Company News
Sensei Article Featured in SLAW Magazine
April 5, 2022
“What do Women Lawyers Really Want?” by Sensei’s Sharon D. Nelson, Esq., John W. Simek, and Michael C. Maschke was recently featured in Slaw Magazine. Slaw is a Canadian online legal magazine.
Why We Wrote This Article
The President of Sensei Enterprises, co-author Sharon Nelson, is a woman. She is involved with multiple groups and associations of women lawyers. For two years, she has been hearing that women suffered more than men during the pandemic and that they have “lost ground” professionally. So . . . along with her co-authors, who are accustomed to a woman leader, we set out together to learn and report on what has happened to women lawyers in the last couple of years and what they now want for their professional lives.
Life Pre-Pandemic was No Bed of Roses
Everyone has heard of the glass ceilings in many law firms. Some women broke through those ceilings, but the pandemic seemed to slow that trend. Work-life balance suffered. One female attorney reported that she felt guilty about sneaking into the firm elevator to leave at 7 p.m., spending a couple of hours with her children before bedtime and then working until midnight. She was chronically stressed and exhausted – and felt horrendously guilty about not spending more time with her children.
Routinely, women attorneys complained about the “good old boy mentality” which seemed to hinder advancement, the lack of work-life balance and the failure (often) to mentor women.
And then came COVID-19.