The Joy of Uncomfortable Conversations

So often, it seems, managers sort of expect those they supervise to glean their thoughts and intentions almost psychically. The manager is too shy to be direct; the topic is unpleasant; the underling—whether a junior associate, a legal assistant, or another member of the team—needs to change his behavior too much. In my own younger years, I’m sure I was guilty of just hoping things would improve, that by modeling appropriate behavior, those I supervised would start engaging in the very same action.

Today, I’m direct. If there’s something I don’t like, I mention it. If a behavior needs to change, I note it. How did I make this shift? The passage of time and becoming more comfortable with myself—and far less afraid of others—surely had something to do with it, but so did the simple fact of being too busy. I don’t have time for nuance, for the hope that strong hints will get me—or those who work with me—where we need to go. If I see something, I say something.

Still, perhaps the transition from good intentions to direct results would have been more speedy had I had more training. I am heartened to learn that firms like O’Melveny & Myers are hosting leadership academies for women, both female lawyers at the firm and at clients of the firm. Ed Silverstein, O’Melveny & Myers sponsors Women’s Leadership Academy, InsideCounsel, 2014 WLNR 28663030 (Oct. 14, 2014) Forget that fellow from Microsoft who thinks women should generate good karma by thinking about raises rather than asking for them. I’m all for direct. I hope other firms follow O’Melveny’s footsteps and mentor their own female team members in a similar way.

—Lori Tripoli

If You Were Elizabeth Wurtzel, Would You Have Called David Boies?

When reading about Prozac Nation author Elizabeth Wurtzel’s self-professed one-night stand of a life in New York magazine last week, I wasn’t expecting to encounter law office management material. I was just hoping for a few juicy tidbits about a talented author, not far from my age, who’d had amazing success, a great body, and plenty of publicity. What becomes the aging ingénue? Surely, despite the economy, the publishing industry’s inability to monetize the Internet, and the gloom, this of-the-moment 1990s writer hadn’t suffered the indignity of being offered 16-bucks-a-post blogging gigs or an unpaid regular column on a major website she could do for the exposure. Who knew the paean to psychopharmacology for better living and the author of Bitch had spent some recent quality time at Yale Law School?

Yet it wasn’t the late-in-life major career change that intrigued me so much as the self-proclaimed feminist’s approach to an icky landlord-tenant problem she was experiencing as a renter in Manhattan. What did the author of two bestsellers, the graduate from Yale, the lifelong New Yorker, the woman who didn’t need a secure but undoubtedly hellacious life as a wife to an investment banker, do when her apparently a little-bit-off landlord started calling her out about the trajectory of Wurtzel’s life? Wurtzel called a man.

She didn’t just call any man. She called the man. She called her boss, who happens to be David Boies, of pursuing antitrust charges against Microsoft fame, of loudly losing the Bush v. Gore contest for the 2000 presidential election notoriety, an undoubtedly intimidating litigator even if hasn’t won them all.

Elizabeth Wurtzel, feminist, lawyer, bestselling author, in distress, called a man, her boss, for help with her personal life.

Her claims of independence, her endless self-examination, her brilliant publishing career, and her top-tier education didn’t provide her with the tools she’d need to escape a rental and an intrusive landlord. Wurtzel not only called her boss for help, but, in her words, she let him take over. She got out of the rental, but did she set the rest of us back?

When you’re in personal trouble, don’t call your boss. Hire your own attorney, and deal with the problem professionally. Your law firm is not your personal playground, and managing partners are not your dad. Don’t cry in the office or in late-night phone calls to your peers.

Interestingly, Wurtzel is not listed in Boies, Schiller & Flexner’s attorney directory. Rumor-mongers say she was let go, she that she resigned. I say leave your personal life at home.

—Lori Tripoli