By the Center for WorkLife Law (WLL) staff: Linda Marks, Director of Training and Consulting; Manar Morales, Senior Counsel and Director of the Attorney Network; and Consuela Pinto, Senior Counsel

The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation currently funds several initiatives at the Center for WorkLife Law, which is located at the University of California Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco. Here is a brief update on our continuing work with the legal profession, unions and Family Responsibilities Discrimination (FRD) training:

I. The Project for Attorney Retention (PAR). WLL’s Project for Attorney Retention has become the major force in the country on workplace flexibility for lawyers. We’re currently running two new programs under PAR, both of which are “firsts.”

- The Leadership Academy for Women is the first and only leadership development program designed specifically for women law firm partners. The Leadership Academy offers a unique educational experience that will give women partners the knowledge, confidence and support they need to achieve their highest leadership potential. (And once we have more women in leadership, perhaps we’ll have more flexibility.) The six-day program runs May 31-June 2 and July 19-21, 2007. You can view the brochure at http://www.uchastings.edu/site_files/WLL/LAWbrochure.pdf.

- “Opting Back In and Forging Ahead” is the first law school based program designed to help attorneys who left law for a year or more return to legal practice. We began the program in October, 2006 and are now over half-way through our second eight-week program. A combination of substantive information, support and resources, the program has been garnering media and conference attention. You can read about it at http://www.pardc.org/Optin/.

II. Unions. WLL has played a leading role in moving unions towards the view that work/family conflict is a core union issue. WLL's groundbreaking research of union arbitrations has documented how union members often have work/family conflicts that place them in jeopardy of being disciplined or terminated. WLL has begun to use its research to develop and market a training program for unions on how to handle arbitrations involving work/family conflict. In addition, WLL continues to work with union general counsels to educate their members on caregiver bias.

III. Family Responsibilities Discrimination (FRD) training. WLL recently completed the first briefings on Family Responsibilities Discrimination (FRD - workplace discrimination against adults with family responsibilities) specifically tailored for employment attorneys representing private employers. WLL chose to focus on management-side attorneys because these individuals have the power to educate their clients and prevent FRD. WLL documented a 400% increase in FRD claims in the last decade as compared to the prior decade.
The numerous variations in FRD claims and the fast pace at which the law in this area is developing, make these cases particularly challenging to defend and, more importantly, prevent without the proper education or training. The next step in WLL's employer outreach plan is to develop and market a training program for Human Resource Professionals. WLL will also continue to write for employer-focused publications and speak to employer groups about FRD and methods for preventing such claims in their own organizations.