Pace Law School Offers Program for Returning Lawyers

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new-directions-class.jpeg You graduated from law school. Then, you practiced for a few years or pursued a career outside of the law. After you had your first child, you decided to scale back to part time. After the second one, you decided to take a few years off while the kids were small. You planned to go back to work when they started school. That was ten years ago.

If this profile describes you, you are not alone. Many lawyers take time off to raise a family or pursue another profession — perhaps a field they worked in before attending law school – with the intent to return to practice, only to find that the job market has changed significantly while they were away from the law. Not sure if their skills and contacts are relevant in today’s market, they have a hard time returning to the law.

Pace University School of Law recognized the need for a program that helps lawyers return to the law after some time away from practice. Administrators there conceived of the unique and innovative New Directions program to help lawyers returning to practice improve their skills and gain practice experience before going back on the job market. This program was recently profiled in a New York Times article called “Mom? Lawyer? The Ambivalence Track.”

The Glass Hammer interviewed Amy Gewirtz, Associate Director of Alumni Counseling and Relations in the Center for Career Development at Pace Law School, and Associate Director of the New Directions Program, to find out more about this exciting opportunity for returning professionals

The New Directions program, which graduated its first class in December 2007, was created by Ms. Gewirtz, along with Deb Volberg Pagnotta, Director of the program, and Mark Shulman, Assistant Dean for Graduate Programs and International Affiliations at Pace Law School. It was developed in collaboration with the Westchester Women’s Bar Association, which played an important role in helping with extern placement and networking with association members. In addition, Maja Hazell, former assistant Dean for Career Development, was fully supportive of the idea. Without her support, the program would not have gotten off the ground.

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Learning from African Micro-Entrepreneurs

342114129505_0_alb.jpegThis week, I returned to the U.S. from a trip to Kenya. I spent the last ten days traveling through the Masai Mara, seeing animals like lions, leopards, elephants and rhino, and visiting the beautiful and ancient beach island of Lamu. I also spent some time meeting with women entrepreneurs involved in microfinance and offering them advice on how to improve the efficiency of their lending and borrowing practices. What I didn’t count on was that I learned as much if not more from them as they learned from me.

As some of our dedicated readers may recall, I wrote a piece a month ago about the way in which microfinance lending has revolutionized the economic prospects of poor women living in developing countries. Women take out small loans from community banks that lend to them without collateral, using networks of social responsibility to ensure repayment on the loans.

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Why Do Girls Hate Algorithms?

The Glass Hammer team is attending the Futures Industry Association (FIA) conference in Chicago this week.

Only an estimated 20% of the total attendees at the FIA annual conference are women. So why are women so underrepresented in this field? And why is it that the women in derivatives trading mostly work on the business side not on the modelling or analytical side?

Dinka Krstulovich, owner of the executive search firm Martingale International Search comments that the MBA degree just isn’t giving people the preparation they need to become experts in quantitative analysis (known as a quant to people in the field). “To be a quant you need to have strong mathematical background and problem solving skills. Business side people are not quants, they can be in sales and marketing. They can even be the CEO, not they are not quants.”

There are only few schools that even offer a Ph.D. program in Financial Mathematics, including aCarnegie Mellon, Imperial College, London and Boston University.

Most of the Ph.D. students at the top schools in the United States spend years studying complex mathematical theories and algorithms while working on their dissertations in order to prepare themselves for jobs in the quantitative analysis field. It is a long and arduous route to obtain the necessary qualifications to work in this specialized field, and the application process is very competitive as well.

Dinka further explains,“of course there are Master’s programs that can help and teach you a lot and help to get there. It is still as good as having a Ph.D. in science. It always depends on your diligence and ambitions to get where you want to be.” Dinka also noted that Columbia University had some excellent courses on quantitative analysis, for those looking to pursue this field in the New York area.

So, once the women have the skills, will they have the desire to work in the quant business?

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Tips For Updating Your Resume

Are you coughing from the dust kicked up by your resume as you wipe the cobwebs off of it? If you are looking for a new job but haven’t updated your resume in awhile…here are a few pointers for how to present yourself well on paper and get that dream job.

According to Distinctive Documents, an organization affiliated with The National Resume Writer’s Association as well as the Professional Association of Resume Writers, the purpose of a resume is to get you an interview. It’s supposed to reel your future employer in and prepare them to be blown away by your face-to-face meeting.

Sadly, your resume is also an elimination tool. The markets are tight and your competition is inevitably highly qualified. When you factor in online job applications, employers could receive over 500 resumes on their desk for each position. They will sift through them quickly and pick out about 20 qualified resumes that have caught their eye. So its important that your resume, at first glance, says everything about you that you can’t say in person yet.

