A Major Bank Slipped Up And Showed Why Women Rarely File Sex Discrimination Cases

From The Huffington Post authored by Emily Peck:

“Of all the tactics companies use to silence women who speak up about sexual harassment, the way corporate lawyers question victims in depositions may be the most brutal.

In these taped confrontations, defense lawyers interrogate people on every aspect of their sexual histories, medical records and traumas from childhood.

Rarely do the depositions in civil cases get broad public attention. But this week, the Sydney Morning Herald obtained a transcript from a deposition that revealed exactly how lawyers for a major Australian bank, ANZ, grilled a former female employee.

Enilolobo Malika Oyo, a black woman who worked as a vice president in investment banking at ANZ’s New York office in 2013 and 2014, sued the bank in federal court in 2016 for sexual and racial discrimination — claims ANZ disputes. Oyo is seeking a multimillion-dollar payout.

Oyo had asked the Sydney Morning Herald not to publish her name, but after details of her lawsuit and deposition became news, she decided to go public. Her lawyers sent a statement to HuffPost on Monday night in which she shared her thoughts.

“One of the reasons I brought this lawsuit was to make sure that ANZ knows that it is not OK to treat the victims of discrimination like they are the ones who should be ashamed,” she said. ‘I know I have nothing to be sorry for.’”

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Florida Attorneys Could Soon Get New Parental Leave Rule

From Daily Business Review, Law.com authored by Raychel Lean:

“A new proposed rule governing parental-leave continuances is set to come before the Florida Board of Governors on Friday.

The rule is being considered by the Florida Supreme Court, which has asked the board for input.

If passed, new Rule 2.570 would create a presumption that pregnant lawyers should get continuances as needed, though judges would still maintain the final say. It would designate a presumptive three-month window for timely requests, except in cases where continuances would cause “substantial prejudice” to litigants.

“If the court denies the requested continuance, the court shall state on the record the specific grounds for denial,” the proposed rule states. “If the motion for continuance is challenged by an opposing party proffering a basis for a claim of substantial prejudice, the attorney seeking the continuance shall have the burden of demonstrating the lack of substantial prejudice to the opposing party.”

The rule was unanimously approved by the Florida Bar Young Lawyers Division and the Florida Board of Governors in May 2017, but the Florida Supreme Court kicked it back on procedural grounds.

The high court will get input from the bar’s Rule of Judicial Administration Committee, which has previously voted 15-22 against the proposal.

As things stand, judges grant continuances to attorneys for a variety of reasons, but there is no specific maternity or family leave rule in place.”

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Young People Are Reuniting Immigrant Moms With Their Kids

From Teen Vogue authored by Isabella Gomez:

“Zoë Van Tieghem felt sick to her stomach when she learned that migrant children were being separated from their parents at the United States–Mexico border as a result of the Trump administration’s policy to criminally prosecute anyone crossing into the U.S. without official documentation. So the 20-year-old from New York City decided to step in — and now she’s reuniting families, one at a time.

Zoë, a third-year student at the New School, is the outreach coordinator for Immigrant Families Together (IFT), a newly established grassroots organization dedicated to reuniting immigrant mothers with their children.

More than 2,300 children have been separated from their parents since attorney general Jeff Sessions announced the Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security’s new “zero tolerance” policy on April 6, according to The New York Times. The policy called for immigration violations to be treated as criminal rather than civil offenses, which meant parents were being sent to federal jails or detention centers operated by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) while awaiting trial. Since children cannot be held in adult detention facilities, they were placed in the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, a division of the Department of Health and Human Services. The ORR then transferred them to sheltersacross the country or placed them in foster care.

Although President Donald Trump signed an executive order on June 20 calling for all children to instead be detained alongside their parents, there is still no effective reunification plan or process in place for those who have already been affected by the policy. That’s where IFT, and Zoë, come in: They raise money through GoFundMe to pay for the bonds of mothers being held in immigration detention centers.”

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Are Women Afraid to Compete With Each Other at Work?

From Glamour authored by Kristin Wong:

“At one of my first jobs, I was blogging for an entertainment media company but was eager to take on extra script writing. Shortly after I was hired, another female writer came on board. My editors asked us who wanted to take on a new assignment, and I didn’t raise my hand. She landed the gig, and the next one too.

Now I realize why I held back—I was afraid our relationship would suffer. Anticipating a rift between us made me avoid competing with her altogether.

