Best Friends at the Bar: Top-Down Leadership for Women Lawyers

In her continuing quest to raise the retention rates for women lawyers, Susan Smith Blakely takes the messages of her award-winning Best Friends at the Bar project to a new audience. The first two books in the Best Friends at the Bar series, What Women Need to Know about a Career in the Law and The New Balance for Today’s Woman Lawyer, address the challenges of the law profession for women lawyers and the responsibilities of young women to take charge of their professional lives to develop successful and satisfying careers. With this new book, the author shifts her focus to law firm leaders and their responsibility for helping women lawyers meet the challenges of law practice and for retaining the considerable talent that women lawyers bring to firms and to the profession. Through the use of proven leadership concepts, the author tells law firm leaders what others are afraid to tell them about the failings of their leadership styles, particularly as applied to young women lawyers. As a former law firm partner, a chief of staff in public service, and a wife and mother, Susan Blakely understands leadership for women lawyers and how it must be responsive to the values that are unique to women in the workplace.

You will learn:

• Why Women Lawyers Leave;
• Why Law Firms Should Care;
• Why Past Retention Efforts Have Failed and What Needs to Be Included in a Successful Law Firm Women’s Initiative;
• Why Mentors and Leaders are Critical to the Success of Women Lawyers;
• Who the Millennial Lawyers Are and Why Law Firm Leaders Do Not Understand Them;
• What Makes an Effective Law Firm Leader for Women Lawyers; and
• How to Have Conversations about the Important Challenges Facing Women Lawyers Today.

Included in the book are check lists to initiate the conversations between leaders and women lawyers to retain talent and positively affect succession plans for law firms.