Balancing the Scales
Two generations of women reflect on challenges they have encountered in their quest to strike a balance between practicing law and attaining personal satisfaction
Arlene and Pia Koslow
The challenge of striking a balance between career and family is a hot topic among professional women. For many, particularly within the field of law, the ideal balance eludes them. Ambitious female attorneys with a goal of making partner at a major law firm often find that to compete with their male counterparts, they must put starting a family on hold or even bypass it altogether. Others who do have children face a vast number of obstacles and sacrifices both at home and at the office.
Arlene Koslow, a 63-year-old attorney in Atlanta, Ga., may have found the magic answer for her personal ambitions. Knowing she wanted to be available to her children, Pia and Shana, she opted out of large law firm territory. In 1987, when they were 10 and 7, she hung up a shingle and began to build a private practice. Since then, it has developed into a general practice focusing on domestic relations, personal injury, workers’ compensation, general litigation matters, and wills and estates.
“As my husband came home, I kissed him and I had one foot out the door,” she says, noting that her husband, Harold, fully supported her decision to become a lawyer and accepted equal responsibility for their family. Arlene built her practice around the fact that her priorities were her husband and her children. Though being a lawyer and a mother posed undeniable challenges, particularly when she was in the midst of defense or plaintiff work in a trial or hearing, she continued to forge ahead. “You always feel pulled,” she says. “But the girls always felt that if they needed me, I’d drop everything.”
Though she didn’t anticipate that her older daughter, Pia, would enter the law, Arlene was pleasantly surprised four years ago when Pia requested to join her individual practice. “I’m really lucky that I have this opportunity,” Pia says. “Being mother and daughter, we have flexibility.” This has been particularly valuable since Pia had a daughter two years ago.
“We get a lot of work done because we work very hard and are very efficient,” Pia adds. “Taking the politics out of my life was something that I really valued. It’s not the same kind of pressure that people feel when they’re in a different atmosphere [where] part of what’s built into being successful is talking to the right people, having the right connections and spending time doing outside activities in the evenings and on weekends. It’s hard for a woman, and it’s not the kind of career where you can take off some time and then re-enter.”
Arlene agrees that if she had chosen another professional track, her situation wouldn’t have worked out so smoothly. “I think I would’ve been held back. The few attorneys I know who were in my [law school] class, particularly the ones who went with a large firm, are no longer there. They lasted about a year. It was too much pressure,” she says.
“There are still some women who have risen to the top in a very big way. They just didn’t let anything hold them down,” she says, noting the success of a handful of women who have soared to the top despite the hurdles associated with such work. “They’ve made it because they’re tremendously ambitious and they’re fantastic workers and they’re very bright. And you can’t take that away from them.”
Ambition and Aptitude
Arlene Koslow’s success in making it all work is particularly notable because she came of age during the years when working women were often frowned upon and the law profession had yet to fully open its doors to the gender. “When I came to Atlanta in 1972, I was still single and I wanted to go to law school, but Emory [University] didn’t take students who wanted to work part time, women especially. I had wanted to continue working as a dental hygienist and I wanted to get married and have children. I had a terrible interview. They said, ‘Why don’t you wait and see if you really do want to go to law school?’”
Edith Silverman Goldstein
Jump even further back in time, when Edith Silverman Goldstein decided to attend law school. A daughter of immigrant parents from Lithuania and Poland whose family struggled financially, Goldstein, who is now deceased, scaled countless obstacles on her way to becoming a lawyer. At age 16, she worked as a piano teacher to support herself, her siblings and her parents, who could not afford to send her to law school. This work funded the cost of law school, but she also received some support from another source. “There was a woman judge practicing at the time who said to my mother, ‘I’ll give you money to go to law school, but you must promise to practice for 10 years,’” recalls Goldstein’s daughter, Toby Bulan, a retired lawyer in Buffalo, N.Y. True to her word, Goldstein attended law school, worked as an attorney and repaid her debt to the judge.
Toby recalls that when her mother wed her father, it had to be done secretly. Though Goldstein held a steady job as head of the Buffalo City Court Marshal’s Office, the cultural mores of the times made the job difficult to hold onto once she was married. During the Depression, jobs were typically reserved for men who were supporting a family. Despite the fact that Goldstein, too, was supporting a family, it had to be kept quiet. When Toby, her second child, was born in 1940, Goldstein left the law to raise her children. Though she attempted to re-enter when her children reached high-school age, it didn’t pan out. “She felt it was time to return to work, but she hadn’t kept up with the changes in the law and she still had a house to run,” recalls Toby. “She could not manage to work and run the household, so that was the end of her legal practice.”
Toby Goldstein Bulan
Goldstein was certainly an inspiration as a lawyer, but in this case passing along a true passion for a legal career skipped a generation. Although Toby eventually became an attorney, she entered the profession as more of a convenience than a passion. Originally a teacher, Toby took time off to raise her family. “At the time, society—and I—thought that it was best to be home,” she reflects. When she was ready to return, her hometown of Buffalo was suffering an economic depression, and teaching jobs were scarce. At her husband’s suggestion, she became a lawyer and joined the family firm. When the youngest of her four children was 12, Toby embarked upon what turned out to be a satisfying 22-year career at Goldstein, Bulan & Chiari, a firm that was initially started by her parents.
