When environmental lawyer Loren Montgomery realized she was pregnant eight years ago, she feared she would never make partner at her high-powered firm.
Traditionally, lawyers have been rewarded for working 80-hour weeks and schmoozing with clients outside the office. Taking maternity leave and scaling back on billable hours, Montgomery assumed, would mark her as lacking a competitive edge.
"I was nervous about telling people," she recalled. "I was worried what it would do to my career."
The first colleague she confided in at Latham & Watkins was her supervisor and mentor, Cindy Starrett, who as a partner, expert on land-use law and mother of two boys knew something about defying expectations.
"She never missed a beat," Montgomery said with respectful awe of Starrett, who has been instrumental in getting management to recognize the need to knock down hurdles for working mothers.
Starrett told Montgomery the firm couldn't afford to lose her, and that she shouldn't be bound by outdated concepts of a lawyer's career path. Montgomery could use telecommuting and creative scheduling to make her life work.
In response to an exodus of female talent turned off by the profession's reputation for not being family-friendly, law firm culture is changing. But it still has a long way to go.
Women have accounted for at least half of law school graduates and new hires at the nation's biggest firms for the last 20 years. But they tend not to stay around long enough to make partner and share in the firm's profits or define its mission.
About 42% of women leave the profession in mid-career, and many others defect to government or corporate jobs with more manageable hours. Only 16% of equity partners nationwide are women, and the top management is less than 8% female, according to studies by the American Bar Assn. and the National Assn. of Women Lawyers.
Latham & Watkins, the firm with 2,100 attorneys worldwide for which Montgomery works, does slightly better than most big firms, with 17% female partners globally and 20% in the Los Angeles office. Other L.A. law offices also boast better records, including Reed Smith, where 31% of the partners are women.
"It's pretty much one of the worst, if not the worst" profession for the advancement of women, said Carol Evans, president of Working Mother Media, which ranked the 50 best law firms for women in its August/September magazine issue.
