Southern California Arbitration Mediation and Conflict Resolution : Settle it Now Dispute Resolution Services : Serving Los Angeles, Beverly Hills, Century City : Settle It Now Negotiation Blog

Most law firms state their commitment to diversity and inclusivity, prominently featuring on their diversity pages the pathetically few women and minorities in positions of genuine economic power in the firm.  Are they walking the talk?  Let me count the ways.

O'Melveny & Myers ~ We attract, retain, and promote people of all backgrounds, regardless of gender, race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, age, religion, disability, or any other group characteristics.

201 male partners and 21 women ~ 10%.  In the legal realm, you win awards for this.

O’Melveny & Myers LLP has been named to The American Lawyer’s 2010 A-List, which recognizes the nation’s most elite law firms for stellar performance in the areas of revenue generation, pro bono commitment, associate satisfaction, and diversity representation.  This is the Firm’s third consecutive year on the list of 20 firms judged best at balancing the practice of law with their obligations to the profession.

I don't mean to pick on O'Melveny.  It's representative of the whole.  Any AmLaw100 law firm that would like to crow about its great track record in retaining and promoting women and minorities, please do drop by with your results and suggestions to your peers for improvements in these figures that the smartest guys in the room just can't seem to be capable of figuring out.  

Today, Forbes Corporate Social Responsibility Blog is commencing a series on how a serious commitment to diversity results in improved bottom line performance.  I commend that series to the attention of the real powers that be inside AmLaw 100 law firms and they cannot be found in the Diversity Programs, of that I can assure you.  Here's the intro to the McDonald's diversity program series:

How does a company that serves 56 million customers a day across 118 countries become a leader in diversity hiring and retention? According to the inclusion and diversity team at McDonald’s, it takes a combination of knowing how to leverage a multicultural customer base, a C-suite-led commitment to talent management, and academic-style learning labs.

If you're a woman, like me, we have our own garden to tend.  We leave the Fortune 50 and the AmLaw100 out of discouragement.  But part of that discouragement is born of our own diminished expectations and failures to build serious rain-making activities into our daily practices along with our failures to demand assignments to the types of cases where partners are made.

If your law firm or corporation does not have a serious diversity program, click your ruby slippers three times, say "there's no place like the board room," take the She Negotiates signature course, and kick a little butt. 

Remember, as Gloria Steinem said, "the truth shall set you free, but first, it will piss you off."

Cross-posted at She Negotiates.

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How do we "sell" the nation on the idea that women's work is as valuable as men's? Despite the fact that 90 years have passed since women were given the vote and 40 since an entire generation of women raised their voices against unequal treatment under the law, we continue to make a third of what our men do.

What's up with that? and why the Coke ad?

What's up with that is this: we're not negotiating our true market value because we believe it is worth one-third less than men believe their true market value to be. That's what the research shows. Instead of getting angry, let's finally "get even" by learning our true market value; gathering the tools to ask for it; and, then just go get it.

That's what Lisa Gates and I are up to over at She Negotiates ~ our four-week online coached negotiation class for women. First, we give you the tools to re-calibrate your market value. Then we teach you how to get it. It's a simple as that.

Why the Coke ad?

Coca-Cola, one of the most successful products ever to grace our planet, wasn't always a world-wide beauty pageant winner. It once had to sell itself. It's SODA POP for goodness sakes. But it didn't sell itself as soda pop. It sold itself as the staff of life ~ bread. It wasn't a luxury ~ something our then-post-depression post-war parents were not keen on buying. It was a necessity.

So how do we sell ourselves as necessary to the economy and as valuable as bread and butter? Come on over to She Negotiates and we'll teach you how.

Our next course begins on September 13 and you can take it in your jammies! A warning: this is no ordinary e-class. It's a lot of hard work.

If you're ready to upset the apple cart and apply a little elbow grease to the gears and levers of a society that still fails to recognize our value, come on by!

Our best for yet another new beginning,

Vickie Pynchon and Lisa Gates
She Negotiates Consulting and Training

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Cross-posted at She Negotiates.

At 8 PM Women on the Move gets down to business with attorney Victoria Pynchon, author of the Settle It Now Negotiation Blog, who has been called a “master of conflict resolution and deposition skills.”

Victoria recently became a regular contributor to Forbes.com’s “On the Docket” column.

