A Roundtable of Their Own

March 17, 2010

Daily Journal

In interview after interview, Ida Abbott kept hearing the same thing: "I feel isolated."

Abbott, doing research for a book on how female attorneys can attain leadership roles at law firms, realized she could do something to help ease the isolation. The legal consultant and former Heller Ehrman attorney sent an invitation to every female managing partner in California, asking if they were interested in meeting regularly with other female law firm leaders.

By January, Abbott's idea was official: The roundtable would meet each month to discuss what it takes to lead a law firm.

"They didn't have other managing partners they could talk to as confidently and as confidentially," Abbott said. "It's not about being a woman. That sometimes enters in the discussion, but we're looking at issues all leaders have to deal with."

The 11 members represent managing partners of small and large California firms and heads of local offices for national law firms. Nine are from the Bay Area, and two fly up from Los Angeles.

"It's an intimate setting that facilitates a nice open exchange of ideas," said Cara Lowe, who leads 32-attorney firm Stein & Lubin in San Francisco. Lowe also co-chairs the Bar Association of San Francisco's No Glass Ceiling Task Force, which is focused on advancing women in the legal industry.

So far, roundtables have focused on topics such as how to train future leaders, how to have difficult talks with partners, how to handle the evaluation process and how to manage attorneys with flexible schedules.

Abbott will lead most of the discussions each year, and Joan Williams, a professor at UC Hastings College of the Law who studies gender issues in the legal industry, will take on the rest.

"There are just some issues where women have a view of things that needs to be shared in a collegial environment," said Barbara Caulfield, who runs Dewey & LeBoeuf's Silicon Valley office.

Caulfield said the group is refreshing because it allows her to think outside the Dewey & LeBoeuf box. "We're very smart people, but we don't see things the way different firms see them," Caulfield said.

Other members include Sandra Seville-Jones, managing partner of Munger, Tolles & Olson; Ellen Kahn, head of Sideman & Bancroft in San Francisco; Jean Lawler, managing partner of Murchison & Cumming in Los Angeles; Alicia Donahue, managing partner of Shook, Hardy & Bacon's San Francisco office and Susan Kumagai, who leads San Francisco firm Lafayette & Kumagai.

About Murchison & Cumming, LLP

With a firm history dating to 1930, Murchison & Cumming, LLP is a premier civil litigation firm with five offices in California and Las Vegas, whose attorneys specialize in the defense of domestic and international businesses, insurers and individuals, at trial and on appeal. The Firm's attorneys also handle employment matters and business transactions. For additional information, please visit our website at www.murchisonlaw.com.