Some Lawyers Try New Health Trend, the ‘Exercise Commute’

A new health trend offers a double benefit for busy lawyers: By exercising while en route to work, they save time. And they also get where they need to go, because the exercise, in fact, is the commute, explains the MisFits blog of the Washington Post. Among afficionados of the…

Oct 5, 2010 9:01 PM CDT

Family Ties

The private and public lives of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Oct 1, 2010 9:50 AM CDT

Ruth Bader Ginsburg as Wife, Mother & Gender Equity Advocate

It’s ironic that being a parent was what made law school easier for Ruth Bader Ginsburg. For a woman in 1950s America, motherhood was held out as the reason that she shouldn’t even have been there. “I think my life was more balanced,” says Justice Ginsburg of her years as…

Sep 24, 2010 9:21 PM CDT

Justice Ginsburg Chats About Balancing Career & Family When Her Children Were Small (Podcast)

Sep 21, 2010 5:54 PM CDT

A BigLaw Life ‘Measured Out with Coffee Spoons’ Wasn’t for Him

As a number of major law firms celebrated their renown this week in newly released US News & World Report and Working Mother rankings, at least two former BigLaw associates were happy to have found a new life elsewhere. Although he had wonderful colleagues and worked on high-profile matters, a…

Sep 15, 2010 11:11 PM CDT

Repeat Performance: Four Law Firms Make Working Mother’s Top 100 List

Four law firms are once again on Working Mother magazine’s list of the 100 best companies for work-life balance. Law firms on the list are: • Arnold & Porter, which also made Working Mother’s “best in class” list of the best companies for parental leave. New moms at the firm…

Sep 14, 2010 2:32 PM CDT

Family-Friendly Policies May Be ‘Double-Edged Sword’

Do family-friendly policies interfere with women’s ascent to equity partnership? That’s the question raised by the Careerist blog and an American Lawyer article on women equity partners in the country’s largest law firms. The Careerist notes a “big irony”: Some law firms with two-tier, family friendly policies had fewer female…

Sep 14, 2010 12:23 PM CDT

Is $75K the Lawyer Happiness Number? Shoes and ‘Life Assessment’ Part of Trade-off

Lawyers who give up big salaries should be comforted by a recent study showing that after reaching a household income of $75,000, people don’t become more happy with more money. The New York Times includes an example in its article: lawyers and others who pursue a field for high pay,…

Sep 13, 2010 2:51 PM CDT

Meet Julia Morris, Sole Female Associate at Conn. Firm Who Became Its Managing Partner

When Julia Morris started work at O’Connell, Flaherty & Attmore in 1994, there were 16 lawyers at the Hartford, Conn., firm. But she was the only woman among them. Six years later, she became the firm’s first female partner. And in 2008 she became its managing partner, recounts the Connecticut…

Sep 10, 2010 7:19 PM CDT

Blogger Hits ‘Palpable Sense of Entitlement’ Among Lawyers Who Eschew BigLaw

Are elite lawyers who turn down careers in BigLaw for public interest jobs a little too smug, and if so, are they entitled to their sense of entitlement? Blogger Conor Friedersdorf of the Atlantic’s Daily Dish started the debate when he wrote about his continued astonishment at BigLaw’s wining and…

Sep 2, 2010 1:06 PM CDT

Tree Hugger

When Felix Laughlin was a young lawyer in new york City in the early ’70s, his wife decided he needed a hobby. So she bought him a bonsai.

Sep 1, 2010 8:20 AM CDT

Gardere Wynne Partner Moonlights as a Soon-to-be-Produced Playwright

By day, Thomas Hagemann is a trial lawyer in Houston. But the Gardere Wynne Sewell partner also loves to act and is about to see his first play, Breakfast at Eight, premiere at the Main Street Theatre in Rice Village in October, reports the Houston Business Journal. “I sat at…

Aug 24, 2010 11:01 PM CDT

Retired Skadden Partner Now Operates Wine & Wedding Biz, Watches the Weather Channel

At one time, Michael Connery was the lead labor and employment attorney at Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom. But he took a step back from law practice a decade or so ago, after finding a 108-acre property in Stonington, Conn., that appealed to him. Surrounded by tidal marshes, it…

Aug 24, 2010 7:51 PM CDT

Bankruptcy Lawyer Bills $950/Hour, Finds Out-of-Office Work Can Be Productive

William Lobel retired from Irell & Manella in 2008. But now the 67-year-old Southern California lawyer has a new gig—running his own law firm. At $950 per billable hour, he is perhaps the most expensive bankruptcy lawyer in the area, according to the Orange County Register. But that doesn’t mean…

Aug 23, 2010 11:05 AM CDT

How Gen X Lawyers Can Bridge the Gap, Foster Work-Life Balance

The 30- and 40-year-olds who make up Generation X have an important new role in molding the younger Gen Y workers whose brush with the recession has turned them into Generation Comply. That’s the assertion of Miami Herald columnist Cindy Krischer Goodman, who says Gen X supervisors can help bridge…

Aug 23, 2010 11:00 AM CDT