You can call in with questions! 

Call-in Number: (347) 857-2102

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Dear Fabulous Women Neutrals of Los Angeles:

One last time!! before the door closes on the opportunity to have your picture in the WLALA Tribute book and to share two tables with your fellow neutrals at the WLALA annual Installation Dinner and Gala. 

I have three more places at the table and on that ad.  I need your check for $175 and a .jpg by Friday to put you in it!  Please, let's show WLALA how eager we are to cross-refer business.

This is a particularly good year to join us as we begin the first WLALA ADR initiative in its nearly 100 year history.

ONE HUNDRED YEARS! of women lawyers - way past time to reach and firmly occupy the higher reaches of the profession.  We've been graduating from the nation's law schools in nearly equal numbers with men for more than 20 years.  My own U.C. law school class (King Hall, '80) was 50% women thirty years ago.

The ADR pipeline is full of competent -- indeed glorious -- women.  Yet the statistics at the top remain grim.

Chopped Liver?

Why is your ADR practice not everything that Tony Piazza's or Eric Green's or even Steve Cerveris' is?  Research shows that both men and women have negative implicit attitudes toward women in leadership and authority positions.  The good news is that women are slightly less pre-disposed than are men to picture a man in a suit when they're looking for access to money and power.  I've had at least half a dozen women commercial litigators look straight at me and say "I don't know any women mediators."

Huh????

Followed by, "well their names are never on the lists [circulated in my firm]."

Women, with their slightly reduced inability to "see" women in authority positions, are our foot in the door. And the new WLALA ADR Committee is our opportunity to open that door wide.

As a member of the CPR-led Joint Task Force on Diversity, I have heard the verdict of JAMS and the AAA.  "The market has spoken.  Commercial lawyers just don't hire women and minorities."

What????

We're advocates, for goodness sakes.  When we come into town we have to register our skills of persuasion with local law enforcement authorities.  We're change agents, opinion makers, powerful holders of the keys to the kingdom. 

And the market has spoken? 

We make the market!

This year's ADR Committee is dedicated to closing the gaping void between men and women neutrals.  We're not going to ask for special treatment, picket the LASC's ADR office, pass new laws or burn our ADR certificates, Super Lawyer plaques, Ivy League diplomas, or our bras (not at this age!). 

We're going to market like no one has ever marketed before and we're going to do so as a group so that we don't each hesitate, as we women tend to do, to promote ourselves and our services.

2010 and 2011 will be the years in which top women will refer to other top women.  2010 and 2011 will be the years in which we close the income gap not only between men and women neutrals but between men and women lawyers (its 40% at the top).  2010 and 2011 will be the years in which we make a market younger women lawyers will be entering in the next decade and the one after that -- one in which they'll flourish after they grow weary of fighting over interrogatory objections and e-discovery.

How?

Marketing.  Proctor and Gamble does  not say, "well, the market doesn't want a new improved laundry detergent."  P&G asks "how?" not "can we?"  And it certainly never says "we give up, the market has spoken."

We're putting our first stake in the ground on September 16 at the  WLALA Gala.  There's no event more important for women neutrals to attend this year. 

Our current attendees will appear in two full-page ads in the Tribute Book and two color flyers to be distributed at the dinner. 

To date those women are Eleanor Barr, Joan Kessler, Lynne Bassis, Katherine Edwards, Laurel Kaufer, Linda Klibanow, Denise Madigan, Stephanie Maloney, Deborah Rothman, Jan Frankel Schau, Gretchen Taylor, Caroline Vincent, Diane Wayne, Linda Bulmash, Lisa Gates (my She Negotiates business partner), Kathy Balin, and Erica Bristol. 

We need three more women neutrals to fill table two.  If you want to sit at another table, ask a woman litigator to change places with you while whispering "cross-refer" in her ear.  The key is that you'll be there to network.  You'll show your support to WLALA by showing up and WLALA women (among the most entrepreneurial in the Bar) will see your beautiful face and panel affiliation or business name in the  Tribute Book while enduring the inevitably tedious speeches at these events. 

Do you want to double your income by 2012?  If we've lasted this long in a profession that was solidly male when so many of us were in high school, we can close this gap by coming together and just doing it.

