THE IMPACT OF SOCIAL CHANGE
While the number of dual husband-wife practices has been diminishing, today it is not uncommon to find husbands and wives working in the same firm or partnership along with other lawyers. In these situations, the wife's role is not as helpmate but as full partner. Women lawyers are alert to the need to establish reputations now and are less willing to do work that might impede them. They resist being moved into work traditionally considered to be “women's specialties,” and they don't willingly do invisible work in back rooms. As a result, more and more women are handling litigation in the courtroom and engaging in client contact. Some lawyers in practice with their husbands have come into the partnership with established reputations. The following accounts provide an insight into some “new” partnerships I studied in the 1990s.
Katherine Marshall (not her real name), an Illinois lawyer, commented on her own family partnership, formed after she had launched a successful career in a major U.S. Attorneys' office: “The problem of not having the option or inclination or opportunity to participate in the active litigation of the law firm has not been a problem in our firm. Perhaps it is the case because I came out of a very highly litigationoriented United States Attorney's office. As a matter of fact, many clients came to me in the area of litigation because of my presumed expertise.”
Another women reported that the sex division of specialties continued to shape her partnership, though she and her husband had quite different abilities. “I bring in more business clients than my husband does, although he handles more of that type of legal work for the firm than I do. By the same token, he probably brings in more family law problems than I do, although I handle all that type of work for our firm.”
One couple who decided to go into practice together found themselves in traditional specialties. The wife, a lawyer in feminist public interest work, reported that
“He had background in corporate work and I had background in Title VII. Neither of us had background in matrimonial work. So we both read everything there was to read on matrimonial work because we suspected that's where most of our clients would be coming from. I learned it by the practice, really.”
“Does your husband handle matrimonial cases with you?”
“He hates it even more than I do, so I do most of it and he is trying to build up the corporate end of the practice.”
Wives in husband-wife partnerships today, even if they started out together in the past, are far more evaluative of their positions in the firm than their predecessors had been. An established lawyer who went into partnership with her husband in the late 1970s said she felt “her identity oozing away” when her husband's male clients made remarks such as “I see you have the little wife here.” She could not be an “associate to my husband” she said, because “it sticks in my craw.” It was mainly in this partnership that she realized “how much it means to me to be a hotshot lawyer.”
Another couple evaluated their partnership as “being ideal for the family, because it's our own outfit with our own hours and our own thing.” In this partnership the wife took off a day a week to take courses that interested her. “What about competition?” I asked. “People always ask about competition,” she said. “It's never an issue. If he does well I am delirious. The same is true for him.”
Couples who had been in practice for a long time, and those followed up ten years after the first study, had undergone changes. Some were ideological changes, some were life-cycle changes, and some developed because of the new opportunities created by changes in the law as well as the women's movement. The women partners were doing much better in their professional lives than they had been previously. One had become much more active in bar association activities, had developed her reputation, and was bringing in business independently. The firm had grown, and she now had a number of younger attorneys working for her. She claimed to have been affected by the women's movement and seemed also to be assessing her marriage anew. The children were now grown, giving her considerably more freedom.
Sarah Leiber (not her real name), an attorney in a labor relations firm, had developed a specialty in sexdiscrimination cases independently of her husband and another partner. She, too, had a heightened sense of career. Because her children were grown, she now had the time
New and old partnerships have thrived when opportunities for women have expanded. In fact, husbands and wives both benefit from them. Kathryn Marshall illustrated this in a note about her husband: “I have had the distinct pleasure of hearing my husband discuss the awesome benefits of having his wife as a law partner. He tends to emphasize how his comfort level is increased because of the absolutely unquestioned loyalty that he knows is part of his relationship with his law partner. He also emphasizes his security in working with a known quantity and with someone whose abilities and capabilities he has no doubt about.”
Work in a family law firm may also permit women attorneys to take advantage of new opportunities in playing public roles. This is true whatever their ideological commitments. Consider the case of Phyllis Schlafly, an active opponent of the Equal Rights Amendment, whose public-speaking engagements have taken her far from home. Schlafly, who received her law degree in 1979 when she was fifty-three years old, went to work part-time in her husband's firm, Schlafly, Godfrey and Fitzgerald, and continued to pursue her political activity.
It is significant that husband-law partners today share the new ideology of sharing. When their wives have come forward, expressing the desire to take more visible roles in the firms, they usually have gained their husbands' support. One prominent lawyer, well known for his work on cases highlighting social causes, practiced with his second wife until his recent death. Friends of the couple noted that the wife started out in classic style “carrying his briefcase.” As time went on, however, the husband promoted his wife's career and gave her a more prominent role to play in court.
It is clear the norms have changed in the past thirty years. Women who work with their husbands do so by choice because they have other options. Women lawyers no longer are satisfied doing the firm's housekeeping or taking on invisible roles, and lawyer-husbands accept this. Moreover, the benefits are shared. Now that women's contributions to family firms have become more visible, men can more easily refer cases to their wives without fear of the disapproval of their clients. Of course, the benefits and rewards in husband-wife partnerships ultimately depend on the personalities involved and the social contexts in which they practice. Other family members, friends, and professional associates can