< Previous10 ONE McGUIREWOODS | Summer 2021 Law firms can help by fostering diversity deeper into the bench — not just diverse partners, but at more junior levels. We look for firms developing diverse talent through their ranks. Teaching and training younger professionals, making them feel included at all levels, and promoting and keeping them is vital to achieve equality in the legal industry. Firms also can figure out creative ways to ensure people want to stay and feel included. When I was at McGuireWoods, its flexibility and outside-the-box thinking were key reasons I thrived as a young mother in the legal profession. When I was an associate, I had a toddler and a baby on the way. Like a lot of young mothers in the profession, I was worried about how to be a good mom and a good litigator, both of which often require you to be available 24/7. I had every intention of quitting after my second baby was born and when I told my mentors, they urged me to reconsider. But I was clear that my family was my biggest priority and I couldn’t think of a way to stay at the law firm and do my job well. In the early 2000s, maternity leave policies were in their infancy, no pun intended. “Paternity leave” and “parental leave” weren’t words that existed. It didn’t seem like there were options for me, but the firm and I found a solution. I went from being a full-time associate to a part-time staff attorney paid for the hours I worked. I had two trials during that time and started working on my first big KPMG case. I would hide in my unfinished basement while my kids napped or played with the babysitter and I got a ton of work done. It doesn’t seem novel nowadays, but in the early 2000s that was an unusual work arrangement for a law firm to support. After two years working from home as a staff attorney, my boys were 2 and 4 and I was ready to return full time. I jumped back in as a senior associate and became a partner a few years later. The firm gave me the opportunity to spend that time with my family, while keeping my toe in the water. Otherwise, I probably would have exited the profession altogether. I’ve always loved being a lawyer. I just needed to figure out how to make that work when my boys were little. I’m appreciative that McGuireWoods’ creative thinking allowed me to do that. Now my boys are teenagers and I am working from home, I can keep them on track and kill it at work. It’s remarkable. I am indebted to McGuireWoods for getting me here, and grateful for KPMG’s flexible and supportive environment.ONE McGUIREWOODS | Summer 2021 11 Four Things to Know About Jess Morrison She trained herself to be an early riser: “I’m a night owl by nature, but I force myself to get up at 5 a.m. every day so that I have several hours to work out and have time that’s just for me before the rest of the world wakes up and demands my attention.” She has a house band: “My sons are incredibly talented musicians and, to my delight, play a lot of classic rock. My favorite live music happy hour venue these days is my family room.” She dresses for success during the pandemic: “I spend a tremendous amount of my workday in video meetings. Sure, I show up in a baseball cap from time to time, but most days I dress like I’m going into the office. Having a professional presence, even from the comfort of home, makes a big difference.” She always has fresh flowers on her desk: “Every week, I buy fresh flowers and keep a bouquet on my desk so that it’s seen when I’m on camera. They brighten my office and are a fun topic to discuss at the beginning of meetings. People like to see whether it’s a tulip week or a sunflower week.” ONE McGUIREWOODS | Summer 2021 1112 ONE McGUIREWOODS | Summer 2021 JOURNEY Jamie Edwards-Pasek’s first paying job — aside from babysitting — was scooping ice cream at a Bruster’s in Poland, Ohio. As a teen, she also waitressed and bused tables at a local restaurant and, in college at Carnegie Mellon University, she was a telemarketer for the school’s alumni fund. “Those experiences taught me empathy and gave me skills working with difficult people,” says Edwards-Pasek, a McGuireWoods associate from 2011-2015 who became Carnegie Mellon’s first full- time associate director and deputy Title IX coordinator. By her sophomore year in college, she knew she’d go to law school. “I was an orientation counselor and I heard a student talk about sexual assault prevention. I had never heard anybody talk about sex so frankly, let alone sexual violence, and things we could do to respond to it. That discussion changed my world,” Edwards-Pasek says. World in Her Eyes A Chat With Jamie Edwards-PasekONE McGUIREWOODS | Summer 2021 13 JOURNEY SJamie Edwards-Pasek, associate director and deputy Title IX coordinator, Carnegie Mellon University She decided to minor in gender studies and became an advocate for gender equity and violence prevention, helping survivors of sexual assault and abusive relationships, issues she also focused on as a student at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School. While earning her J.D., she was a McGuireWoods summer associate in Pittsburgh and an extern with the Women’s Law Project in Philadelphia. She also clerked at a New Jersey family