What I experienced is a real thing. Selin Kesebir, Ph.D., an assistant professor at London Business School, has studied how competition affects women’s relationships. Her team asked women and men to complete a simple typing task with same-gender and with opposite-­gender participants and rate how they felt afterward. The women going up against other women reported higher levels of negative emotions—like feeling nervous, insecure, or hesitant. Men competing with each other were more likely to report positive reactions; they felt energized and excited. And when the women went head-to-head with the guys? They didn’t feel as threatened as with their female peers, nor did they worry their relationships with the men would suffer. It was a girl-on-girl problem.”

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Unsure how your career impacts your kids? Here’s some perspective

From Fast Company authored by Art Markman:

“Nearly every parent who’s working to support a family feels constrained by their career choices: Providing financial security for your children usually takes precedence over fulfilling your own dreams and aspirations. If you’re especially fortunate, you don’t have to choose or compromise. But many of us do, even though most of us never start out thinking that way about our working lives. As kids, we aspire to be doctors or astronauts or pop stars, and only as adults–and particularly as parents–do we begin to adjust our career decisions, first to the realities of the workforce and later to the needs and demands of other people (partners, spouses, parents, children).

My dad is an accountant. When I was very young, he served as a comptroller and then started working in small accounting firms, eventually moving out on his own. The older I got, the clearer it became that accounting wasn’t my father’s passion, even though it paid the bills. When I got to college, it struck me that he spent an awful lot of time doing things he didn’t particularly like. And this observation motivated me to think differently, and pursue career paths I’d find more fulfilling than he seemed to find his.

There’s been a lot of debate in recent years about “passion careers” and “dream jobs,” including whether they’re reasonable things to pursue in the first place. But those conversations typically focus narrowly on individual (and implicitly unattached) job seekers, with seemingly little to say to working parents whose career choices are always influenced by concern for their kids. In reality, though, opting to find purpose and fulfillment in the work you do can benefit your children in unexpected ways. It just takes a shift in perspective to understand how.”

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Using Client Reviews to Grow Your Practice

Contribution from our SPONSOR ZipBooks authored by Aubrey Milligan. Aubrey is a writer and marketer at ZipBooks.

It’s likely that the last time you were trying to figure out a new restaurant to go to for a girls night out, you used review websites like Google and Yelp to decide the ideal destination. Though online reviews are often associated with these kinds of service industries, as an attorney, your practice also provides services that people want to know about. Here’s how reviews (and other tricks) can help you grow your practice.

 

Full disclosure: ZipBooks does more than bookkeeping. We grow your online presence by generating customer reviews, improving your Google search results, and listing your business across maps, yellow pages and more. Mention Girl Attorney and get 10% off forever.

 

Reviews Make Your Practice Discoverable

People turn to Google (and Bing and Yahoo too . . . I guess) for pretty much everything nowadays–and researching a lawyer is no exception. If you want potential clients to find your practice’s website, you’ll need a good SEO (search engine optimization) strategy, which online reviews are an essential part of.

 

The more reviews you accrue, the more Google will favor your business and show it off in the earlier pages of the search results. The earlier you appear in search results, the more prominent your practice is online and the easier people can find you.

 

Reviews Inspire the Trust of Potential Clients

Your reviews may have helped you get noticed online, but the work doesn’t stop there. Businesses that have online reviews are more likely to be trusted by potential clients. According to one study, 73% of consumer respondents trusted a business that had positive reviews more than businesses that didn’t. Write all you want on your website about how great of an attorney you are, but unless you have the reviews to corroborate that claim, you may not be taken seriously.

 

Reviews Offer Valuable Feedback

Reviews inform potential clients about your practice but they also inform you about how your practice is perceived. Reviews from past clients can show you what you do well–and what may need some work. You have to know your weaknesses to improve them, so take the time to address the criticisms that you receive, either by reaching out to a miffed client or resolving more core issues. Use the review process as an opportunity to connect with your clients.

 

How You Can Get Reviews

Now you know reviews’ benefits, but how do you get reviews? The best way is to simply ask.

With a click of a button (or just set it on auto-pilot), ZipBooks will send an email or text message requesting a review from your clients, making the review process easy for you and your clients.

 

You can even install the ZipBooks widget that will automatically populate your website with the reviews you’ve received. No matter how you do it, gathering reviews is a simple and worthwhile way to help grow your practice.

