Ed. note: This is the latest installment in a series of posts on motherhood in the legal profession, in partnership with our friends at MothersEsquire. Welcome Jamie Szal back to our pages. Click here if you’d like to donate to MothersEsquire.

You’ve heard the saying — it’s all about who you know.

To that end, when I was in law school and early in my career as a lawyer (definitely pre-kids), the advice I received from pretty much everyone was to take every advantage of networking events and social hours to build my network. Networking even for the local bar association tax section? I’m there. Run-to-the-pub club with my colleagues? Forget about my hatred for running and sign me up. Dinner or lunch at a colleague’s house? Are you sure I can’t bring anything with me? Knowing I was not from a family of lawyers, I was all about building my network any way I could.

And I assumed pretty much every lawyer and budding lawyer felt the same.

Last summer, as I do every year, I hosted a shindig at my home for my firm’s summer associates and younger(ish) attorneys. (When the average age of lawyers in Maine is 55, young becomes relative.) I look forward to this shindig every summer. It’s a great chance to get to know our summer associates outside of the office, in a more casual setting where everyone can relax. Working with the firm’s summer associate coordinator, I set the date and then sent out an Outlook invite to all the invitees.

The event rolled around.

And the summer associates were nowhere to be seen.

No appearance at the event. No response to my email about dietary restrictions. No response to the Outlook invite one way or the other.

I turned to the MothersEsquire community to vent some frustrations about the event and the behavior — or lack thereof, in my perspective at the time — of the summer associates. I was convinced every mom in that community would take umbrage with me. No showing on a partner shindig? The horror!

My vent post struck a nerve. Turns out my assumptions both about networking and event etiquette may be a tad old fashioned. Yes, there was a large contingent of moms who felt much as I did about the value of networking events, building your network, and putting yourself out there.

I was, however, surprised by the equally sizeable, equally adamant group of moms pushing back. The pushback came in three buckets:

1. Quite a significant group pushed back on the notion that summer associates should be expected to attend “extracurricular” networking and social events outside of the workday, especially if the event took place somewhere requiring them to drive or otherwise arrange their own transportation.

2. There was a spirited debate about whether an RSVP was either actually requested or required.

3. Quite a noticeable group of moms called me out on using Outlook invites as the way to host a firm event.

With the group’s consent, I solicited feedback to incorporate into this article.

Networking Nights

We’ve all heard the stories about Biglaw summer programs. Summers were wined and dined, treated to tickets to a baseball game, or courted over oysters on the partner’s yacht.

I took it as a given that summer associates are expected to participate in all social/networking events, and that those events would occur outside of the standard business day. I was surprised to see a sizeable group of moms who challenged this expectation. While many of them were a newer generation of lawyers (elder-millennial here), not all of them were.

Those of us who fell in the camp of expecting everyone, especially summer associates and newer lawyers, to prioritize networking raised the point that an attorney’s ability to network and engage outside the office is a significant factor in their ability to bring in work for the firm. It’s not enough to just put your head down and produce good work, especially for any one with the ambition to move up the chain of leadership in law firms or in-house. Cultivating relationships is critical. And that can’t be done in the office alone. More senior lawyers pointed out that one of the things summer associates are evaluated on by firms is the likelihood they will be a profitable partner in the future. Will they be a rainmaker? Or a workhorse? These events are akin to auditioning for a job. Not attending — and especially not attending and not declining the invite to alert the host — was seen as a show of poor manners and poor communication skills.

The group pushing back on the expectation raised a few points.

One point homed in on the challenges parents face when it comes to these extracurricular events. With two kiddos of my own, this point resonated. Finding child care these days is exceptionally difficult in general, and so many responding moms pointed out that it is even more difficult to arrange child care outside of normal business hours as day cares and after-school programs extended hours may not go late enough to cover the event. Firms that employ summer associates or lawyers with young kids really need to be mindful of the impact demands on lawyer’s time have on their other priorities. If firms want attendance outside of normal business hours, there’s a real opportunity to think creatively about things like child care. Something like arranging for child care to be on-site for an event could make a significant difference — both for who attends and for what type of relationship you forge with them for the long term.

Another point they raised was that lawyers are people who have the right to rethink their priorities and how they spend their free time outside of work. For many, the shift came about because of COVID. Pre-COVID, so many shared that they were much more willing to go to after-work social hours with colleagues on a regular basis, but post-COVID they no longer felt the inclination to do so. Others flagging this emphasized that they wanted to be evaluated on their work product and personality at work. Networking events and social hours outside of the normal business day were no longer a priority for their personal time, and were considered an old school expectation that did not make sense. Our time as humans, lawyers, and parents is valuable. How we choose to spend our time is valid, whatever that choice may be. Similarly, in our post-COVID Zoom world, it is very effective to build relationships online. Being in person requires energy that some people do not have or are no longer interested in expending. Where summer associates (in particular) are not being compensated to attend events, they should be free to attend or not without judgment or negative implications. Perhaps it is on the firm to understand the new world of hiring and retention instead of trying to enforce what may be outdated norms.

