Gender: Female
Industry: Law
Age: Unknown
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Rainmaking in Second Life

It is raining dollars in Second Life, and it’s not all Linden dollars.  It seems that a number of lawyers have already joined Second Life, the virtual world created by Linden Lab, in the hopes of rainmaking, and some are starting to see real life results.  An article, published in the March issue of the American Bar Association Journal, reported Stevan Lieberman, a DC Lawyer, as having picked up about $7,000 in additional business from Second Life by December 2006.  Lieberman runs a virtual law office in Second Life, but his listing in the Second Life classified section also directs viewers to his real-life law firm Web page.  Now that is what I call professional marketing.

Well, the world has already woken up to Second Life’s immense commercial potential and companies like the BBC, Calvin Klein, Domino’s Pizza, ABN Amro, and Sony have made their presence in the virtual world.  Dell has opened their “Dell Island” and even Coca-Cola has recently opened shop in Second Life with a “Virtual Thirst” competition.

One couldn’t expect law firms to be far behind in grabbing this new opportunity.  Now, the press reports that Field Fisher Waterhouse, a major UK law firm, has opened office in Second Life. We can expect others to follow in the very near future.  And no doubt, the idea is interesting.

I find that Second Life offers a novel approach to procuring clients and interacting with other lawyers and people in a more interesting manner than other communication tools on the net.  When I went to the Second Life website on May 7^th, it showed that in the last 24 hours a sum of $1,538,287 (U.S. dollars, not Linden dollars!) worth of transactions had taken place.  With commerce of that kind, a lawyer or a law firm can hardly afford to ignore the virtual community any more.

05-08-2007

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Should sexual-moral conduct in personal life affect career at the workplace?

Deborah’s dark diary is starting to take effects.  The other day, Randall Tobias abruptly resigned from office after his name surfaced in an ABC News interview of Deborah Palfrey, the DC Madam.  Now, a legal secretary of Akin Gump Strauss Houer & Feld, LLP, has been put on administrative leave after she informed the firm that she used to moonlight for Palfrey.  R. Bruce McLean, the chair of Akin Gump told ABC that the firm had a policy barring full time employees from holding second jobs.  ABC further reported Mclean to have said that the firm was hesitant to dismiss her because she was a government witness in the case involving Palfrey.  In other words, had she not been a government witness, she probably would have lost her job by now.  As of now, she is on “administrative leave.”

My questions are not about the fundamental rights concerning adult consensual sex, nor are they about how dumb people can be (although there will always be people who will never cease to amaze me in this aspect).  My concern is how we, both as individuals and as a society, continually tend to equate an individual’s loss of sexual-moral integrity with the loss of that person’s work integrity.  Character lost, everything lost!  How quixotic!  Years of dedicated service and performance are irretrievably wiped off the slate and become meaningless for acts conducted essentially in a person’s private world and space.  Jobs are lost for personal acts that have no bearing upon one’s professional performance.  Bright careers snuffed out for what somebody did in bed.

I do not advocate sexual misconduct, but do feel that this type of moral policing needs to end.  It is surprising, but true, that if you go through legal literature you will notice that the term “immoral,” wherever used, invariably indicates sexual misconduct.  Crimes like cheating and breaking the trust of humans are rarely termed immoral.  All our morality seems to revolve around a single issue: the sexual conduct of a person.

I think that some people, those who lead and generate opinions, are obsessed with sex.  Then again maybe it’s because that’s what the people are interested in and want to hear.  (Who knows?  What came first the chicken or the egg?)  Either way, sexual scandals have rocked our country time and again.  Many of our dignitaries and public figures have watched their careers topple and become crippled by these scandals.  The net result is the world being deprived of their contributions of competence.  There should be more concern over loss to the economy, and our society, than the loss of their personal characters.

If somebody commits a crime, the machinery of law is there to take care of that.  There is no contradiction there.  The question is whether people, even in this century, should keep on losing careers and expelled from the workplace for acts unrelated to their work.

05-07-2007

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Weekend Judged

Be positive!

Hi everybody.  This weekly tour away from my daily routine does wonders for my mind and spirit.  This morning, I took my ritualistic cool shower, closed my eyes, and shooed away all those thoughts of law firms and law firm personnel that relentlessly clutter my mind.  Feeling serene and revived, I opened the Blog of Legal Times.  The page opened to announce an unmatched message of love and peace: “Fired U.S. Attorneys Keep Firing Back”

I quickly fled to Eri c Turkewitz’s New York Personal Injury Law Blog, and went into the “Interesting Cases in The News” section hoping to salvage my mood.  The page opened: “Can Va. Tech Be Sued For Shooting Massacre?”

Not being ready to engage myself in such an enlightening discussion, I went over to meet Al Nye The Lawyer Guy.  His page greeted me with the news:  “U.S. Death Toll For April in Iraq is 104”

Deciding not to dwell on something that makes me feel so helpless, I opened the Legal Pad.  The article on May 2 proclaimed:  “Reward Offered in Death of Protected Witness”

I tore myself away desperately and plunged into my favorite safe haven at Overlawyered.& nbsp; And the post at the top of the page asked: “I’M BEING SUED FOR WHAT?”

Unable to answer, I went to Peter Lattman’s blog at the Wall Street Journal’s Law Blog to find Lattman crossing the borders of propriety and blogging about something that definitely isn’t new, yet something that we never, ever, mention:  “A New Judicial Crisis: Judges Falling Asleep”

And just underneath that post, Lattman asks:  “Are Women Lawyers Reaching a Crisis Point?”