court before joining the firm’s Pittsburgh office full time. McGuireWoods recently talked to Edwards-Pasek about her years at the firm, her career path and the impact of the Me Too movement.14 ONE McGUIREWOODS | Summer 2021 How did you come to join McGuireWoods and what did you do at the firm? I wanted to get litigation experience. I was in law school during the great recession of 2008. I did on-campus recruiting thinking, “Maybe I’ll go to D.C. for a while,” and I struck out with on-campus interviews. I love Pittsburgh, so my résumé went to firms there, too. received a summer associate job offer that day. When I came back to the firm as a full-time associate in 2011, I was in the Complex Commercial Litigation Department, primarily doing work in the natural gas industry. What factored into your decision to return to Carnegie Mellon? It was serendipitous. A former boss who’s a close friend and mentor — and an associate dean for student affairs at Carnegie Mellon — told me the university was opening a Title IX office and she thought it might be a good fit for me. That’s actually the only job I have applied for since I’ve been in law school. I was excited to get the chance to work on issues I care so deeply about at a place I love so dearly. What was it like to set up the office? Since the 1970s, schools have been required to have a Title IX coordinator to oversee gender equity efforts. For most schools that was a part-time role — one of many hats people wore. The Obama administration issued guidance in 2011 and 2014 creating significant changes that expanded what universities needed to do, particularly with respect to sexual violence prevention and response. I think of discrimination as a pyramid, where the bottom layer is harmful attitudes and beliefs. Moving up the pyramid, those beliefs manifest toward other people — different types of discrimination in the workplace or in academia, for example. And at the tip of the pyramid is harassment and violence, the most extreme forms of discrimination. A lot of the Obama administration guidance involved the tip of the pyramid. Most schools at that time realized that “Title IX coordinator” isn’t a part-time job, so they created a stand-alone Title IX office or a Title IX office that was part of a broader diversity, equity and inclusion office. When I came back to Carnegie Mellon to create the Title IX office, I was building off the great work the school already did. There were people working on sexual violence prevention and on response. Bringing that together, into compliance with the law, while making it visible to our community, were priorities. For the first nearly three years, I was the only full-time employee in the office. I created the website, did training and education, took all of the reports, and did all the case management and investigations. Whatever needed to get done, I did it. We then expanded to a team of four, and we recently grew to a team of six.ONE McGUIREWOODS | Summer 2021 15 What do you do in your current role and what is a typical day like? My work now falls primarily into two buckets: training and education, which is where my heart is, and investigations. Regarding training and education, I design orientation programming for incoming first-year students, graduate students, staff members and special populations. I work with university police on how to respond to sexual assault and domestic violence calls. I also train other types of first responders, like resident assistants and student-facing student affairs members. I’m passionate about creating interesting programs about consent and what a healthy relationship looks like versus an unhealthy or abusive relationship. I create interactive sexual harassment programs about what’s appropriate when and under what circumstances. I’m developing a strategic plan for meaningful continuing contacts and conversations with folks throughout their time at the university beyond orientation. Regarding investigations, when a person files a report with our office, we counsel them about their options and the support and resources available to them. People may not feel safe in their residence halls, may be uncomfortable reporting a case to their supervisors, or may need help with classes — that’s case management. For folks who want to pursue resolution, I’m the person who investigates. I interview complainants and respondents, and collect evidence such as text messages, screen shots, videos and letters. I talk to witnesses, put together the investigative report and get the parties to review it, then finalize the report for one of our resolution processes. I’m not the decision-maker; I’m the neutral information-gatherer. “I’ve always been an educator at heart, but McGuireWoods taught me how to dive deep to research and learn everything I could about challenging, obscure topics, like tax wash sales in Pennsylvania or natural gas storage fields, and then explain them to others in a digestible, and hopefully interesting, way.” — Jamie Edwards-Pasek, associate director and deputy Title IX coordinator, Carnegie Mellon UniversityHow can law firms, companies and schools work together to address gender disparities and speed up the pace of D&I