One group of commenters homed in on the logistical challenges of attending events outside of work. Candidly, I read these as coming from people who live in cities where events may happen in proximity to the office. There was an interesting split. Those of us who live and work in places where a 30- to 40-minute drive to get anywhere is the norm felt that hosting an event at a partner’s home requiring that type of drive to attend was totally reasonable. Others indicated that expecting anyone to travel 40 or more minutes for an event was not. If distance cannot be helped, a takeaway from this conversation is that firms can be intentional about arranging transportation for associates/lawyers that may want to attend but lack access to the transportation to do so.

A last group of respondents made a really important point I had not considered: there is a real opportunity for many more established lawyers to shed their privilege assumptions and mentor newer lawyers who may come from different cultural or socioeconomic backgrounds. Some may need to work part-time jobs outside of their summer associate position in order to support themselves and their families. Firms that cannot or do not pay a strong enough wage to summer or new associates should be more understanding when those same individuals may have demands on their time outside of work that conflict with social events. One mom shared that her spouse did not grow up in the U.S., and the cultural norms over networking and social-business etiquette were very different where they grew up. Some newer lawyers may never have been exposed to professional social expectations (or benefits). Networking and relationship development is a skill to be learned and cultivated. Firms and senior lawyers have an opportunity (perhaps even an imperative) to address how to navigate the social networking aspects of being a lawyer.

Respondez S’il Vous Plait

Let me tell you, there are some very strongly held opinions about whether events require an RSVP these days.

So many moms expressed shock and horror that a summer associate would not RSVP. “Just plain rude” was a common refrain. One mom left the thoughtful comment tying RSVP etiquette back to the “summer-long audition” theme of networking and social events generally. Whether someone is able to attend is less the point — how they communicate whether they will attend will be just as scrutinized as their behavior at the event itself. A well-crafted note declining an event can be just as effective in forging a strategic relationship as a chat over lobster rolls. (Not to sound snobby or bougie — I am from Maine, and I’d lose my Mainer-card if I didn’t work lobster in somehow.) For example, I later learned that one of the summer associates missed the event because they had been selected for early on-campus interviews for their 2L summer. So the reason they missed the event was totally understandable. However, by not informing me of that reason, the summer associate missed a valuable opportunity. I would have loved to wish them luck. And I absolutely would have looked through my network to see if I have a connection to someone at that firm that I could use to the summer associate’s advantage. After all — it’s all who you know, right?

Equally as many moms shared that they had been raised to only RSVP when they were not attending an event. Even if the invitation was not styled as “Regrets only,” attendance was the assumption and did not require any further communication on their part. Confusingly, some indicated that they only responded if they were attending — not responding was effectively giving the answer that they did not plan to attend. A lot of moms suggested restyling invitations to expressly request a response only for regrets to make it clear that attendance was going to be assumed, if not expected.

You could tell the moms who plan events from the comments — quite a few shared how important an RSVP is for allowing them to anticipate and plan for enough food. Heaven forbid we run out of chips and guac or seltzer or anything else to drink.

We all commiserated about how difficult it is to get anyone to RSVP for anything these days. The social media generation accustomed to indicating they are “interested” or “maybe” attending has very different expectations of what it means to be invited to and attend (or not) events.

You’ve Got Mail

My firm’s general practice for every firm event is to only send out invites via Outlook as a calendar invite. And when it came to this event, all of my colleagues responded to the Outlook invite. Not all were able to make it, and those that were not declined the invite. I took it as a given that the summer associates were as accustomed to our Outlook invite practice as we were. Honestly, until this discussion within MothersEsquire, it was not even something I thought controversial.

However, so many people responded by pointing out that an Outlook invitation just does not cut it. Sending an invite with a built-in reply option is seen as an invitation to an event. Invites are easily missed, and easily disregarded. If I wanted to have any expectations at all about attendance, I needed to step up my game and at least issue something like a separate evite that makes it clear the shindig is more than just as casual get together of whoever happens to be in the office that day.

I walked away from my vent with a very different appreciation for what I thought were widely agreed upon expectations. Will I stop hosting this shindig at my home? No. But are there things I will — and firms can — do differently as newer generations of lawyers join our ranks? Of course.

After all — it’s who you know. And how you cultivate your relationship with them — as colleagues, peers, and future clients or referral partners –- matters just as much.

Jamie Szal assists businesses understand and strategically approach state and local tax compliance as a partner at the firm of Brann & Isaacson. Outside of work, Jamie is an active volunteer in her communities: serving on the Trinity College Board of Trustees and as a founding member of the college’s Women’s Leadership Council. She also is a member of the Board of MothersEsquire, involved with the Maine State Bar Association Women’s Law Section, and President of the board of Community Dental of Maine. She co-authored best-sellers “#Networked” and “Women in Law” about the power of women supporting women.

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