And if the $175 is too steep a price during these recessionary times or if you'll be out of town or otherwise engaged on the 16th of September, please let me know that you want to be a member of the new WLALA Committee by return email.

Our first event will be an afternoon on arbitration in October with CPR CEO Kathy Bryan and other powerful women attorneys, GC's and CEO's who arbitrate, either as advocates, as clients or as arbitrators.  The panel will be moderated by complex-commercial AAA arbitrator Deborah Rothman.

Shock me!  Let's fill Table Three!!

I look forward to hearing from you and to kicking the last pitiful shards out of that darn glass ceiling.

Best,

Vickie

Victoria Pynchon, Esq., Incoming Chair, WLALA ADR Committee
ADR Services, Inc. and She Negotiates Consulting and Training

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My friend's Women's Bar Association is looking for a speaker. 

They wanted that other woman who speaks on the topic of women negotiating.  You know the one . . . what's her name.  Yes, that's her.  The annual meeting committee gave her a ring and she quoted them $10,000 for an hour keynote.  To be fair, an hour keynote takes all day.  First, you've got to travel, then stay over night, then, if you're really serious about being of service to women lawyers, you get up early and listen to the morning speaker, talk to your table mates, find out what their challenges are, and, then alter, ever so slightly, your noon keynote to deliver exactly what this particular unique group of women need to hear.  You stay after, of course, to answer questions and sell copies of your book, which is, after all, your time, the time you'd be spending anyway spreading the good news that women can negotiate away the glass ceiling and the pay gap and their kids' private school tuitions.  Because that's just how you roll.  So it's never just an hour.

Still.

$10,000. 

"Did you negotiate with her?" I asked.

"The search committee didn't even try," said my friend.  "They figured her price was retail."

I don't mind being second choice.  That other woman, well, shoot, she pretty much started the whole women-negotiating-revolution.  I get it.  So I gave my quote and added, "but I'm not a suit on a hanger at Bloomies.  You don't have to buy me retail.  Remember some of what I taught you about money and value."

"Uhhhhh, make an aggressive first offer?"

"Well, yes.  But that's not what I'm talking about here.  I'm talking about the money is meaningless lesson.  You remember.  You can't eat or drink it.  It won't actually do the surgery nor build an addition to your house.  Remember how it just evaporated overnight right before George Bush left office?  Remember how your house was worth $500,000 on Monday and two fifty on Tuesday?

'Money has a value only because we give it value.  It's only worth what we say it's worth.

"Uhhhh . . . . "

"O.K.  I know.  I talk too much and too vaguely."

Here's the deal.  My price is X + expenses.  That's negotiable.  I don't tell you it's negotiable because as soon as I do you'll start negotiating!  And since it was me who taught you to negotiate, I'm not wild about bargaining with you.  The desire to teach is way to strong in me.

"I'm negotiable.  So is that other woman, the one whose book title is Ask for It!  And money isn't the only measure of value.  It would also be of value to me for your women's bar association to sell my book.  Of course I'll bring it with me to autograph and the like.  But you could also include it on your invitations.  If someone in your Bar Association blogs, they could give it a review.  If you haven't already pledged that you wouldn't give away anyone's email address, you could give me your mailing list so I can stay in touch with your members.  Each of your members also has her own network.  We could brainstorm about ways that you could give me the benefit of my pre-speech networking acumen to get more women to your convention.  It's hard to sell seats these days.  How many people are you expecting?  What if we double that?  Could you pay me my full fee then?

"None of us is a suit on a rack.  And what we can do for one another is so much greater than opening our wallets and shelling out a few dollars that money sometimes seems just laughable.  So let me say this again.  I know you've heard it before but I want to highlight it here again.

"I am a store of value and you are too.  My network, my social capital is a store of the store of value of each member in it.  And in that, you and I are both rich.

"Got it?"

My friend, my student, is smiling, even though I can't see that over the telephone.

"I got it."

"Now what was that offer again?"

 The next game changing She Negotiates workshop is still open for a few last-minute members.  We start on Monday.  Don't be a suit on a rack.  Join us!

(cross posted at She Negotiates)

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Pictured:  Chere Estrin, Chairperson, Board of Directors, The OLP;  Editor-in-Chief, SUE for Women Litigators; Editor-in-Chief, KNOW the Magazine for Paralegals; CEO, Estrin Education, Inc.

