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Member Profile Danielle M. Kays The AFW is full of fascinating women, and the newsletter committee thought our members would like to meet some of them. Here’s the AFW Newsletter interview with: Danielle is a full-time working mother and a commercial litigator at Grady Pilgrim Christakis Bell, LLP in Chicago. AFW: Why did you become an attorney? Danielle: I love to advocate. AFW: Was practicing law your first career, or did you do something else first? Page 6 Danielle: Being an attorney is my first professional job. I went to law school right after college. AFW: Was practicing law what you expected? Danielle: I was in the courtroom trying a civil case alone the day after I was sworn in. I definitely did not expect my career to start off that way! AFW: How are you different from other attorneys? Danielle: I am a 32-year-old commercial litigator with more than 40 jury trials under my belt, plus some bench trials and many arbitrations. But more than that, I love really helping and getting to know my clients and as well as other attorneys (especially women) and try to make that a focus in my career. AFW: If you had to do it all over again, would you choose to become an attorney again? Danielle: Yes, I would be an attorney. AFW: If you could change the practice of law how would you change it? Danielle: Unfortunately, gender stereotypes and biases are still very prevalent in many aspects of the legal field. I wish I could eliminate those stereotypes and biases entirely. AFW: Why did you join the Alliance for Women? Danielle: I deeply care about the advancement and retention of women attorneys in the workforce and about joining together with other women to not only accomplish those things, but also to share experiences and make the road less bumpy for all of us along the way. AFW: What are the ways you make a difference in the world? Danielle: I run races for the American Cancer Society. In the past, I have acted as a volunteer tutor and mentor for underprivileged elementary school children. AFW: Tell us about your best and worst day as a lawyer. Danielle: I think both are still to come. AFW: What else would you like people to know about you? Danielle: I am a full-time working mother. Though I am at the beginning of that journey, I hope to be another example for others that doing both successfully really is possible. Would you like to share your journey with us? We’d love to hear your story. Answer the above questions (or others you would like to answer!) and send to the co-chairs of the newsletter committee for publication in the next newsletter. Sue Pipal at sue@blueprinttours.com, Cindy Van Ort at Cynthia.van-ort@harrisbank. com, or Jill Russell at jrussell97@gmail. com. AFW Domestic Violence & Advocacy Gift Card Drive Huge Success By Rachel Fleischmann This year the Alliance for Women’s Domestic Violence & Advocacy Committee’s winter gift card drive raised over $2,065 in gift cards (up from just over $1,650 last year). The proceeds will go to help women and their children escaping domestic violence and seeking shelter at Connections for Abused Women and their Children in Chicago. Women fleeing violent homes often arrive at shelters without any money or belongings. They do not have the necessary clothes to wear to work the next day or the basic items required to care for their children. The donated gift cards empower women and allow them to buy their own clothing, toiletries, and other much needed supplies as they begin to reclaim their independence and build their new lives. The Domestic Violence & Advocacy Committee thanks everyone for their generous contributions and especially thanks Michelle Talbot for donating her services as a graphic artist and designing this year’s flyer. Rachel Fleischmann is the AFW Programming Co-Chair and an associate at Katz & Stefani, LLC.
Who is Training New Lawyers? Evaluating a Consequence of the Current Legal Market on the Profession By Nancy Mackevich Glazer Originally printed in the January 2012 edition of the CBA Record I graduated from law school back in the Dark Ages. Then, a new lawyer freshly- minted and passed-the-bar licensed, worried a little bit about getting hired but never about being trained. We assumed with gusto that our first positions in law would be full of training and direction. Back then, we were generally right. Law graduates’ plans and expectations all changed in the past three years. Law firm clients tightened their overly- stretched budgets and refused to pay to train new lawyers. As a result, law firms put the brakes on hiring new graduates. All law firm hiring went down. Way down. I. “Experience required” In the past three years, the supply and demand pendulum has swung widely in the legal industry, knocking itself far off-balance. As a result of the market, new admittees have competed fiercely for jobs, and most job postings frequently scream two disappointing words, “experience required.” So pardon my naïveté in asking, like the kid who shouted out that the Emperor had no clothes, but how do we expect recent law school grads get trained to compete for starting and lateral jobs? Are they supposed to waive a magic wand and just become trained? I know a young lawyer who graduated from a Chicago law school last year. He was hired at $13 an hour as a litigator for a small firm. While he was hungry for experience and worked very hard, he was fired some months later because a complaint he drafted almost went out the door with a typo. In 2012, the guys in the corner offices expect new grads to come to them knowing the finer nuances of practicing law. Novice lawyers are supposed to know that all pleadings, motions, briefs or letters must be crosschecked to perfection before being Page 7 blessed --by virtue of the simple fact that they are now practicing law This lawyer’s story is not unique, and it stresses the underlying point – that new attorneys have to somehow get themselves trained How does that happen? How can an inexperienced lawyer guide and mentor her own legal development? The answer lies in part with novice attorneys themselves as well as with the legal community at large. New lawyers can find training in a few places: (a) at nonprofits that provide legal services, (b) from the legal tech and temporary staffing worlds, or (c) from private practitioners, perhaps, with busy practices and overloaded credenzas. As a legal community, we need to talk about this industry-wide dilemma and come up with real ways to meet the unmet need of training. There are novel ways emerging to train attorneys that we should also consider such as (a) creating law firms sponsored by the law schools themselves to teach practical skills (the South Carolina Model), (b) hiring private companies to teach firm associates and new grads, investing their own money, needed hands-on skills, and (c) formalizing a training framework similar to that used in the medical profession. II. Help me help you – what new attorneys can do to help themselves A. The Let Them Eat Cake Model In today’s legal climate, doing pro bono work is one way for an industrious new attorney to get trained. This means (a) selecting one or more of Chicago’s outstanding legal services non-profit agencies, (b) being accepted as a volunteer, (c) attending training sessions taught by practitioners in the various practice areas of choice, and (d) representing clients. In this way, a new attorney learns to practice law and also receives mentoring from seasoned staff or a senior volunteer attorney. Most non-profits cover their volunteer lawyers under their malpractice insurance as well. In many cases, a new volunteer attorney gets out into the legal community and away from the solitude behind her computer screen. She also meets people along the way who try to help her make connections and get hired. I have seen this over and over again; getting out and “doing good” does some good for all concerned. It’s a real win-win. However, letting the nonprofits train our newbies, obviously isn’t a perfect solution. A new attorney has bills to pay, rent, groceries and student loans … Moreover, from an industry point of view, we as lawyers need to decide if this is a training model we want to follow. Perhaps even more importantly, can organizations like Chicago Volunteer Legal Services, John Marshall Law School’s Veterans’ Clinic, and the Center for Disability and Elder Law, to name a few, handle all the training of Chicago’s new attorneys? Do non-profits even want to assume this enormous task? B. Training from the legal tech and temporary staffing world As most firms are employing fewer attorneys, hiring staff attorneys, and even engaging temporary staffing agencies to review documents for document productions, firms once- picky about who they hired and how their associates were trained, appear to be more lax. Many Big Law Chicago firms have taken a gigantic leap of cost-cutting faith in recent years, taking their chances with cheaper labor. The attorneys hired for document reviews by temporary staffing companies Continued next page
Page 1 and 2: Alliance for Women 2011-2012 Execut
Page 3 and 4: From the Office to the Boardroom an
Page 5: Alliance for Women Committee Deep D
Page 9 and 10: Who’s Training New Lawyers Contin
Page 11 and 12: Chance Favors the Prepared: Lay the
Page 13 and 14: Holiday Party Highlights By Elizabe
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