Paying It Forward: Advice from Women in White-Collar

Last week, in his Guide to the ABA White Collar Conference, Matt Kaiser gave his perspective on how best to do the conference, which we’re both at this week. (He also put together a killer bingo card that I hope will eventually go viral and become an annual tradition at the conference.)

One of the things Matt talked about was how to drink at the conference, which — like many lawyer gatherings — tends to involve a lot of drinking. He noted that you don’t want to be the outlier when you’re drinking — while you shouldn’t get bombed at the first reception of the night, getting drunk enough to sing bad karaoke at 2 a.m. might actually be useful.

When I posted that column on Facebook, a female lawyer friend of mine made an interesting observation: women sometimes have to think differently about drinking. In her view, women may have more to risk by getting drunk enough to act goofy and may be taken less seriously by their colleagues if they do, while that usually won’t happen to men. She also pointed out the obvious risks to women who get drunk late at night with people they don’t know well — also something men don’t really have to worry about.

I think that’s a very good point, as did Matt. And it got me thinking about this week’s column, especially given that yesterday was International Women’s Day. It seemed silly not to write something about the conference, since I am surrounded by terrific white-collar lawyers for three straight days — and a lot of terrific female ones to boot.

So I decided to brush off my reporter’s cap from my college days and ask some women at the conference what advice they’d give a young female lawyer who was interested in doing white-collar work. Everyone was guaranteed anonymity so they could speak freely. Here is what they said, edited for clarity and length.

My advice for women doing white-collar work when you’re going to be doing a lot of travel, especially a lot international travel with male colleagues, is that there will inevitably be very awkward situations. I’ve had a quite a few experiences where I had to travel with senior male colleagues that perhaps wanted to spend more one-on-one time than was necessary to push the case forward and for our client’s needs. So, I found that I would often make up excuses like food poisoning or too much work for another case and have dinner by myself in the hotel and just order room service instead of continuing to endure unnecessary and awkward situations with senior colleagues. So, my advice to other women starting in white-collar would be find creative ways to get out of a situation where you are not comfortable or feel free to report it to your firm if it ever rises to that level. If not, just find polite ways to excuse yourself from a situation you do not want to be in.

–Counsel, mid-sized firm, Washington, DC

My advice would be to have a really good sense of humor, to learn to listen to and be able to tell rude jokes, drop the F-bomb and all kinds of curse words and, and just really be able to hang with men. I mean, that is really important, so that they don’t feel like that have to be prudes around you, to be honest. That is my opinion.

–Partner, mid-sized firm, Washington, DC

My key piece of advice for coming up in white collar would be to find mentors, both male and female, and keep in contact with them regularly, stay on top of cases that they’re involved in and use that as a mechanism to learn more and develop yourself professionally in this field. Second piece of advice, definitely join your local chapter of the Women’s White Collar Defense Association. Check out their new website and network with the people in that group. It’s led and founded by Karen Popp at Sidley.

— Counsel, small firm, Washington, DC

My advice would be, number one, particularly for women starting out — wear suits to meetings, even if everyone else is going to be business casual. Wear suits. That advice was given to me by a man early on, and it was good advice because he said you’re young, people are going to assume you’re even younger because you’re a woman, and you want to be taken seriously so wear a suit. Also, master the facts in the document early on, because then everybody has to come to you for the information and you get to go a lot of places that you wouldn’t otherwise. Take on pro bono cases. That’s a good way to get into court. If you can be a prosecutor, I think that’s great. If you can be a federal public defender, that’s great, too. Those are great ways to get into court. A lot of people can’t do that, so another good way to get some courtroom experience, particularly if you’re at a bigger firm, is to do pro bono work, because that’s a way to get more court room time on cases than you can get elsewhere and that ultimately is important.

–Partner, mid-sized firm, East Coast

Although many white-collar lawyers have been very successful without any government experience, I still would advise young attorneys interested in this field to spend some time as a prosecutor if they have the opportunity — and to take their time in that job. Enjoy it to the utmost and don’t leave for private practice until you feel you’ve accomplished everything you want to accomplish in the government.

—Partner, large firm, Washington, D.C.

Try to meet as many people as possible who are doing the same work as you, men and women, and from as many different regions as you can, and always be professional and have a good sense of humor about it. [Also,] I think women sometimes tend to promote themselves less than men do. So you want to be careful. You don’t want to be too overtly self-promotional, but you, at the same time, should not underestimate your experience and your skills.

–Partner, mid-sized firm, New England

I do think that there’s a bit of an old boys’ network still that’s alive and well, and if you’re a former prosecutor who likes to do guy stuff, that’s a benefit. You’re kind of already in. But obviously if you have certain skills and credentials that other people don’t have, I think that’s a benefit, so learning a foreign language [for FCPA work], knowing about technology and e-discovery, knowing how to get data and information from other people. I would say having an accounting background is immensely helpful because a lot of prosecutors just glaze over when you start talking about numbers because most of us went to law school to not have to do math.

–Counsel, large firm, Southeast

I was an associate for 12 years before I went to the U.S. Attorney’s Office. And I was very good, very knowledgeable, worked on every major matter, but I couldn’t break through to the next level because I was never a federal prosecutor, and then once you go and you are one, then you know the inside baseball. So what I would recommend to young women coming up who want do white collar work is to go spend some time at some government entity — U.S. Attorney’s Office, the Department of Justice, State AGs — and really get to know the sound of your own voice in a courtroom. Get to know how to handle cases, how to handle people, how to talk to judges, how to deal with opposing counsel, and you have to do it day in and day out, and so that’s the kind of environment that you really learn and grow in, and then if you want to leave and go into private practice afterwards, you have a really good foundation to be an excellent woman lawyer.

–Partner, large firm, Washington, DC

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Justin Dillon is a partner at KaiserDillon PLLC in Washington, DC, where he focuses on white-collar criminal defense and campus disciplinary matters. Before joining the firm, he worked as an Assistant United States Attorney in Washington, DC, and at the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department. His email is [email protected].