I've written about happy and unhappy lawyers before - here and here but I've rarely framed the issue as succinctly or as well as Chere Estrin at the Organization of Legal Professionals.  In the sidebar to her article The Secrets to a Stress Free Career, Estrin says work does not give you stress. Feeling bad about work gives you stress. 

What does Estrin know? 

Quite a lot. 

"I used to be the most stressed-put person I knew," says Estrin.

I averaged 90 hour weeks in the legal field as an executive in a $5 billion corporation, traveled three weeks out of four, answered to some big shots who thought they owned the planet, and managed hundreds of people.  It wasn’t much different when I was a paralegal manager.  There were critical deadlines to meet, difficult attorneys to juggle, anxious clients to handle and something called a “minimum billable hours” requirement, now referred to as “suggested” hours in a more politically correct and less actionable environment.  I recently looked at a picture of myself during that era.  I was holding my new-born niece, Cristina, a joy to behold and I looked like I just escaped from a train wreck and stopped by to say howdy.

Sound familiar?  After debunking some stress myths (you should go right over there now to read them) Estrin suggests the following:  

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(cross posted at She Negotiates)

I asked one of my consulting clients for a testimonial yesterday.

"Anything," she said, "it's genuinely changed the way I do everything.  It's not just the shift in my business relationship with [BigBiz, Inc.].  I dumped a boyfriend last week because of our conversations!  So, seriously, what would you like me to say?"

My client and I, like the few women commercial litigation clients I had during my twenty-five years as a lawyer (2%?) were quickly becoming friends.  And I was proud of her.  Truly proud.  Like a parent would be.

"I'm proud of you," I finally said, even though I'd been thinking it for weeks.  "You've shifted the power in your working relationship and that was difficult to do.  You were persistent.  You're a first class learner.  And you've been brave."

She laughed, the way we women do when we're praised, wanting the moment to pass instead of savoring it a little, particularly when we know deep down we've genuinely achieved something important in our own lives and careers but don't want to appear self-satisfied.

So I said it again.  "I'm really proud of you.  You've done great work and you never gave up.  You didn't fold to the power of BigBiz, Inc.  You stood up for yourself."

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Do come visit us and consider enrolling in our July 19, month-long, coached negotiation course here.

The blog, which is today offering prizes, is here.

Testimonials

It's the quality instruction, real world experience, and bevy of resources brought to you by Victoria Pynchon that makes this course a stand out. On the internet a lot of people purport to deliver courses that will 'transform your life' or 'bring you to a new level in your business,' but often prove to be nothing more than advertising vehicles to enhance their lives and not yours. Victoria, with the support of that fabulous woman behind the Craving Balance curtain, Lisa Gates, has created a real winner with this course. And yes, it is transformative--it changes your beliefs about what you're capable of doing and having, because you're given the know-how and tools to make it happen."

Doreen Lima, Wildly Successful Personal & Professional Development

 "I am embarrassed to admit that I had only a glimmer of the science behind the negotiation process. And I had not given much thought to how often we bargain every single day in every part of our lives. Victoria has opened my eyes and helped me to fill a huge gap in my business and life tools. The change in my attitude toward money was a surprising bonus! I no longer dread talking about the fees I charge for my services. I may never eagerly embrace negotiation, but I no longer fear it and better yet, I appreciate and enjoy the process now. Thanks to She Negotiates, I am making great bargains and walking away when I say it’s the right time."

CaZ of Writing Bytes and 2 Chicks at Home

"Thank you so much Vickie and Lisa for raising my level of awareness of the power of negotiation, for helping me re-examine my self worth, and for encouraging me to stand up for my bottom line and not be swayed by someone else's bottom line."

Lori Lacey, Corporate Learning Specialist and Coach

"I learned more during this hands-on negotiating course than in another higher-priced class I took. Victoria and Lisa helped me make the emotional changes necessary to demand a higher value for my work, and taught a step by step process for getting the most from sales negotiations." 

Linda Gryczan, Mediator

 "Victoria and Lisa are an amazing team. Their individual areas of expertise create the perfect blend and balance for understanding the subtle nuances of the art and science of negotiation, and they do so in a way that is fearless and authentic. Thank you for this incredible opportunity. You've empowered me and I am grateful."

Debra Healy, Beaverton, Oregon

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