I can patrol alone in the darkness; I spent many nights walking under stars bright enough to light my way. I saw wildlife that I had never seen before, such as owls and flying squirrels. I developed a new, deep-seated sense of confidence, and I overcame my fears of confrontation with other people. And because of my experience with this job, I gained a career goal: to become a Forest Ranger, which is essentially a police officer in a wilderness setting.

Forest Rangers are each assigned a specific area that they patrol. They handle all of the wildfires, searches and rescues, and trail maintenance; they also carry out public education activities and address any illegal activities that take place within their area. They are sworn law enforcement officers who carry sidearms after taking a civil service exam and going through a six-month academy. I know that I would never have considered such a career path for myself had it not been for the Night Ranger job.

Being a Night Ranger wasn’t easy. However, it revealed to me my weaknesses and gave me new strengths. It helped prepare me to go into law enforcement, and it laid the foundation of confidence upon which I can build a career.

Besides, after spending years chasing bears through the woods, everything else just seems easier.

Photo provided by K.T. Garner.

By Molly Bishop Shadel

A couple of weeks ago, I went to the movies with some friends to see I Don’t Know How She Does It. I found myself nodding in recognition at the heroine, Kate Reddy—I, too, have driven myself crazy trying to be both a perfect mother and a perfect professional. Then I breathed a sigh of relief, thinking, wow, I am so glad I don’t have her type of job anymore; I’m so grateful for my job, instead. And then I grew angry at the notion of gratitude for a job that doesn’t require me to live the crazed life of Kate Reddy—because no one should have to live like that. If we want a happy workforce, and especially if we want to keep women from exiting it, then we must shift the norm so that workers can be both professionals and human beings being at the same time. Law, in particular, should care deeply about this problem.

I used to be a practicing attorney; now I am a law professor. I want to tell you about how I got here, including mistakes that I made along the way, because many of the choices I have confronted are typical for women in my profession. But the point of this story is not that everyone should quit practicing law and go teach. Instead, I would like to suggest that there are challenges endemic to both legal practice and the legal academy that (despite everyone’s best intentions) will disproportionately affect women who have (or want) children, or on whose shoulders care for other family members (such as aging parents) will fall. I have two audiences in mind:  my students, who are aware of some of those challenges and are puzzling over how to confront them; and lawyers and law professors, who are in a position to change things.

When I first started out as a young lawyer in my 20s, it was just me on my own, focusing on racking up as many awards as I could. I went to Harvard College and Columbia Law School. I was on Law Review. I clerked for a judge. I took a high-paying job at a top-tier law firm after graduation, in part because I wanted to pay off my loans, in part because it seemed like an interesting place to work, but primarily because it was a hard job to get—a prize. My classmates, both male and female, were making similar decisions, and our salaries were roughly the same.

First Life Lesson: Don’t Just Work…Network

The law firm that I joined after law school was a great one, full of smart people who cared about me and wanted me to succeed. Some of the professional connections I forged there continue to be the most significant professional relationships of my life, and I have called on that network time and again, even though I left the firm a long time ago. So I pause here for my First Life Lesson. Women coming out of law school: if you don’t know what kind of law you want to practice, it can be wise to join a firm with a broad diversity of work and a high caliber of colleagues. While you are there, invest in relationships with your co-workers. It will make the job more satisfying, and can help you find another job down the line. I thought as a young attorney that the most important thing was to slog away at my desk, and that if I kept my nose to the grindstone, then my hard work would be noticed and rewarded. But I now firmly believe that creating personal connections with your colleagues—so that people care about you and are motivated to actually notice the work that you do—is one key to career success. The American Bar Association’s Commission on Women in the Profession, the Project for Attorney Retention, and the Minority Corporate Counsel Association agree, noting in a July 2010 report that networking opportunities directly affect compensation, and arguing that firms that care about compensating women fairly should ensure that these opportunities are available to their female workers. If you are a young attorney, find those opportunities and take advantage of them. My work only got me so far; it was my mentor who took me the rest of the way.

But even though I liked my colleagues, I began over time to feel uneasy. Every Sunday night was filled with dread, because Monday morning was coming. Something wasn’t right.