 

If you want a hand in keeping your bookkeeping up-to-date, let us know. We’re happy to add a personal bookkeeper to your team — or just answer your questions. ZipBooks fully supports Girl Attorney, so check out our Girl Attorney special and get 10% off bookkeeping forever.

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ARE WOMEN BETTER TEAM LEADERS THAN MEN?

From Women 2.0 authored by Brenda Hali:

“We are not trying to start a gender war, but we are an organization that is consistently digging for the latest research and insight on how to optimize people potential.

Some of the findings that we’ve come across have … well, given us food for thought. So let’s talk about what we’ve found and how it relates to leadership and gender.

Recently, Gallup published a research “State of the American Manager: Analytics and Advice for Leaders” conducted over four decades about managers and their leadership skills. The research showed findings that women make better managers than men. Why is that? To be honest, when reading these findings, we weren’t sure that it was fair to make such a broad generalization on the topic. However, we’re all ears when it comes to learning exactly what about women, or men, makes them great leaders.

The Gallup study showed data that 41% of female managers have better engagement skills and are more involved with their workforce as compared to only 35% of male managers. Engagement with your organization and your team can make a pretty massive difference when it comes to being a great leader. If your employees feel that you are immersed in their day-to-day successes, frustrations, etc. then you are doing something right! While the difference between 41% and 35% isn’t giant, it does point out that more women seem to possess the skills needed to engage their team.

One thing to ask ourselves is “how do we measure what a good manager is?” For some, a great manager is measured by the output or the productivity of their team. According to the Gallup study, team members of female managers performed better on 11 out of 12 engagement items as compared to team members of male managers. So based on these findings alone, are female managers fostering more productive team members than male managers are? Let’s look further…”

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Any Volunteers? Why Adding Activism To Your Skills Counts As Women Leaders

From Take the Lead Women  authored by Michele Weldon:

“Desperate and confusing times call for action.

Spending your spare time with a purpose can benefit you as well as those whom you are donating your time and energy to assist. This is not about writing philanthropic checks—this is about hands-on volunteerism.

You may not be taking several weeks off from work to help families and children in crisis at the border, recover fom a natural disaster or rebuild lives, but you can volunteer your time mentoring, leading a community group, registering citizens to vote or helping young girls learn how to code.

By volunteering whether on the ground in physical activity or as a volunteer board member of a non-profit whose mission you endorse, you can gather skills that will enhance your leadership and expand your networks. And it does have an impact on your career.”

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ALY RAISMAN TAKES THE FLOOR

From ESPN authored by Mina Kimes:

“The first thing you notice when you walk backstage is how many people are hugging. The room is swarming with female activists, politicians and actresses. Most of them have never met, but they’re embracing one another like old friends, displaying a level of intimacy that’s rarely found among strangers in mixed company. In one corner, Jane Fonda, who is wearing an olive pantsuit with a Time’s Up pin, is chatting with a pair of young organizers; Valerie Jarrett, former senior adviser to President Barack Obama, holds court down the hall. Amid the frenzy at the conference, called The United State of Women, it takes me a minute to find Aly Raisman, who is sitting in a folding chair near the back of the room, deep in conversation.

She’s speaking with Tiffany Thomas Lopez. Like Raisman, who barely tops 5 feet, Thomas Lopez is small and strong, radiating coiled energy. Otherwise, they’re very different. Raisman, 24, has won multiple gold medals competing in two Olympics; she now lives with her parents outside Boston and flew to Los Angeles for this event. Thomas Lopez, who played softball for two years at Michigan State before leaving the program and returning home to California, is 37 and married. Their paths probably would not have crossed if they didn’t share the deep, terrible bond of having been sexually abused by Larry Nassar, the former USA Gymnastics and Michigan State doctor who in January was sentenced to up to 175 years in prison for molesting hundreds of young women.

Raisman, whose stick-straight posture betrays her years of training, sits with her legs crossed, eyes narrowing as she listens to Thomas Lopez recount her story. The former softball player arrived at Michigan State in 1998 and first saw Nassar that year. Raisman does the mental math about how old she was at the time, then glances at me and shakes her head. “I was 4. Jordyn [Wieber] was 3,” she says later. ‘We never should’ve met him.'”

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Marriages With Female Breadwinners Still Struggle. Here’s How To Make It Work.

From The Huffington Post authored by Casey Bond:

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