Want More Women Partners? Then Name Them, Blogger Tells Firms

Diversity

Want More Women Partners? Then Name Them, Blogger Tells Firms

Posted May 27, 2008, 01:33 pm CDT
By Martha Neil

As he listened recently to yet another panel of managing partners lament the lack of women in the pipeline to promote to partner in their law firms, a blogger had an epiphany.

If they want more women partners, they should make more women partners, writes Aric Press, the editorial director for American Lawyer Media, in an AmLaw Daily post. Today's commonplace two-tiered partnership structures readily allow this option, he points out, since so-called partners don't necessarily have to be equity partners.

Law firms who want more women, he suggests, should make an offer of non-equity partnership to those they value, along the following lines:

"You want to play in the regular tournament? Fine, stick around, and we'll vet you the old-fashioned way. But if you don't, we want you to stay anyway. ... Full-time or part-time work. A slight raise if we can afford it. A decent bonus at the end of the year. We'll commit to seven years. And then we'll see what happens."

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