“Creating flexibility is an imperative,” said Ellen Ostrow, psychologist and principal of Lawyers’ Life Coach, a personal and career coaching service for women lawyers in Silver Spring, Md. Ostrow said the reasons behind the change are two-fold: Attorneys increasingly strive to achieve better balance between work and family life, while legal employers generally face lower rates of retention among their attorneys. In an effort to keep their best employees and attract new talent, many corporate legal departments hope promises of flextime and other work-life balance tools will lead to more loyalty and better retention rates.
But while flexible work arrangements and other initiatives are becoming more and more common in corporate law departments, striking the right balance between the needs of their clients and those of their in-house counsel can still be quite challenging for GCs.
