ALLIANCE NEWS - The Chicago Bar Association

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Meet Mary Smith
thoughtful advisors to assist me with
my career and whose advice has been
incredibly helpful over the years.
If you could give one piece
of career advice to young women
lawyers on the topic of service, what
would it be?
Make time for service – you
will not regret it. Now, maybe some
of you are thinking that you barely
have time to balance work and family
let alone have time for service.
That reminds me of a quote from the
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Alliance For Women Deep Dive
This committee also coordinates
the luncheon at which time
the Founder’s and Alta May Hulett
Awards are presented to the winners.
The luncheon is held in May, with this
year’s final date still to be determined.
The luncheon also wraps up the AFW
“bar year” and offers a great opportunity
to network with colleagues. A
number of law firms purchase tables,
but many other women attorneys
come on their own or bring along
a junior lawyer whom they mentor.
This year, Cheryl Dancey Balough
(cbalough@balough.com) and
Emily Masalski (emasalski@yahoo.
com) serve as co-chairs joined by
Dana Blumthal and Kelly Parfitt. The
committee welcomes ideas about how
to increase participation in the always
enjoyable and motivating luncheon.
If you are interested in assisting with
the luncheon planning and promotion,
please contact the committee co-chairs!
Watch for other committee profiles in
future editions!
Page 12
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Chance Favors
Work extra hard, and be
accessible and flexible in the early
stages of any client relationship. If
your firm allows it, agree to take on
smaller matters for new clients with
the idea that if you do a good job,
more work will follow. Offer discounts
and/or flexible fee arrangements, or
even handle the early work pro bono,
until you have had a chance to prove
yourself – and hopefully become
indispensable – to the client. Keep
the long-term relationship in mind.
To borrow a phrase coined by former
Goldman Sachs partner Gus Levy, “Be
long-term greedy.”
Take advantage of structured
business development opportunities.
Look beyond the obvious marketing
and business development avenues,
such as publishing articles relating
to your areas of expertise and public
speaking. Many law firms hold
women-focused events designed to
bring together female partners with
their female clients. (Men are usually
invited, too.) Chocolate, massages,
and manicures are often featured.
If you are a young female attorney,
take advantage of these opportunities.
Invite your contacts at the clients for
whom you work, and be sure to watch
more senior attorneys in action at these
events. You may learn a thing or two.
Make networking part of
your DNA, and remember, chance
favors the prepared. Putting
“network” on your to-do list is like
saying, “wake up.” It should become
so natural and automatic that you don’t
even think about it. And networking
efforts should not be limited to planned
and structured activities; some of the
most fruitful networking can happen
by sheer accident. Polish your elevator
speech, and be ready at all times to
seize opportunities. (I met an attorney
recently who had been injured and
shared a hospital room with a stranger
who, through networking from the
hospital bed, became his future boss.)
Don’t be afraid to ask. Many
people believe that women are not
wired to ask for what they want, but the
most successful female partners I know
have come to realize that it’s okay to
ask for business, and it’s okay to exploit
their relationships that have taken years
and enormous effort to develop. Men
do. And they don’t preface any of those
conversations with an apology. Know
your value proposition and always be
ready to communicate it with complete
confidence to current and prospective
clients.
Find a mentor, male or
female. Identify one or more senior
partners in your firm that you admire
and invite each of them (individually)
to an informal lunch. Find out how they
go about generating business, how they
were able to capitalize on their network
of contacts, and the firm’s platform to
grow their practice. Ask them about
the challenges, pitfalls or mistakes they
have made along the way. Share your
own thoughts about where you see
opportunities and seek their input. And
then, of course, execute!
Conclusion. Developing
business is becoming an increasingly
competitive endeavor, even more so
for young partners, but it is also an
important piece of a law firm partner’s
ultimate success. If you think of it
simply as relationship building one step
at a time, it may not be as difficult as it
looks; it might actually be fun!
Pamela DiCarlantonio is a Managing
Director in the Partner Practice
Group at global legal search firm
Major, Lindsey & Africa. Earlier in her
career, she was a litigation attorney at
Jenner & Block. She can be contacted
at pdicarlantonio@mlaglobal.com or
(312) 896-8554.