By JODI SOKOLOWSKI
Buffalo Law Journal

You've come a long way, baby. Or have you?

Compared to the 1950s, more women are engineers. More women are doctors. More women are lawyers - but they're not on equal ground with their male counterparts.

"I think the glass ceiling still remains," says Linda Joseph, a partner at the all-woman Buffalo firm of Schröder Joseph & Associates LLP.

Compared to 1975, when she graduated from law school in a class that was 25 percent female, the percentage of women graduating from the University at Buffalo Law School has been holding steady at about 50 percent for the past 10 years.

But the number of women rising through the ranks to partnership or serving on management committees has not kept up with that increase.

Consider these figures from the Buffalo Law Journal's Law Firm Survey, co-sponsored by the Women's Bar Association of the State of New York, Western New York chapter: Out of 396 respondents in the local survey, slightly more than two-thirds of the associates were female. The exact percentage was 69 - which also happens to be the percentage of equity partners who are male.

"From my perspective, we certainly see that gender bias is still alive and well," says Flex-Time Lawyers President Deborah Epstein Henry.

Steps forward, steps back

Joseph recalls being pushed at the beginning of her career toward practices perceived to be women-friendly such as real estate and estate law, though she was interested in litigation. She was also told by male colleagues to go "powder (her) nose" when something important was going to be discussed.

She said more women need to serve on management committees. As for the few who are are currently on management committees at area firms, she said, "My own perception is that - I may be wrong about this - the selection is to basically accommodate the need to be seen as politically correct."

Joseph believes larger firms have been making strides since 1985, the year Jaeckle Fleischmann & Mugel LLP hired her; she was nine months pregnant at the time. She says she was given as much responsibility as she wanted there, became partner in a few years and later headed the firm's litigation department.

"I never felt discriminated against" at Jaeckle Fleischmann, she says.

Most lawyers strive to make partner within seven years of joining a law firm. However, it's taking 10-12, on average, to get there, especially if the lawyers take a break or work part-time, says Lisa Patterson, UB Law associate dean for career services.

"They still want to feel like they're moving on and not spinning their wheels on the side," she said.

Hurwitz & Fine PC President Ann Evanko says that twice in the last decade, her firm offered partnership to women lawyers working part-time, who had been at the firm for 17 and 11 years, respectively.

"It made sense at some point in their career because they met certain standards," she says.

Making choices

Women lawyers are saying it's not that they can't have both a family and a career, but that they won't sacrifice family time for a successful career.

Sakina Riddell recently left Phillips Lytle LLP as an associate to open Riddell Recruiting, in association with a Washington, D.C., recruiting firm. She says she left not because she couldn't handle the demands of billable hours, but because "there's guilt in being away from your child."

"There's not much give and take. You have to constantly choose between one or the other," she says, adding that she's now able to spend more time with her 5-year-old son.

Jennifer Bowen says she left private practice after two years to become UB's vice president of human resources because the university offers more flexibility, onsite day care and "generous" family leave. While she says she had a positive experience at Cohen & Lombardo PC, she believes it would be hard to "stay on a partnership track while juggling the demands of family."

However, many do, such as Amy Flaherty, who returned full-time to Damon & Morey LLP after working part-time after her twins, now 4, were born - while still making partner.

Looking at the local survey, more women lawyers than men work in the government and nonprofit sectors or as a company's general counsel. Affirmative action in government hiring may account partially for that, but Bowen says it "seems to be more common (for women) to take a government job or do something more nontraditional" in order to have the flexibility.

"We have to stop calling it nontraditional," Henry says.

The proof is in the perks

More firms are offering work-life balance options to remain competitive in recruiting and to retain their talent.

"When you have half of women coming out of law school and consequently half of women to recruit, you can't avoid it at all," Patterson says."If a firm doesn't have a woman or minority initiative, then they're behind in some sense."

However, flexibility and work-life balance issues aren't just for working mothers, sources say. Younger workers value intangible benefits more than salary, and even Baby Boomers are interested in slowly transitioning to retirement by working part-time, Henry says.

Henry says firms need to create a written policy on what it takes to make partner and to include recruiting and retention initiatives, especially for women and minorities, in their strategic plans. Organizations such as the local Women's Bar Association of the State of New York chapter, which is planning a program titled "Negotiating Your Way to the Top" and mentors women law students and new lawyers, support women in their goals.

Women's Bar President Marybeth Piore says the survey is a good starting point for programming and discussion, but acknowledges that "there's progress that still needs to be made."