Inherited Inspiration
Edith Goldstein’s life as a lawyer seems to have had a particularly strong impact on her granddaughter, Lynn Bulan, who was deeply inspired by her accomplishments. “I give Granny a tremendous amount of credit for doing what she did. She was spunky. How many other kids could say their grandmother was a lawyer?” she says.
Edith Goldstein’s life as a lawyer seems to have had a particularly strong impact on her granddaughter, Lynn Bulan, who was deeply inspired by her accomplishments. “I give Granny a tremendous amount of credit for doing what she did. She was spunky. How many other kids could say their grandmother was a lawyer?” she says.
Lynn Bulan
Lynn, 44, is currently senior assistant general counsel for the Legal Services Corporation in Washington, D.C., an organization that promotes equal access to justice and provides civil legal assistance to low-income Americans. As an in-house litigator, Lynn deals with any number of legal issues, including litigation, general corporate compliance matters, transactional matters, employment matters, and legal opinions. She also advises the board of directors and senior management on legal issues.
Distinct Perspectives
“I think I’ve benefited from the generation right in front of me,” says Lynn. “It has still been difficult—not as difficult as for them—and it’s probably less difficult for the generation behind me, but they’re still feeling their way. As a woman, it has been very difficult to find a mentor. And coming up against [many] blustery men, it’s a little off-putting. Someone once called [a woman colleague and me] little ladies.” Lynn has had numerous encounters with male attorneys who appear to have a low opinion of female attorneys and often approach them with condescension and bullying, particularly those who are opposing counsel. “A lot of men thought I’d be a pushover,” she says, adding that confidence and her “straight-shooter” personality have proven invaluable.
Having a full bank of gender-biased experiences of her own, Toby is particularly disappointed when it comes to Lynn’s experiences. “I think Lynn gets taken advantage of because she’s a woman,” she says. “I think she doesn’t get paid as much as a [man], I think she doesn’t always find a mentor like her male cohorts might and she isn’t given the opportunity to practice in certain areas of the law that a male might have.” In fact, Toby strongly discouraged Lynn from entering the law despite the fact that a law career can be intellectually stimulating and that women can make a difference. “I didn’t think it was a good field for women. Somewhere along the line, a woman has to choose between her career and her family. And you can’t drop out with great ease in the law. You suffer consequences if you do.”
Toby believes that although women are treated with more respect today, the legal profession has a long way to go. “Very few women to this day make full partner at law firms in Buffalo. It’s only a handful and it’s usually because they bring in a lot of business.” Even so, she notes that the profession is improving and that women add a great deal to the field of law. “They add another viewpoint to issues, and have brought certain issues to the forefront, such as children’s rights and women’s rights.”
Arlene Koslow has also found that women are often perceived differently than men. But she certainly doesn’t feel powerless. “I think respect is earned. The hardest thing is to continue to be very strong in your position. It can be intimidating, but I think that women can overcome it by being very secure about the areas of law in which they practice. The law is still the law, whether you walk in as a woman or as a man.”
Pia shares a similar outlook. “If a man handled himself in the same way a woman did, in terms of being tough and being a strong advocate, nothing would be said,” she notes. “But if women are being strong advocates, it might be said that ‘she’s a really tough cookie.’” That’s not the case, she explains. Being assertive is simply the best possible way to advocate for a client.
Fortunately for her, Pia’s run-ins with discrimination have been limited. But that doesn’t mean they don’t exist. “In different counties, I’ve walked into a courthouse and there’s a bit of the old gender game going on,” she says. Like her mother, Pia has found a positive spin. “I found I have to define my own style as a professional and just go with it, regardless of who I’m talking with.”
Master Jugglers
More tenuous than biased attitudes and limited opportunities, says Pia, the toughest challenges of being a woman in the field of law involve balance. “You’re literally always keeping it in balance. It involves looking for pockets of time, keeping things moving, and getting work done. It’s not like you just achieve it and you have it. Balance was something [my mother] always worked on. I thought [her career] looked fascinating and because she enjoyed it so much, it looked fun. But I knew it was stressful too and that she struggled.”
Despite the sacrifices, Arlene managed to make it work. In the process, her personal satisfaction became a source of inspiration to her daughter. Pia chose to take on a role nearly identical to the one she saw her mother employing throughout her childhood. Perhaps Arlene struck the perfect balance, marrying a professional life with a personal life in a way that allowed her children to thrive. Maybe her leanings toward private practice and her lack of desire to make partner at a large firm helped. Then again, it could be the result of a strong support network led by her husband. Perhaps it was the personal satisfaction that stemmed from following her passions—both career and family—and refusing to give up on either, that led to a life and a legacy of contentment.
“I feel very fulfilled with the way I did it,” Arlene says. “I’d do it all over again.” DB
Kara Mayer Robinson is a freelance writer based in northern New Jersey.
From the July/August 2008 issue of Diversity & The Bar®