Kwame Brown? Is he not worthy of a thread?

Male attorneys with preschool-age children are more productive than other male attorneys because being in the office is a lot less stressful than being at home with preschool-age children.

As a male associate with three kids under the age of three, I concur with 2:21. Another man's hell is my refuge.

"The moral of the story for law firms: hire more childless women."

Not quite, Kash. The moral is: hire more *barren* women. Childless can have children and lose value. Barren women can't.

Concur with 2.25. The office was quiet solice on Easter afternoon compared to the racket at home - complete with cousins, aunts, uncles, etc.

The study assumes that productivity is measured in the billable hour. It probably takes no account for the fact that women with children have to become more efficient with their time, getting more work done in fewer hours.

"The moral of the story for law firms: hire more childless women."

firms are likely hiring childless women, but they don't stay that way.

Childless women have this icky tendency of turning into mothers.

So what if they're "less efficient" as long as the client is paying. Success isn't measured by the number of things you can get through, it's measured by your profitability.

I say, fire the women once they have babies. Excellent.

Was there any info regarding the average number of billable hours for each? And any consideration for the fact that high billable hours doesn't always equate to high productivity?

When I was at my former firm (top 10 biglaw), 70% of the litigators were men. All but two were married, and even those two had fiancee's. Of the 30% who were women, only one was married, and even she left within a year of having a baby. Was there any performance-based reason why the women couldn't be married w/children?

I'm going with my hypothesis that men having wifely support at home makes it easier for them to perform at work, while husbands at home make things harder, not easier, on them. Husbands expect working wives to perform certain roles that working wives don't expect working husbands to perform. Add children to that mix, and you get a lot of demands on women that just aren't on men, and men are exacerbators of that imbalance.

Go ahead. Tell me why I'm wrong.

How is this study flawed?

Billable/Actual hours only matters to the extent that an associate with a low ratio of billable to actual hours could produce more total billable hours by increasing the billable work he or she can get done in an hour. Assuming a woman with children is not using the extra time she has because she gets more billable work done per hour to produce more billable hours, her ratio of billable to actual hours is irrelevant in terms of her productivity to the firm.

From the firm's perspective more billable hours = more productive.

childless woman = no life but work, so must bill a lot of hours
father = has wife and kids at home who require him to work hard and bring home the bacon, i.e., must bill a lot of hours
single male = more money can handle and lots of options with ladies; also, hung over most days, i.e., not quite as productive
mother = lots of obligations at home and likely a second income from her better half, hence not as productive

2:50 is right.

But this shouldn't be surprising information. Most women rarely make it up the ladder b/c of all the other demands on their time (husbands, children, etc). Men get married for the support structure.

Further, the women that actually do make it to the top of BigLaw are miserable whores.

The glaring hole in this study seems to be whether the fathers have stay at home wives. Obviously, the women surveyed work. The men with young children are much more likely to have stay at home wives. In addition to taking care of the kids, they typically do most of the other household related tasks, so all the guy has to do is work. Of course he's going to be more productive. I wonder what the stats are like for those guys who have wives that also work full-time.

Say...are there any laws against sterilizing my employees?

2:50, 2:52 and 2:54 -- hit the nail on the head

As a child-less female attorney, I feel the "miserable whore" stigma constantly over my shoulder. And the pressure to find a man and get married is non-stop from all angles. See Miranda Hobbs, "Sex and The City."

"Consider two propositions: The overwhelming majority of women are heterosexual. The overwhelming majority of women are mothers. The degree to which social preferences and prohibitions - otherwise known as compulsory heterosexuality - contribute to the "fact" stated by the first proposition has become relatively accepted within feminist, and certainly queer, theory circles. Feminists have become, to varying degrees, sensitive to the technologies of power that steer, suggest, coerce, and demand that women be heterosexual and that abjection lies in the refusal of such a demand.

[*184] Yet the same cannot be said of the second proposition laid out above: Most women are mothers. Why is it that we are willing to acknowledge that heteronormative cultural preferences play a significant role in sexual orientation and selection of sexual partners, while at the same time refusing to treat repronormative forces as warranting similar theoretical attention? 10 If you believe the statistics, women are more likely not to have borne a child in their lifetimes 11 than to be lesbian. 12 Is there any principled reason why legal feminists might not want to devote some attention to exposing the complex ways in which reproduction is incentivized and subsidized in ways that may bear upon the life choices women face? To ask such a question is to risk being labeled unfeminist. 13 To [*185] suggest that we reconceptualize procreation as a cultural preference rather than a biological imperative, and then explore ways in which to lessen or at least modify the demand to conform to that preference, is to initiate a conversation within feminism that has been explicitly and curtly rejected by some legal feminists. However, it is a conversation that necessarily demands feminist discussants, for only by positing the possibility of female identity divorced from mothering can we make mothering ethically and politically intelligible. Surely mothering grounds the lives of many women, but that ground, once taken for granted, risks obscuring the figure of woman, whose identity extends beyond her role as mother.