I constantly fretted that the work I was doing wasn’t enough. This is not a new story; many of you at law firms know what I am talking about. It is a product of the billable hour system that many law firms use, which rewards quantity of hours billed over the quality of the work product. I felt like I could never get ahead, that becoming more efficient at my work did not result in a reward—it just netted me more assignments. Work, and worries about work, crept into every corner of my life. I felt pressure to stay late, to work longer hours, because that was what everyone else around me was doing. It is the sort of competitive thing that you see happening when you gather enough type-A people in a workplace and tell them that some—not all—will get a big bonus at the end of the year. Joan C. Williams, a law professor at the University of California-Hastings and the founder of the Project for Attorney Retention, has described this traditional law firm environment as designed with an “ideal-worker” in mind—one who is available to work at all hours, who will not object to having work swallow up his personal life, who presumably has someone at home to manage the unpaid work of going to the grocery store and keeping the bathrooms clean. The guilt/gratitude pressure that I have observed in myself in relation to my job began at this point in my life—I felt guilt anytime I fell short of the “ideal employee” model. It did not occur to me at that time to question whether that model was valid.

At the same time, I was keenly aware of the price I paid when I put in those long hours. Some of my friends were married and had children, and I could see that they were missing the most pleasurable years of their kids’ lives. As for me, I started to worry that if I spent my young adulthood working, I would never get married or have kids at all. Of those of us who wanted children, my female colleagues and I felt this pressure much more acutely than our male counterparts, many of whom already had wives at home to carry the load, or were not worried that they had a finite amount of time in which to start a family.

I sometimes hear my female students talk about how things for men and women are much more equal in today’s society, or about how they will always put their careers first and will insist that their partners carry an equal load, and I think to myself, just wait. Attrition rates tell a different story. For the past two decades, about half of the law school graduates out there have been women.  That is a long time, and you would think that would mean that you would therefore see a similar proportion of women at the top of the law firm structure. Not so. Today, women account for more than 45% of associates at law firms, but only 19% of law firm partners are female. Even with all our medical advances, women at law firms who want kids have to deal with the fact that the years that they are supposed to be logging the most hours are their childbearing years. It is also hard to anticipate how much you will long for your children, once they are in the picture—you may think that you will be able to outsource a lot of the childcare, or feel okay about your partner doing it while you are at work, but sometimes, on some days, that will become unbearable. Any new mom crying at her desk as she is hooked to her breast pump knows exactly what I am talking about.

Today, I have only one female friend from law school who actually stayed to make partner. The rest left. And the one who stayed does not have children. (Interestingly, my colleague, John Monahan, did a study of the Class of 1990 of the University of Virginia School of Lawboth when they graduated and at mid-career, and found that the percentage of women working full-time was highly correlated with the number of children they had—those who had more than two were unlikely to be working full-time. Not so for men.)

When I quit my job at the law firm, it was because of September 11. I had already experienced numerous nights in which I would wake up at 4 a.m., panicked, and think, this isn’t where I want to be and I have no idea how to change that. I would come home from long business trips and drop my suitcases inside the door of my Manhattan apartment and feel palpable loneliness because no one cared that I was home—nobody was there. I dated men with whom I had no future for longer than I should have simply because I didn’t see how I would possibly meet anyone else. I didn’t have the time. Then on Sept. 11, 2001, when all those people died and some of my friends from work and I walked home together amidst the crowds of bewildered New Yorkers, I thought, if that had been me, if I had died today, I would feel cheated because I haven’t yet had most of the experiences that I want in life. And I won’t if I don’t make something change.

Second Life Lesson: Listen to Your Own Unease

On September 12, I started sending out resumes, and soon took a job at the U.S. Department of Justice. It paid about half of what I made in private practice, and it meant that I had to leave my beloved New York for Washington, D.C., but it was a good decision. I loved the job because I knew that what I was doing was making the world a better place. I also loved it because it did not have a billable hours requirement. I was surrounded by people who had no problem leaving in order to be home for dinner, and that gave me permission to follow suit. So I will pause here for the Second Life Lesson (or perhaps it is more a life suggestion). If you are feeling that sick-Sunday-night feeling, make a change. In today’s economy, it is probably wise to get another job before you flee the one that is making you ill, but do not ignore the signs you are giving yourself. What you are looking for is a job that is a prize to you, not just a prize in someone else’s eyes. For me, that prize was a mission I felt good about and the absence of the billable hours, face-time pressure.