On their website, Goldman Sachs posts various tips on what your resume should look like when it lands in the hands of your future boss. First, Goldman recommends you consider the visibility of important pieces of information. Think about block capitals or different size fonts to draw attention to those specific accomplishments. At the same time, think about how your resume looks aesthetically. Make sure that the layout flows well and that the font is legible and not too small or cramped.

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Adaptability – from Aboard the Paris-London Eurostar Train

My last article talked about training. If I had to plot a graph of “Dullest vs Most Valuable Training,” I would proudly place proper typing skills in the upper right hand corner. But the mind-numbing hours of practice have certainly paid off over the years. As colleagues pick out letters on their keyboards using the hunt-and-peck method, I effortlessly pump out prose at high speed. (That’s not to say my accuracy’s all that, in triu8rth my backspace key is worn to a shine).

Today, I believe I’ve achieved my personal best. As I type, I’ve reached speeds of roughly 170 mph and I’m feeling pretty smug… as I sip coffee & munch a croissant, tapping my backspace key on the London-Paris Eurostar train.

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Breaking the “Quant Jock” Stereotype

Women, let’s rock the boat in Quantitative Analytics. Mostly known as a field for “Quant Jocks,” this financial sector is yearning for female professionals. In capital markets, where women have been traditionally underrepresented, this is one career where we have been dealt the upper hand.

Quantitative Analytics, or “quant” to those in the know, is defined as the process of determining the value of a security by examining its numerical, measurable characteristics such as revenues, earnings, margins, and market share. This mathematics –heavy discipline often relies on complex computer-driven algorithms to analyze investments and generate an investment strategy.

Scott Gerson of Focus Capital, an Executive Search firm for the IT sector of the financial industry, believes that if women have the same credentials as men, women will get quant jobs over their male counterparts, due to the lack of diversity in the hedge fund world. Scott estimates that 20% of the consultants he places in quant jobs are female. With the intellectual challenges, fast-paced environment and opportunities for advancement; I wondered why more women weren’t pursuing this aspect of finance.

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The Role of an Executive Coach

Twenty years ago, if a person mentioned having a coach most people would have assumed that they were an elite athlete or that they drove a tour bus in their spare time. Today, having an executive coach has become an increasingly common feature of corporate life – but why?

In the past, organizations were relatively simple structures. There was usually one leader to whom a number of sub-leaders reported, each being responsible for a department related to their own specialization. There was usually a clearly defined hierarchy, explicit reporting lines and specific job descriptions. Of course this led to its own set of problems, in that departments did not always collaborate to the extent necessary, but it was at least fairly simple to manage. With globalization has come a complexity which was not present in the old traditional structure. Companies today have numerous different structures and matrices which overlay each other in a complex web of local market and centralized resources.

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One Woman’s Perspective on WOWS

As a young professional woman attending the 13th annual Women on Wall Street conference, I was impressed by what the panelists had to say. Their advice was pertinent, somewhat sassy and all together entertaining. They talked about changes in the work force, changes in their professional careers and changes that helped them achieve personal success.

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Women on Wall Street Conference WOWS the Crowd

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Last night at the Hyatt Hotel in New York, Deutsche Bank held its annual Women on Wall Street (WOWS) Conference. The theme for this year’s conference was “It’s Your Move: Driving Change in Your Career and Life.” Over 2000 women in finance packed the main ballroom to hear motivating speeches and frank advice from a panel of distinguished guests.

Brenda Barnes, Chairman and CEO of Sara Lee Corp. gave the keynote address, in which she emphasized the importance of creating a culture of diversity and inclusion where every employee is valued. She outlined five categories for how to achieve this. First, get people who do the work to know the answers, and create a culture that is conducive to encouraging people who know the answers to speak up. Second, change the representation of women in the company. Instead of just relying on “the pipeline” of female graduates from top MBA programs, companies need to do more to make sure women are represented at the highest levels. Third, create diversity and affinity groups in the workplace and put support networks in place so that those groups can thrive and flourish. Fourth, put your money where your mouth is by paying people more for engaging in behaviors that further diversity efforts. Fifth and finally, work on ways for companies to become more flexible, not just towards women, but towards all of their employees.

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The Revolving Door of Public/Private Sector Careers

I want you to engage in a little thought experiment with me. Think back to the time when you applied to college or graduate school. Now think about those essays you wrote, earnestly explaining to the admissions officers how you needed to obtain a degree from their university. If you were like me, chances are pretty good that your essays were filled with visions of social justice, civil rights, helping the poor or serving the public good in some other quantifiable way. Chances are not good that you wrote something along the lines of, “I need to attend your university so that, immediately upon graduation, I can work for a huge corporation and make tons of money.”

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