Hollee Schwartz Temple on Good Enough Is the New Perfect

By Meredith L. Mercurio – September 28, 2011

Hollee Schwartz Temple, a 1996 graduate of Northwestern University and a 1999 graduate of Duke University College of Law, took time out of her very hectic schedule to talk to me about Good Enough Is the New Perfect, a book she coauthored with friend and fellow Northwestern graduate, journalist Becky Beaupre Gillespie. Now professor of law and the director of legal research and writing at West Virginia University College of Law, Hollee sacrificed a high-paying and prestigious position with a large Pittsburgh law firm to achieve the elusive work-life balance that working mothers so desperately seek. In performing research for her book, Hollee and Becky surveyed 905 professional working moms, 174 of whom were lawyers.

During a busy week where Hollee had been running through airports traveling to speaking engagements, she and I were able to spend some time talking about her book and about the challenges and choices that women litigators face. Amid the chaos of Hollee’s two young boys and their friends laughing and playing in the background, a visit from the piano teacher, and a dog on the loose, Hollee provided me with some of the insight she gained from her research and answered some of my questions about the choices that litigator moms have available to them in finding their new perfect. 

Meredith: There are a lot of career choices for litigators—equity partnership, non-equity partnership, staff attorneys, arbitrators, in-house counsel, of counsel. When you were doing your research for the book, did you find that there was any one group that found it easier to achieve work-life balance than the others?

Hollee: I don’t know that there is really one path to choose that leads to the greatest balance. I think it’s a lot about the culture of the institution, how it has worked in the past, and who is making the decisions. I think that even if a woman is litigating in a place that hasn’t traditionally been open to more flexible options, now would be a great time to suggest it. Especially moms who have been there for some time and have earned some clout—those are not lawyers that firms want to lose. It has become more and more clear that firms want to retain their talent. If you look at the periods of lawyers’ lives where they need some flexibility—maybe after a child is born or if they are caring for an elderly parent—in the big scheme of the career, it’s really just a blip, and that’s what I think both the lawyers and the institutions need to recognize. When employers were flexible, their employees were extremely loyal and wanted to give back to the firm that they thought had treated them as they should be treated during a difficult time.

Meredith:  Marketing and networking responsibilities can really be difficult for working moms since those responsibilities either take place after work hours or cause a break in the billable day. Of course equity partnership usually depends on rainmaking and managing big clients. What kind of choices do you think that working-mom litigators have for the type of marketing that will result in client generation and then eventually equity partnership?

Hollee: I think moms can start where they live. With more and more women moving into positions of power across the disciplines, they shouldn’t overlook the moms at their preschool or the moms in their kids’ classes and activities. Often times, women feel that they need to go to a designated marketing event, a networking group, or whatever. But I think sometimes the connections are right there—for relationship building, it’s all about feeling comfortable. I have seen—and I highlight in the book—some moms who have been very successful by starting within their own close networks and even in places where they are already going with their kids. I would say you don’t necessarily have to think that marketing has to come outside of the billable day that you’re already trying to cram in. Maybe you can look at all of the parents you are meeting through your children’s activities as a potential source of clients.

Meredith: Do you think that litigators can create a part-time situation that actually works, given the fact that so much is outside of the attorneys’ control?

Hollee: I think it comes down to being realistic and not taking on more cases than any human could possibly handle. But the unpredictability of litigation is what makes it so difficult, because you have to be able to drop everything. There are some firms that have gotten creative in terms of their staffing so that they don’t rely solely on one person. There can be almost a job share of sorts.

Meredith: When people tell me that they have a part-time arrangement, I think of the saying that “there is no part-time work, only part-time pay.” Did any of the women you spoke to during your interviews talk about part-time arrangements not ending up being what they had hoped for?