Noticing that Lattman has chosen to focus on different crises as premiere topics, I called my editors.  “Look,” I told them.  “The public loves negative views.  I used the same study that Peter used and came to the opposite conclusion.  The study says 17 percent of firm partners today are women.  Peter says it’s a crisis and he gets 57 comments!  In my Judged blog, I say this new study proves just the opposite of a crisis.  When I say this proves the presence of women partners has risen at least four percent over the last four years and things are actually improving, nobody cares to comment.  Readers want doom and death.”

“Relax,” they say, “be positive.  You are reading too many horror stories.”

But then again I only read the morning news….

05-04-2007

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It’s really not as bleak as once presumed

Nothing can stop change.  And changes in workplace are dictated by market forces.  An article in the Boston Globe titled “Many female lawyers dropping off path to partnership,” quoted some quite interesting data from the “Women Lawyers and Obstacles to Leadership” report prepared by the MIT Workplace Center.  They prepared the report conjointly with the major bar associations of Massachusetts.

Some of the data shows that:

• More women leave the partnership track than men do.
• Women fall off the track of partnership principally for the motherhood barrier.
• Ninety nine percent of male lawyers have a spouse or a constant partner at home, while only 84 percent of female lawyers enjoy the same privilege.
• Eighty percent of male lawyers have children compared to only 68 percent of female lawyers.
• Although, more men in the profession have children, most of them have never worked part-time compared to at least 40 percent of women lawyers with children who have engaged in part-time work.

The data supports a 1999 Boston Bar Association report that concluded with the warning: “We are in danger of seeing law firms evolve into institutions where only those who have no family responsibilities – or, worse, are willing to abandon those responsibilities – can thrive.”

That does paint quite a bleak picture for female lawyers, but things are changing on the national level.  Initially, the pressures of keeping their status as equal opportunity employers solely encouraged many big firms to improve conditions for women, but recently other factors have started to support this movement as well.  

It is no more a secret that many big business clients have made it a policy to work only with those law firms that exhibit proper diversity.  And law firms have woken up to that fact.  They have also woken up to the fact that most women clients feel more comfortable with women lawyers as primary liaisons.

Take for example Fish & Richardson.  There are continual efforts and programs by the firm to increase diversity, and project a diversity-friendly image, some of their efforts have really paid off.

The firm was one of the first to adopt a policy of promoting “family friendly benefits” to retain attorneys stressed with the responsibilities of children.  In 2005, the firm revamped its paternal leave and maternity leave policies, and today they are among the best in the legal workplace.  In the same year, the firm started providing child-care backup for all its workers.

Fish & Richardson offices host a program called LEAD (Leadership Through Enrichment Action, and Diversity Retreat) each year.  This program, meant for women attorneys and their clients, brings them together and allows them to share the firm’s resources in a congenial atmosphere.  It allows opportunities for networking and career development to women attorneys of the firm in a positive way.  Other major firms have also started to follow this practice of a yearly retreat to promote diversity.  Most are also known to provide childcare benefits with some going even so far as to open on-site childcare centers.

I feel as if the scenario for women lawyers is constantly improving and is not as bleak as once presumed.  If there are 17 percent women partners in law firms today, (as Boston Globe reports) then that is way more than the 12.71 percent found by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in 2003.

So, ladies, keep your chins up and keep working hard.  There is light at the end of the tunnel. 

05-03-2007

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Reading the climates

The Institute of Legal Reform and Harris Interactive conducted a recent survey on the legal climate of each state meant for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.  The survey, named "Lawsuit Climate 2007: Ranking the States," proves what I always suspected.  It shows Delaware and West Virginia to be the states with the best and the worst legal climates respectively, while Los Angeles earned the national distinction of being the court with the worst legal climate.

In spite of considerable opposition, Delaware has managed to top the list for six years in a row, while for the second successive year, West Virginia refused to give up its claim for maintaining the worst legal climate in the nation.

In between the top and the bottom spots, a number of states have moved up and down since last year.  The survey rates each state’s legal climate against numerous parameters including judicial impartiality, fairness of the jury, treatment of class-action lawsuits, and awarding of damages.  The media, companies, and policymakers accept it as a reliable guide to the legal environment of a state.

California dropped one spot from the previous year’s 44th to this year’s 45th position, while Texas slipped down from 43rd to 44th.  Illinois, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and West Virginia followed in order to their proud placements at the bottom of the list.

Two states, which suffered the steepest fall, are Rhode Island, dropping from 26th to 35th, and Alaska falling from 36th to 43rd.

However, Florida managed to move up to the 36th position climbing six spots over the last two years.  But, the best upward mobility was shown by Minnesota that jumped from 14th to 2nd spot, Tennessee that went from 22nd to 7th spot, and Wisconsin, which jumped from 23rd to the 10th spot.

Talking about West Virginia, Tom Donohue, the president and CEO of the U.S. Chamber commented that West Virginia seems more interested in appeasing trial lawyers than in helping to create an employment and business-friendly environment.

It amazes me that some states such as Florida, Minnesota, Tennessee, and Wisconsin have used the survey to better the economies within their states yet others have failed to take any action and remain at the bottom of the list.  The Judge applauds those who have improved their legal systems!!

05-02-2007

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