Catalyst Award Winner: Gibbons PC

“The law firm is a service business. We don’t sell product: our greatest resource is human capital. So, we started our Women’s Initiative—we were one of the first law firms to begin such an endeavor—because we recognized that the face of the legal practice was changing. 50 % of law school graduates are women now; we wanted to attract the best of the best talent,” said Patrick C. Dunican, Jr., Chairman and Managing Director of Gibbons PC, a top law firm in the New York, New Jersey, Philadelphia and Delaware metropolitan regions.

Named one the nation’s top 200 firms by The American Lawyer, Gibbons recently won the Catalyst award for its Women’s Initiative. Christine Amalfe, Chair of Employment Law at Gibbons and co-founder of the Women’s Initiative 12 years ago, spoke of the importance of maintaining the firm’s commitment to the advancement of women, even in these difficult economic times. “In the law firm world, management changes a little more regularly than it does in the corporate world. Changes on the executive committee, rainmakers…lawyers come and go, especially women lawyers. Women have learned that they can walk away from firms that are not supportive and go to those that are supportive. We wanted to be on the receiving end.”

The Women’s Initiative at Gibbons provides professional opportunities for women including new and experienced Gibbons attorneys and Gibbons clients, to network, mentor and support the advancement of women in all professions. Amalfe justified the program’s expense, saying, “we have committed financial resources, hard work and sweat equity over many years to make things work. You can’t depend on what you said in 1997. In this economic environment, when firms are looking to cut costs and people are losing their jobs, you need to justify the existence of an initiative [which costs] a good amount of money every year. You justify it with the business case. There is no doubt that there is a business case for promoting, retaining and advancing women in law firms and in every company. And if the senior management gets that, even in difficult economic times, they will find a way to continue.” And, there is a business case for it, with Dunican crediting $6 million dollars of business to the Women’s Initiative. “Women [in our client organizations] are making the legal decisions. It is not the old boys’ club anymore.”

The Gibbons approach to the advancement and retention of women has several components, including education, internal and external communication, and organization of the firm around the business case and training and development. “First you have to educate…You have to tell your colleagues about how important it is,” adds Dunican, “and then you have to communicate…and for law firms like ours, this is ‘American flag and warm chocolate chip cookie’ stuff because our clients are asking us to identify our numbers; they are asking us how many women we have and then they look at us 5 years later to see how we are doing. This is really important to our business and we need to have a relentless focus on it.”

The participating women also have the opportunity to interact with top women from their client companies and related companies in ways that are otherwise unavailable. “The law firm business is a very relationship-oriented business. The Women’s Initiative allows our women lawyers and our clients to come together in a variety of events (cocktail parties, panel discussions). It gives our women lawyers and our young associates an opportunity to get direct client contact. This is a huge benefit, particularly for our young associates learning how to develop and market our business. This is an area senior partners watch for growth. The initiative provided me with the opportunity to learn how to do that for the first time,” said Ghillaine Reid, who is now the director of Business and Commercial Litigation.

Networking within the firm has proved beneficial as well. “Through the mentoring segments of the initiative, younger female associates and counsel are paired with more senior women and allowed to come together to talk about various aspects of law firm practice. They can talk about flex hours, work/life balance, the different things they want to achieve in their life at the firm and in their career overall. With that partner, there is an opportunity to talk about pathways to partnership, posturing yourself to achieve that goal, developing certain client relationships, generating a certain amount of business for the firm. The associate can go to the partner for mentorship and for guidance on achieving her professional goals. And because of that, we really have been successful at growing the ranks of women. When I joined the firm 9 years ago, we had 5 or 6 women in the partnership. Today we have upwards of 20 which is a tremendous success,” added Reid.

Often a major issue in the retention of women in the practice of law is the difficulty in maintaining an acceptable work-life balance. “There is no such thing as a part-time lawyer. It is a 24/7 job” explained Dunican. “Our lawyers understand that and that’s why the suite of benefits used to attract lawyers to the firm, the hallmark of [the Gibbons experience] is flexibility. We provide the technology to let our lawyers work when it is necessary. They don’t punch a clock and we don’t require them to be in the office all the time.” Amalfe added, “We don’t walk around and take a headcount as to who is sitting at their desk at 9 PM. That’s the standard in the law firm world; that’s what we grew up with. That’s why women are retreating. So while 50% of the people coming out of law school are women, by the time they reach the partnership level, most of them have left. So there are fewer women in the pool to make partner equals fewer women partners. So the idea [behind the Initiative] was to keep women engaged. In our 2006 class of counsel, all five were women: 2 were having twins; another 2 had flexible schedules. All of our male partners were right there voting with us because they understood how this could work.”

The Women’s Initiative also helps develop rainmakers and business developers, to help women become equity partners. “It is difficult to become an equity partner. You need to have a good amount of rainmaking ability and good amount of client base of your own. That is generally hard for women so we’ve worked really hard with our women over the years. Women make up about 21% of our executive partners; the national average is about 16%. We’re proud of that,” said Amalfe.

But the key to the success of these programs is management buy in and the key to management buy-in is accountability. “You need to go to the management team and explain to them in very clear terms what you’ve accomplished, what you hope to accomplish, what you need to accomplish, what your goals are and how you’re going to meet those goals. When the business case is presented and the goals are made clear, the Women’s Initiative continues to thrive,” said Amalfe.