<p>I’ve attached some exerpts from an article about women working as attorneys below, though I think that some of the comments may provide some perspectives to anyone considering becoming an attorney. This article certainly isn’t any kind of survey, and it doesn’t describe the feelings and needs of all women attorneys, but I think it is interesting reading nevertheless.</p>
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Why Women Leave the Law</p>
<p>By Debra Bruno
<p>Why do the women keep leaving? Sure, we all know the statistics ? just 17 percent of law-firm partners are women, a figure that?s been stuck in the same place for years.
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Of course, it?s not so shocking to see people make course corrections when they realize they?re better suited for other things. After all, folks tend to start their careers when they?re young and foolish. The reasons people go to law school can vary, but they?re often terrible ones: Maybe they want some sort of vaguely defined politics-and-policy job. Maybe they were the star of the debate team in high school. Or maybe they were just the kind of student who got top grades and wanted a profession but couldn?t stand the sight of blood. </p>
<p>And then they start practicing law, and they realize, like many others, that they had no idea what they had signed up for. And they don?t much like it. It helps, of course, if they live in a household with more than one salary, so that they have a cushion while they?re figuring out the next step.
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? Debbie Levy, 50, actually began her career in journalism. But then she decided to try law school at the University of Michigan, although she says she didn?t go ?with a very well-formed idea of what I was going to do when I became a lawyer.? . . . </p>
<p>?I have really good things to say about the law firm and judgmental things to say about myself,? she says. ?I didn?t really think about what it was going to be like for me as a lawyer.? The truth was that although she was an ?OK? associate, ?I wasn?t completely in love with practicing law ? that?s maybe the easiest way to put it.? </p>
<p>While on maternity leave after she had her first child, she decided to move back into journalism, ending up at Legal Times. Eventually she wanted to spend more time at home with her school-age children, she says. She left the paper and started writing freelance articles focused on parenting issues and then books for children.
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? Maria Ramos, 44, has an activist background. Her grandmother was a union organizer, and her mother was involved with the women?s movement and the Black Panthers. So, naturally, Ramos wanted to go to law school, she says, ?to learn how to fight for justice.? By the time she was immersed in the study of law at the University of Pennsylvania, though, she realized that ?law school has nothing to do with justice.? </p>
<p>Even so, facing $60,000 in debt at graduation, she decided to take a law-firm job. She lasted exactly 50 weeks. ?I really had hoped to stay for a year, and I couldn?t make it,? she says. ?I was representing tobacco companies who were being sued for cancer.? </p>
<p>Ramos moved around from job to job, working for a couple of months as a cowgirl in New Mexico, then living with her sister and writing ?depressing poems.? Finally, she discovered her niche in helping organizations with dispute mediation and sexual-harassment training. Today, Ramos works a part-time schedule from home so she can spend more hours with her children, ages 2 and 4. ?The thing that?s most important to me,? she says, ?is my freedom and my independence.?
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? Although many women who?ve left the law are loath to assign blame, Lauren Drake, 38, is quite clear that the structure of law-firm life drove her out. And she has one core complaint: billable hours. </p>
<p>?I have found that the key to being a truly successful professional working mom is efficiency. I am a highly efficient worker, and I can juggle a lot of things at once,? Drake says. But law firms, she says, are designed not so much to complete tasks as to bill hours. ?I felt that something I?m really good at is turnaround time, and I did not feel there was any reward for that,? she says. ?The reward was more work. I didn?t see how I could ever get to the point where I was so good at my job that I could manage it all. The point was the hours.?
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For Drake, the message is simple: If the legal world were set up differently, she might still be there. For now, though, ?that?s not a satisfying way to live my life or to manage my career.?
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<p>My wife practiced law full time for 13 years, and has now taken a 10-year hiatus following the birth of our children (with occasional part-time work from home in that period).</p>
<p>She has no regrets about having gone to law school (aside from having met me there, which I believe she only occasionally regrets), or about the hiatus.</p>