Hollee: Yes. Absolutely. And I think the nature of litigation is problematic because when some crisis hits, it’s hard to say “it’s my day off.” I think that just doing it purely by numbers is not the way to go, and if you have some more creative arrangements where people are sharing responsibility on the case, then you can actually say “I am off today but so-and-so is handling it.” I think it’s just hard in law because there is such an availability anxiety out there; lawyers have the sense that if they do not respond to their clients within 60 seconds that the client will go elsewhere. Whether that is actually true, I don’t know. Clients are people with families, and they are probably more receptive to the need for flexibility than firms believe. I think the pure reduced-hours concept is probably not enough, and that’s why law has had so much struggle as compared to other professions. It comes down to the billable hour. If the commodity is time, women are never going to win—especially working moms.

Meredith: Do you think job sharing is a feasible choice for litigators?

Hollee: I think it is happening more. Again, a lot of times, job sharing has to be initiated by the people who want to take advantage of it. I don’t think any firm is going to come to a litigator and say “You seem too stressed out. Let’s create a job share for you.” It may be a team of moms or whoever it is that wants to propose this, create the proposal, and go to whomever is the decision maker and say “Here is what we want to do and here is how we will handle it if x, y, or z happens.” I think firms are starting to open up to the idea.

Meredith: In your book you discussed alternative fee arrangements and how they are becoming more common and could be helpful for working moms. Why do you think that is?

Hollee: The thing that is great about these firms that are doing alternative fee schedules is they completely value efficiency, so it’s not about the billable hour being the commodity anymore. It’s about the product being done efficiently. So that can really be great for women who can turn out great work product in an efficient way and don’t want to be valued purely by the number of hours they work.

Meredith: In conducting your research, did you find a difference in attitude between women working in bigger cities versus those working in smaller cities?

Hollee: I talk to some people about the philosophy [of] the “good enough ideal” and some people have said that “I don’t know if I could accept that. I have to be going towards the best.” People from bigger cities in particular, I think, have that notion that maybe there is some sort of settling involved. I think it comes down to the individual and what you want out of your life. I think that when we look at our book and see how successful some of these women we featured are, I don’t know how anyone could say that they were not good enough. But I definitely think there is more pressure in larger cities.

Meredith: It sounds like you really found a good fit for yourself in your professor position with West Virginia University, but is there anything about litigation that you miss?

Hollee: I always really enjoyed research and writing, so my job is a great fit for me because I create new fictional legal problems every year for my students. It allows me to keep a hand in it, and if something interests me that I see in the news or whatever the legal topic is, I create a problem around it so I can learn more about it. The things I liked about the job—the hunt of the research—I still get to do. So I don’t really look in the rearview mirror too much. What I sacrificed to make this move was salary, of course. I gave up more than 50 percent of my salary, which is a lot, and I sacrificed some prestige, because when I first took the job I was not even in a role where my title was professor. I took the lowest-on-the-totem-pole position just to get my foot in the door. And that bothered me for awhile, because I had always wanted to do whatever was sort of the gold standard. But now with the perspective of being eight years removed from the law firm, I am so glad I found the courage to do that because my book Good Enough Is the New Perfect is my proudest professional accomplishment. Sometimes I think you need to trust your instincts and take that leap of faith, because if you’re choosing what you really love, it will work out.

Meredith: How have men reacted to the book?

Hollee: It’s been really interesting. Men have been more interested in the book than I would have expected. I’ve heard from a lot of women that they’ve had long discussions with their husbands about the “balcony view” of their work lives after reading the book—that they recognize themselves in some of the characters. In real life, maybe things weren’t looking the way they wanted them to. My husband says that the book was very eye-opening for him, and he’s approached our marriage differently after reading it. He didn’t know the depths of some of these feelings that moms have about their roles. So I’ve been pleasantly surprised that men have been interested in the book as well, even though we sort of aimed it at working mothers for our primary audience.

You can order your copy of Good Enough Is the New Perfect at www.thenewperfect.com.

Meredith L. Mercurio is with Cooper & Walinski in Toledo, Ohio.

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