Notwithstanding the prevalence of both childlessness and lesbianism, 14 somehow reproduction continues to be regarded as more inevitable and natural than heterosexuality. That is to say, repronormativity remains in the closet even while heteronormativity has stepped more into the light of the theoretical and political day. Reproduction has been so taken for granted that only women who are not parents are regarded as having made a choice - a choice that is constructed as nontraditional, nonconventional, and for some, non-natural. 15 In a telling switch, the [*186] issue of choice flips for lesbians, who are constructed as choosing motherhood, given that lesbians continue to have an identity understood as non-reproductive in nature." 101 Colum. L. Rev. 181

Glass,

You are wrong. Just kidding. But I think support is only part of the story. It isn't so much about support at home as what do you want to do with your time. The wife with child wants to be at home with child. She often has an additional income from her husband which is very comparable and often greater than her own to rely on. The man with child often wants the same but he is often also motivated by need to support wife and child, which makes him work harder. Sometimes the wife works and makes more, but usually the wife makes less or doesn't want to work once she has kids. If you have a wife and three kids at home to feed keeping your job becomes a lot more crucial than if it is just you. Also it keeps you a lot poorer. So you are less likely to be able to comfortably survive a long period of unemployment.

Frankly, I've often thought that guys just settle down and stop going out drinking as much once they get married and have kids. Hence their productivity goes up.

But the childless women. You just can't complete with a 45+ single woman. She has nothing to distract her except her cats at home. She can work Friday nights and Saturday mornings and no one really cares. While a childless 45+ male is getting pestered by his much younger girlfriend leave the office and take her to dinner like a proper sugar daddy. The women are machines in comparison. Frankly, if there wasn't the payoff of the childless woman, I don't know how many lawfirms would be hiring women in the numbers they do hire them. The childless woman is the bomb.

2:50 is taking the extremely short view. If I were a client, I would want that mom who is extra-efficient on my matters, and not the attorney who takes his sweet time with my work. If it's all about how many hours you're billing "right now", then yeah, women are less profitable, but if it's about the long-term relationship with the client, I'll take the efficient woman who bills fewer hours annually any day.

Mr. Burns, sir,

A brilliant notion, sir. I'll get right on paying some lobbyists to pay some politicians to legitimize that.

NY to free abortions!

sick, just sick

Biglaw father agreeing with 2:21, 2:25(1). Because time spent at home is basically a nightmare and I need the money/job security badly, I'm glad to bill tons of hours.

crappy biglaw dad and others: why are kids so annoying? they run around and yell all day? do you live in a house with a yard or an apartment?

3:03 said lesbian...

3:11,

You are assuming a whole hell of a lot there about why mothers bill less. Sure, it could be a necessity-borne efficiency. Then again, they could just be rushing to pick up little Tyler (Madison) from soccer (ballet) practice. Put another way, you are assuming things about relative quality of work that are counterintuitive and unsupported by the study. Is it really so unlikely that mothers make less efficient employees?

With the exception of "mothers," the rest of the post title supports a conclusion that one's productivity is inversely correlated with the amount of time one spends on ATL.

I will fully cop to being less productive now than I was pre-children. Pre-children (even post-marriage) I was a billing MACHINE.

Now, I have to compress my day into the 10 hours or so that I have childcare. Sure, I can get back on line after the little ones are asleep IF they decide to go to sleep.

But I know I am less productive during the time that I have available to work. I assume that is related to the fact that I haven't slept longer than a three-hour stretch at any point during the past 30 months.

3:46

The answer to your question might be in a quck survey of the posters here. How many here are mothers compared to those who are not (e.g., fathers or childless individuals)?

The mothers are probably actually working while the rest of us waste time reading the comments on this website and "billing" the time to a client.

US > Canada

3:03 - worst. post. ever.

This isn't all that surprising. Child rearing falls largely on female shoulders in most families. Also, there are way more single mothers than single fathers out there (assuming that parenthood is defined in the familial and not biological sense for purposes of this study). The fact that mothers are collectively more burdened than fathers by child rearing responsibilities should be perfectly intuitive. The only mildly surprising finding is that kids make men MORE productive. But when you think about it, this is also somewhat intuitive. Men don't typically relish being at home and taking care of kids, so a guy with a family has more incentive to stay at the office and work late. When he was single, he was probably cutting out at 6:00 for happy hour, staying out until 2:00AM at clubs, and coming into work after 9:00AM.