But also pay attention to something else that I just said. I took a 50% pay cut when I changed jobs.

I started to think about the significance of salary discrepancies during my time at the Justice Department. I became aware of the fact that my newly-lowered salary was still higher than the mid-level lawyer who supervised some of my cases. The lawyers in my office who had joined the Justice Department straight out of law school started at one of the lower salaries on the GS scale, and their raises were calculated as a percentage of what they had earned the year before. I came in at a higher salary because of what I had earned in private practice. It would take years before my supervisor would ever catch up with me. My supervisor had made her commitment to public service clear from the beginning; she had gone straight into it from law school and had many more years of government service under her belt than I. But if salary was any metric, that was not something the government cared to reward.

The way to make money in the government is to be willing to leave your job—to switch back to private practice for a time, and then to come back into government in a more senior appointed position, for example. The ability to change jobs requires a fair amount of support from home, particularly if the switch involves relocating. This can be tricky if your spouse has a job of his own, as the majority of spouses of female attorneys have. As in private practice, the legal world in the public sector rewards a model of employee that is likely to adversely impact female attorneys, albeit unintentionally.

Somehow, leaving the safety of my law firm job jolted my personal life into action, maybe because I had more free time. I met the person who would become my husband when I started my job at the Justice Department, and two years later we decided to get married and settle in Charlottesville, Virginia, where he owns a business. Thus began yet another job search.

Here is where I ended up:  I am now a law school professor at the University of Virginia, and the mother of two young kids (who arrived very quickly after I started teaching here).

Going into academia turned out to be the best career switch I have made thus far. I love my job. I teach classes that are extremely interesting to me, and I write about things that I care about. I have a huge amount of flexibility in my job—I design my classes the way that I want, I write about what I want, and so long as what I am doing helps students, it will be fine. And I work in the most family-friendly place you can possibly imagine: I only have to be on campus during the hours in which I teach class or have meetings, and other than that I am free to work from home, pick up my kids from school, and the like. I am a much better mother in this job than I would be without it. Work lets me have a place where I can have my own identity, independent of motherhood, but the kind of work I do does not drain me, so I can be present for my kids.

And yet…

Third Life Lesson: Make Time to Write

Law schools usually have two tiers of faculty members: tenured/tenure-track professors (who are expected to teach classes and publish scholarly work), and non-tenure-track faculty, who typically are not expected to publish, and usually carry heavier teaching loads, or other responsibilities (like running a legal clinic), in exchange. Since I did not plan to enter academia and consequently had no writing portfolio, I could only compete for a non-tenure-track faculty professorship, which pays a lot less than tenure-track positions. And so we reach the Third Life Lesson: if you have any inkling that you might want to be a tenure-track professor one day, then carve out some time to write. Having a written (preferably published) piece tells people so much more about what you are like and how your mind works than a resume ever could. You might consider spending some time writing even if you never intend to teach one day. Writing is work that keeps working for you—you log in hours to create the piece of writing, but once it exists, you can keep pulling it out again and again to reap the rewards of having created it. Writing, like networking, is another excellent use of your time.

And now, a word of warning. If you think that you want to be a professor, you should realize that taking a job as an adjunct, or going into law school administration, or even joining the faculty as a non-tenure-track professor, is not a route into a tenure-track teaching job. Once you take one of those routes, you cannot switch. There is no obvious on-ramp into the higher status tier of academia available to you.

