Women’s Networking and Helpful Advice

This past week, I attended an event in D.C. sponsored by Washington Women’s Weekly, headed by Judith Wilson, who left another successful business career to start an organization where career women can come together on a regular basis to share ideas about their challenges and their careers. Judith also publishes an online newsletter with articles that may be helpful to its members, and she profiles successful women in this area.

The speaker at this event was Susan Smith Blakely. I had no intention of writing about Susan’s talk, but once she began, I realized that there would be inspiring and useful ideas and immediately grabbed index cards from my notepad and started jotting notes to capture Susan’s messages.

As background, Susan had been a partner and litigator in several DC-area law firms and a Chief of Staff in the office of an elected official, having a very successful career. She was able to continue her career while she and her husband raised their children. As the heavy responsibilities of childcare, even through high school, fell primarily on her as mom, which is the norm, Susan’s law firms accommodated her with a certain amount of flexibility, and she sought out help when she needed more.

When her youngest was off to college, Susan returned to her law practice on a full time basis.  A few years later, she realized that she wanted to retire from the firm to focus on helping young women who wanted careers in law and business. She has written two wonderful books, Best Friends at the Bar: The New Balance for Today’s Woman Lawyer (Wolters Kluwer Law & Business 2012) and Best Friends at the Bar: What Women need to know about a Career in the Law (Wolters Kluwer/Aspen Publishers 2009), and she is a frequent speaker at various events around the country and a regular writer.  To find out more about Susan and Best Friends at the Bar, go to www.bestfriendsatthebar.com.

A key incentive behind Susan’s decision is that there is such a talent drain in the legal profession, e.g., between 33 and 40% of women leave practice mid-career.

A really cosmic shift in women’s lives occurs when they start a family. This responsibility, a huge one, almost always falls heavily on the mom. Today, some Gen Y men are assuming more family responsibilities than men historically have, and that is wonderful, but women still bear the bulk of it.

A second cosmic shift in women’s lives increasingly seems to be the need to care for one’s elderly parents.  Again, it seems as if daughters assume the greater responsibility for this than do their brothers.

Shouldn’t women have the right to resume their careers after they’ve stepped up to raise their children and again after they’ve cared for their elderly parents? Yes, of course they have that right, and by the way, they have so much more to contribute in law and in business. Why can’t women come back to satisfying careers on a full speed ahead basis if that is what they want?!

Susan encourages women to determine their own definition of success, which may change at different stages of life. Maybe it’s becoming managing partner in a law firm, or general counsel of a corporation, or a top executive in company, or maybe it’s more of a balance of their goals for themselves, their work, family, home, and finances—the balance they want under the circumstances at different stages and times in their lives.

Please, Susan encouraged, embrace and celebrate your achievements with the balance you want. It may change from full time to part time and maybe back to full time as a lawyer, business person or entrepreneur or whatever is driving your desire for your career and other priorities and passions.

If our definition of success in law or business is to reach a top job in our profession, and we have family responsibilities, we need a commitment from our spouse or partner, maybe a superb nanny, and almost certainly our employer must give us the flexibility of schedule we need. With technology today, it is certainly possible to effectively serve our clients and communicate with our colleagues.

Insightful advice from Susan included:

• Find mentors and sponsors who recognize your talent and contributions and want to help you.
• Recognize that coming back to the workplace is not easy, but that you can overcome the challenges and succeed.
• Realize that today’s legal and business worlds are demanding. It’s not 9 to 5.  Some days you may go to an afternoon soccer game or a family dinner and then come back to the office or have dinner and then finish up your work from 10 pm to midnight or later. Other times, when there is important activity in the office, if at all possible you should stay till the job gets done, regardless of the hour.
• Help other women, and men, coming up with and behind you.  Susan points out that women, still a minority in senior positions, are too often judged by the weakest link in the chain. Not right, yet sometimes true.
• Do take care of yourself, as you cannot feel good if you are completely exhausted.
• Perhaps think of the oft-used term balance as harmony in your life and know that it changes with different circumstances and at different times in your life.

This was a very inspirational program. I definitely thought those in attendance were very appreciative of Susan Smith Blakely’s wisdom, as I sure was.