At my former job, the old, lame, married guys with kids were by far more productive than the young single guys. Us single guys went out like 5 nights a week, got drunk, and hooked up with countless girls. The married guys really had nothing to look forward to except work and living vicariously through our exploits.

Did they need a study to point this out? Duh. Wait 'til you get married and have kids. Someone has to be there for the little terrors and that someone has to have flexible hours. I suppose you and your spouse could just flip a coin, but probably it will be the wife that takes care of the home front.

The 35 year old plus associates that are single work the hardest at my firm. They have nothing else to do with their time, and may need to support themselves in the future. The vicious circle will ensure that they remain single. Law firm a$$ and a 70 hour work week don't make them attractive mates.

"and living vicariously through our exploits"

Sure.

"How is this study flawed?

Billable/Actual hours only matters to the extent that an associate with a low ratio of billable to actual hours could produce more total billable hours by increasing the billable work he or she can get done in an hour. Assuming a woman with children is not using the extra time she has because she gets more billable work done per hour to produce more billable hours, her ratio of billable to actual hours is irrelevant in terms of her productivity to the firm.

From the firm's perspective more billable hours = more productive. "
-----------------------
It is flawed because efficiency has to be taken into account in any measure of productivity. It doesn't matter if one associate is billing more hours if that associate can't meet a deadline because he or she is too slow or the work is wrong and needs to be corrected. If I'm supervising two associates, one of whom can get the job done in 6 hours v. the other who takes 10 hours, I'd say the faster associate is more productive because now I can give her something else to do.

The firm cannot afford to have inefficient, high billing associates, if their associates can't handle the workload coming through the door.

Post the study showing that mothers are in fact more efficient with their time as claimed by some here.

Oh wait, that is just a PC argument that women toss out there without any scientific support anytime this issue comes up.

Abortions should be given out in Biglaw offices like flu shots.

I think (as a man) that my least efficient work comes at times when I have something else major to worry about (closing on my home, death in the family, wife is sick). I don't find it at all hard to imagine that most people, male or female, would agree with this. Now, I think it's pretty self-evident that a woman with children, especially young children, has a LOT of extra things to worry about, many of them important. I don't see how it's sexist to say that she will be less productive, and I certainly agree with 4:40 that I doubt there is any scientific evidence proving the contrary.

The people in this study are not working at BigLaw- the average billables for the childless women was 1597.

3:20 is hilarious.

So, I guess I'm in the minority for sharing child-rearing tasks with my (also an attorney) husband....?

If Biglaw should fire women because they might have babies one day, shouldn't they also refuse to hire men until they are married with children?

"the average billables for the childless women was 1597."

And that was the highest billing group? When was this study done, 1950?

Here's my question: Why aren't men "distracted" by kids at home? Is it because they take less responsibility for them than similarly situated women? I work more hours, make more money, and have a higher-stress job than my husband (also a lawyer), yet it is I who am responsible for literally everything pertaining to our life at home, and our kids' lives. It is my life that suffers (not my hours, as I start working at 6:30 AM so I can leave for home at 6:30 PM), not my husbands. (Yes, he's a jerk. I know.)

Glass, you're clearly a sucker and you get--and deserve--what you tollerate.

If you're really the breadwinner, tell him to wear the apron or boot his ass to the curb.

the moral of the story is mothers should not tell their employers they are mothers.

some notes about the study:

The average size of the firms in the study was less than 48 attorneys so it is pretty clear that we are not talking about exclusively biglaw attorneys.

The percentage of fathers with stay at home spouses was significantly higher than that of mothers with stay at home spouses.

The average years of experience for the non-mothers was under 7, while the mothers averaged over 11 years and the fathers averaged over 15 years of experience.

And a note to Glass C. Ling: there is no such thing as a living martyr.

Glass C. Ling,

You go home at 6:30 and you still complain? You've got some balls, mister.

1597 is the highest average # of hours!? This isn't 1950, 5:04, it's Alberta, Canada. End of discussion, and end of relevance to our situations.

Let's look at a US city next time.

They need the rest of their time to hunt meese?

5:40:

I go home at 6:30 because that's when my childcare ends. I continue working at home. I NEVER bill less than 2200/yr., and I'm not bragging. I think there's something wrong with this whole setup. My husband, if it weren't for travel, would never bill more than 1400 or 1500. (His travel pumps his hours up to around 1850.)