This choice has consequences in terms of your salary, and it is likely to be women who will feel that consequence. Just as there is a notable gender divide in the law firm world between partners and non-partners, there is also a pronounced gender divide in legal academia between tenure-track and non-tenure-track faculty professors. According to the2008-2009 AALS Statistical Report on Law Faculty, 62% of all law faculty (both tenure and non-tenure track) are male, while 37% are female (the rest not identified). Of the non-tenure-track faculty teaching at law schools, over 50% are female. These non-tenure-track jobs carry less prestige, fewer privileges (like faculty voting rights), and less job protection. As the Society of American Law Teachers has observed, “an increasing number of women are entering law teaching as clinical and legal research and writing teachers. Their entry into teaching increases the overall number of law teachers who are women, but women are less likely to have the security of position and the status that is afforded to their male colleagues.” These jobs also offer much lower pay. Often, the top salaries for these jobs are capped at tens of thousands of dollars less than the starting salary of a tenure-track professor only a few years out of school. There is a similar divide in the ranks of law school administrations—according to an American Bar Association report from January 2011, 66% of those working at the assistant dean level at law schools (such as the people who staff the career services and admissions offices) are female, while only 20% of Deans (the heads of law schools) are female. Those at the assistant dean level may find that their compensation level hits a glass ceiling pretty quickly as well.  Life Lesson Number Four is to go into these arrangements with your eyes open, and to realize that if you agree to a low salary, you may never catch up.

This salary effect is similar to what happens to women in law firms who decide to go part-time or accept non-partner positions (like “of counsel”), or leave and then re-enter the workforce after some period of time. These choices have consequences. In a 2010 report of the 200 largest firms by the National Association of Women Lawyers, 6% of the attorneys are part-time. Of these, 75% are female, and 25% are male. Typically, women working part-time do so during the formative years of their practice, whereas men working part-time are usually at the end of their careers. The result? These women make a lot less money than their male classmates from law school, and that gap widens over time. Sometimes the women opt back into a full-time track (if the firm permits it), or (even more rarely) are able to be considered for partnership even as a part-time employee. Those who are able to make equity partner earned 85% of what their male counterparts make; those who do not have that job protection will make significantly less money per hour than the partners will. These women are paid less, often are given less interesting work, and have positions that are less secure than those of the other lawyers around them. Reports NAWL Foundation President Stephanie Scharf, “Women make up the majority of staff and part-time attorneys at large law firms.  Staff attorney positions offer little possibility of career advancement, and part-time attorneys are often the first to be let go.”

What next?

What does all this mean for law firms and the legal academy? Certainly there are already some women who have risen to the top at law firms and law schools, but the statistics show that they are the anomalies. Some may be childless or have an incredible (nontraditional) support system at home; others may just be superstars.  But should that really be the requirement?

It is worth examining our model of what is required to make partner or tenure. It is a model that was designed for a different era, when the workplace was designed for a worker with a stay-at-home spouse, and it puts a burden on the workers who are not able to rely on someone else to do the work at home. Questioning this model does not mean that we are giving women special favors; instead, it means noticing that we have constructed a model that gives a leg up to people who have no family demands. These women—the same ones who were at the top of their law school classes, the same ones that we cared about and mentored when they first entered the profession—are likely to suffer as a result. We must change the model to take the realities of the lives of the majority of women (and some men, it turns out) into account. If we do not change the inputs, then we cannot expect the outputs to change. If we want more women to stay in the law, then we will have to make changes to the legal workplace to make that happen.

This is not a question of people wanting to keep women down, or intentionally discriminating (most of the time)—but the practical result is the high levels of attrition that we have experienced among female attorneys, and we should care about that practical result, even if the steps that got us there were not meant to be nefarious at all.  On a purely economic level, we can consider the amount of money required to train a new associate when that valuable female attorney quits, or the amount of faculty time required to add a new professor to the ranks when one leaves. Think of how the advice to clients will be better if there are women on the team to offer their perspective. Think of the female students who want female professors to mentor them. It is bad business to lose the women.

But law firms and legal academia are more than just businesses. Lawyers in America play an influential part in our government, our politics, our businesses, and our society, asAlexis de Tocqueville noticed long ago. We recognize that this power brings with it responsibility, which we have codified in the professional responsibility rules and pro bono requirements of bar associations across the nation. Many of us came to law school in the first place in order to make the world a better place. We know that the law is an instrument of change, and we care about aspirational goals like social justice.

Law is important in America, and America is important to the rest of the world.  Consequently, we who are attorneys—and particularly those of us who teach attorneys-to-be—should do more than simply adhere to the minimum of what is required in the workplace. We should make that workplace better, and better suited to the realities of our current lives.

