intensive it's long hours is working nights working weekends and that might be in many other professions as well but specifically to law very inflexible schedules up until this know technology is changing that a little bit but throughout most of my career you know your files your paper files are in the office and you have to be there and you're dealing with clients so you're on the telephone with  in person with all the taum now again technology has changed in the past few years but in my life time as a lawyer it's not very conducive to raising a family and so  women leave you know they're like i can't do this i can't work all these hours and not only be expected to do my work but to market and network and do all the other things that we have to do as a business person not just as a lawyer to bring work in the door so i think people many women leave for that's one main reason you know there's just in flexibility around the  are what are these women even to go to so the women that i know that have left over the years will go into government positions like working for the the d or the attorney general's office or they might go as of counsel or counsel to smaller or corporations because they're more nine to five jobs so when women leave law firms it's because they want they want to know that they're working monday through friday nine to five as opposed to eight to eight and saturdays and maybe sundays so i think that's what they're looking i think certainly with technology it's making remote working and working remotely a lot easier and it's adding i think to the flexibility which we we all need very much yeah right so one of the things that i was saying to current of even earlier today that when i had my children we didn't have computers we didn't have cell phones so my second maternity leave with my second child i was back in a month because because nobody was doing my work and i was on the phone with work every day i might as well just go in and i had to pick up far l's and bring them home or bring them back i was always on the phone with clients now it's here now you know which does make it a lot easier in the beginning i didn't want to use email everyone was always using email so i was old school on site you have to pick up the phone and call clients they want to hear you but now it's not let's say you're preparing for court the next morning and you forgot something and you know we can turn on our computers get the information or when i can't find it and you know we want to go back to the old ways are very paper and pen x said so it's good that you're coming about i and i was like the other day i said what's this court like thing that we have to i need to know that but we also handle we do prenuptial agreements adoption in domestic violence cases so it's not just limited to just to divorce and i and the divorce issues cover everything from custody and parenting time alimony child support equitable distribution of assets and so it's a that's a wide range of issues that we need to know about including a lot of tax issues that go along with that ok so what are some of the tips i think we started talking about already terms a source of the tips in terms of helping women to overcome some of the hurdles you talked about the technology making it a little bit easier for women to be able to work from home is there anything else that's your guys are doing in your office that actually can and that's helping with that well before we can even get to the tips about working at home and i'm going to turn this to the brand because she started a wonderful committee at our firm o k so i started our women's initiative and we have within the women's initiative we've formed different committees and and one of those committees is our policy in steering  committee and that committee meets and comes up with issues that they that we all perceive and they come up with possible solution and they meet with management regularly and they present not only be issues complaining and they're just saying what the problem is right but with what we've learned that that we really need to come up with the solutions as well and it may not be a solution that's accepted but at least we're trying exactly  change things and i think the only way things are going to change anywhere is by first of all acknowledging that there's a problem and our firm is very good at having done that the knowledge that we need more women we need we need more how what are some of the areas that you have conquered so you know having this new committee and you know working so we've come up with a policy that we have completely paid as for a year and then we also have the option of working and adjusted schedule as well we've also come up with a mentor ing program that where more senior attorneys are matched with but more inexperienced attorneys and they try to provide them with guide and on issues that they've dealt with that i think it's been very successful and we mentioned the policy already about working something accomplished and it is and it's really good that it's in our policy books so that everybody knows what it is and and really coming around to possibly working you know in a just schedule after you've had a child   and there are some women that are working from home one or two days a week and they live far away which really works much better for them as well as the firm because they one of them has like a one and a half hour commute each way assuming there's no traffic jam she also has children and so she can save that three hours a day and work and yet be available for the children and so so it's nice to know that that this is out there that our firm is accepting of it and you know it has to be the right circumstance and probably have a bright department you know if you if you if you're a person th same court all the time time you know you have to be in court when you have to be in court so i am not working  t it's so much nicer to be able to you know to look up things and work from home i live five minutes from the office so i don't really have to but i do sometimes as well because there's interruptions is the phone there's the e mail that you just can't help because clients want a turnaround time immediately but i'll bring something and spread out on the dining room table and it's quiet and nice and nobody's you know bothering me right so you mentioned yes i'm on the personal and professional development committee and it was our committee that really matched the mentors and the mentees and i'm trying to think i don't know that we followed a particular process we just wanted to have people that maybe didn't know each other very well be math right so for example i'm not corinthian mentor in this program although you know changes it's just that they're not aware that there are problems but i think that that's one of the things that that you really see people that there's this huge difference between men and women we all know about and to me it's so clear but the men don't see that like differences in the way first the world i think women are more collaborative for example where as men kind of want to win and you know they're competitive we always joke that you know the guys are out in the hall you don't talk about ourselves either we don't promote ourselves and that's a problem i mean i've read a lot of the books lately and some of the others and and it's so i opening it suggests we should be doing that but we don't we're we think it's we're you know we're being bragger and that's not what we are exactly so it's harder for women to move up the ranks because we're not promoting ourselves it's harder for women to say i deserve i deserve more money i deserve to be a partner or whatever i deserve to be on this committee and men just they're just not used to exactly they don't even know it's  problem exactly yeah so they you know they're surprised when we say we feel excluded so what do you mean you know we don't exclude you but you know you'll see groups of guys going out to lunch or groups of guys going to play golf or going to help out our department the men went to a yankees game and we weren't baseball like really i said bringing awareness and i think that's important i mean you know because one things that i really want the show to do is to help people to to learn and to take something that they c circus very community minded it's um it's one of the things that perhaps attracts people to our firm or once they're there they learn that that's the culture of our so i would say that every attorney is probably on some county i went off a couple of years ago because my time was up but on the campus of american cancer society board the princeton ballet board which is now the american repertory theater so you guys are in a few other things and then and i'm still on the board of dress for success mercer county i've been on that board for seven years now and i'm on the board of the princeton y w c a is next gen board ok so it's great that you're you know but change is happening not only internally but you're influencing change out in the community which i think is critical yeah i mean we live and work in this community and so we want to help and that's been the philosophy of the firm probably from the inception so it's good to be you know i just went back to the mentoring thing in terms of you had your own mentor i gather what i the you know key things that your mentor has helped you with so i think just and he challenges that come your way it's important to have someone to talk to handle this particular situation i can't tell you the number of times i've gone to maria and said i'm experiencing this issue whether it be with an adversary or it could even be a personal issue and i bring it to her and say what is your experience been and chances are she's dealt with a similar issue or situation and then and can tell me how she handled it and  just the women's initiatives mentorship program but all around so that we're going to continue our mentorship program but we also think that men should be mentoring women and women mentoring men and we think that that's going to be very helpful to the future of the young attorneys there too to get everyone's input you know men for whatever reason you know other they have a lot more contacts it seems because they've been doing this a lot longer and you know they're out on the golf course or they are out at sporting events that were not invited and they're making those connections and if they could bring those connections to us it would be great so so we're looking to implement that as well that's an awesome thing that we all feel maybe bridged the gap also because you're learning from your male counterpart ago so back then i think partners were made between six and seven years something like that and i was all about it i mean i did everything to get there i  was married but that marriage actually met my husband at the firm so but we didn't i was going to have any children until i became a partner because i wasn't going to let that affect my partnership so i was out every night you know i was working all day i was in the office every saturday i did everything that i had to do so what do you become a partner it's just you know it's just it's like not an acknowledgement so it's not that you're doing anything more different because i was always doing what i