Only 2200? I should hope you aren't bragging.

if billable = collected, then the study is not as useless as it seems to be....

Glass,

I realize you work hard. But you probably realize that its not your partners' fault that you have childcare ending at 6:30. Even if you are exceptional, it's does not change the fact that a person, generally, working under this sort of strain, will tend to be less efficient than someone who is not.

Glass,

Perhaps you and your husband need to talk.

Glass - you need to nip this in the bud. Now. All of my friends who have husbands who they claim are useless have enabled the dudes to be that way. It's one thing to divvy up strengths and weaknesses, it's another thing to assume the lion's share of child-rearing when your work is just as time-consuming as your husband's.

It seems like the point should also be to NOT hire men until they have children.

Glass,

Don't put everything on your shoulder. Hire a nanny or housekeeper and put that husband of yours through some day-care and house cleaning boot camp! It's time for him to do HIS share! You have my admiration for seemingly hvaing it all, but you must learn to let go before you crash.

Glass,

You are a 21-year old male JD candidate who is amusing himself. That is all. The rest of you - stop responding.

Glass's husband has my respect and admiration for being the one who actually has it all.

Can someone good at math convert those 1570 Canadian hours into US hours for me?

Glass,

How often do you and your hubby do the dirty?

This is such a dumb chick blog post and airhead follow-up discussion. Come on, Kashie, you can do better than this. Thanks a lot, sweetie, for laying an egg.

single chicks have the easiest time getting laid, so they have the most time available to work

I'm a dad of three kids, all under age 8. I agree with the comments above starting with 2:21.

Most days I would rather be in the office than at home. I come in early and get more done than the single folks who come in at 10:30 still hung-over from the night before.

"Law firm a$$ and a 70 hour work week don't make them attractive mates."

can someone define Law firm a$$?

Glass et al.,

As a hard-working, 30-something male litigator (ok, you caught me posting at work, but anyway) who has a toddler and infant at home, I resent the intimation that the lawyer/Daddies are not pulling their weight at home. I often get into work late so I can feed the kids breakfast and take the older one to preschool. I try to come home early enough for dinner, playtime, storytime and bedtime. After they go to bed (at around 7:30), I usually get back on the computer and work until I collapse. I take turns with my wife for the nighttime feedings, and then I am up at the crack of dawn to do it all over. I freely admit, I would rather be at the office most days then home with the kids -- home with the kids is much more exhausting then cranking out briefs and document requests -- but honestly, I miss them too much when nighttime comes to miss their bedtimes. Fortunately, the partners I work for understand all this, and seem okay with my lack of face time. (Of course, it helps that they see me sending emails and working on documents at 10:00pm.)

I am not denying that there is likely a glass ceiling. It seems like there is. I just want to point out that there are guys out there who are trying to be as good (or better) fathers as/than they are attorneys.

Similar findings made the rounds in HR departments a few years back. The term "zero drag" was coined. That is code for an employee with no outside responsibilities - no spouse, no kids. Nothing to drag down the pace or dedication to the firm.

Thank god for dads like 4:05. The posts in this thread that assume that all working moms have spouses (gag, better halves) with comfortable second incomes and that only mothers worry about what their young children are up to all day just demonstrates the uphill battle that women like me have to change the expectations of family responsibilities and what parenthood (not motherhood alone) should look like in families with two working adults. I guess it's no surprise that all these firms (yes, including the one I will be joining) are filled with men who adore their wives for conforming to gender roles straight out of antiquity-- after all, she helped you to get where you are today by doing all the dirty work! Dads, quit hiding at the office and making your wives do everything-- you admit that taking kids to appointments and cleaning up after they spew whatever bodily fluid in a three-foot radius is exhausting and harder than cranking out good work product-- what kind of bastards are you to push that off on your wives permanently?

When you are a single guy, you bang anyone and don't worry about lying to avoid getting caught. Once you get married, you have to lie, so you get better at lying with more practice. Better at lying about poon tang makes you better about writing down hours. I spend less time in the office than i did before I had kids, but i increased my billables by using a fatter pencil in my log book. Works like a charm.

Single twats are good at lying too. Look at that cunt that used to be married to Bill Clinton. She lies like her fucking pants are on fire, and look how far its gotten her. Good job, girl.

So having kids is good for your psyche... unless you have to, like, take care of them.

And women are better than men, unless they have to do 80% of the child care.

Excellent information.

Maybe this is because a substantial number of women with children work part-time. Did this survey take that into account? (The sex stereotyping on this thread is astounding. Are the posters here all over age 65?)