Lawyers are uniquely positioned to take actions that will have far-reaching consequences throughout our society. If women are leaving the practice of law, we will not have women in leadership position at law firms. (Right now, only 6% of managing partners at the 200 largest law firms are female.) We will not have as many women serving as judges.  (Right now, only 26% of federal and state judges are female. Thirty-three percent of the Justices on the U.S. Supreme Court are female—that means three, and two of those three do not have children.) We will not see enough women serving in Congress. (Right now, only 17% of those serving in Congress are female.) And we will not see enough of them in front of the class in law schools, either. This hurts all of us, especially our daughters, who surely are noticing the message that this sends them. As Marie Wilson, the Founding President of the White House Project has said, “You can’t be what you can’t see.”

Law firms who want women to stay aboard might begin by questioning the billable hour model, creating an environment that truly does not require face time (not one that just claims that it does not). This requires partners to support the idea in employee evaluations, assignment decisions, and bonuses, and to mentor associates so that the climate changes. The ideal firm would offer a track that would let people work humane hours and still make partner, with the same kind of plum assignments and salaries that would be equivalent (prorated for the number of hours actually worked) to others in the firm. It would also create an on-ramp to help women who have taken time off to raise children re-enter the profession.

Law schools who want more women on the faculty might think about the fact that any writing an entry-level candidate has done was likely performed on top of another demanding, full-time job, possibly with kids at home. It is wise, of course, to search for talent, but a fatter portfolio is not a perfect proxy for that, and it can lead to skewed gender results. Demanding a large corpus of written work in order to get the job places a particular hardship on women, and might explain why so many more entry-level teaching candidates are men rather than women. If a Ph.D. is required in addition to a substantial body of written work, then the results may well be even more skewed away from women. Think also about the burden that a female lateral candidate with children faces if the only way to obtain a new faculty position is to teach as a visiting professor at the school for a semester or a year (which requires either uprooting your family, with new schools and disruption to the spouse’s employment, or leaving your family behind for the year). Many male candidates in this position can meet the requirement because their spouses do not work or can stay behind with the children while the husband visits; few women are similarly positioned.

Law schools might also consider exploring ways to enable non-tenure-track faculty—significantly more likely to be women—to become fully integrated with tenured faculty.  This could include making sure to invite them to faculty meetings and workshops, so that they have access to valuable networking opportunities and the intellectual exchange of ideas that will make them better professors. Include them in social occasions, such as dinners for entry-level candidates or visiting scholars, so that they can make networking connections that will help them develop, and more fully participate in the life of the law school. Develop a mentoring program for them, just as you would for tenure-track faculty, to encourage their progress. Question the pay differential between tenured and non-tenure-track faculty, especially the glass ceiling that limits non-tenure-track compensation; consider the message that it sends about the value of the employee and the work. Offer job protection, like a non-tenure-track version of tenure, such as the university where I work offers, or consider making all law school teaching positions tenure-track, as other law schools have done.

One could say that the difficulties of which I write are a problem of privilege—the contract attorney or non-tenure-track faculty jobs are still jobs that pay quite well, compared to the average worker, with more prestige than the typical employee enjoys. One could also say that it is a good system that we have, in which we have these alternative jobs that may pay less but also offer more flexibility, because there are people out there who want them.

But while I can see that I am closer to “having it all” than my mother’s generation was, and certainly closer than the heroine of I Don’t Know How She Does It, I remain concerned by the fact that 71% of tenured faculty in law schools are men, while 51% of non-tenure-track faculty are women. 81% of partners at law firms are men, while 75% of attorneys who work part-time are women. That means that many of those female professors or attorneys that may have taught you or mentored you may be making a significantly lower salary per hour than their male colleagues. It helps explain why you are less likely to see women in those leadership positions at the tops of their law schools or law firms. Women are much more likely than men to take “mommy track,” family-friendly jobs, and I can tell you that, on balance, I am glad that I did. But it is startling to realize that once you have jumped onto this track, you will not find it easy to climb off of it. I do not have all the answers to the questions that I have raised about how the legal profession is designed, and how that design affects the women in it, but I do know that I want to keep talking about the skewed results. Especially because my four-year-old daughter tells me that when she grows up, she hopes to be a mommy. And a lawyer.

Photos provided by Molly Bishop Shadel.