progress, particularly in the legal industry? It helps to think of that in two phases: getting people in the door and keeping them once they are there. There are established practices we know work to get people in the door, like expanding the applicant and recruiting pool. Are we dipping into the same undergraduate institutions and esteemed law schools or law firms, or can we broaden our approach and look elsewhere? Can we work with affinity groups at those schools to encourage recruiting from those pipelines? Trying to remove identifying information from applications and résumés would help. There have been experiments where a person sends the same résumé to places with the name José, then drops the “s” and submits as Joe. They will have more callbacks as Joe. In classical music, they created auditions where reviewers can’t see the person playing the instrument. The number of women accepted into symphonies and orchestras exploded as a result. To the extent we can remove identifying characteristics and judge people on their merits goes a long way. Also, think about what you want to pay somebody for a position and pay that amount, instead of asking, “What did you make in your last job?” Women who didn’t negotiate a higher salary or took time out for childcare might have lower salaries than the market suggests they deserve. Those are ways to get people in the door, but keeping them is a different story. Focusing on work-life balance is crucial to retain women and other minority groups. Destigmatizing leave for medical and family reasons, including for adoption or paternity leave, helps everybody, especially women. Also, it is important to be thoughtful about access to opportunities. At a law firm, a partner who likes an associate may keep giving them work, and that associate may get amazing experiences that peers don’t by virtue of beginning that relationship with that partner. Is there a checklist associates should accomplish by certain points in their careers, and can work be spread out rather than continually going to “favorite” associates, who look like us and who we feel more comfortable with because their identity aligns with ours? Mentoring and sponsoring are huge, too. Mentoring is what you do day-to-day to help that person learn and grow. Sponsoring is what you do to hold that person out to others. McGuireWoods was a mentor and a sponsor for me, and he continues to be to this day. He’s fantastic. The Me Too movement has been groundbreaking in many ways. It blew the lid off sexual harassment and sexual violence, and held people to account for their behavior. But there are downsides: One of them is that men may be uncomfortable mentoring women. We must not let that be the case. We can’t overcorrect. One-on-one interactions help people grow. We must work to overcome our biases. We expect people to act a certain way, and when they act outside of our preconceived stereotypes, some are punished while others are rewarded for the same behavior. For example, if a woman acts assertively, she may be viewed negatively. But if a man is assertive, that may be viewed positively. Why punish somebody for the same behavior just because of a gender role stereotype? Finally, increasing civility, decreasing harassment, and implementing strong policies, reporting mechanisms and responses have real impact and decrease the number of incidents. 16 ONE McGUIREWOODS | Summer 2021ONE McGUIREWOODS | Summer 2021 17 What do you value most about your time at McGuireWoods? I’ve always been an educator at heart, but McGuireWoods taught me how to dive deep to research and learn everything I could about challenging, obscure topics, like tax wash sales in Pennsylvania or natural gas storage fields, and then explain them to others in a digestible, and hopefully interesting, way. It honed my writing and ability to synthesize huge amounts of information. I also was encouraged to do things I deeply cared about. I completed a 40-hour mediation training course with the firm’s support. I did pro bono work representing domestic violence victims. I worked on the Women’s Law Project annual fundraising committee. I was able to do great work that taught me so much while pursuing my passions. It polished the diamond in the rough. Four Things to Know About Jamie Edwards-Pasek She believes education can change the world: “A favorite quote that inspires me is from Nelson Mandela: ‘Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.’ ” She is a self-proclaimed “klutz”: “I’m prone to accidents and injuries, so much so that my childhood Girl Scout troop leader nicknamed me ‘Grace’ ironically. When I interned for my congressman, I fell down a flight of marble stairs while giving constituents a Capitol tour. I brushed myself off and finished the tour, went home and spent the rest of the day on the couch with ice and pain meds.” She practices active listening with her toddler: “ ‘Active listening,’ which is important in my line of work, can feel a bit unnatural because it’s not the way we always interact. But when my daughter wants to tell me something, she demands my full attention. She gets frustrated if I don’t demonstrate that I understand what she said, which often requires me to repeat or rephrase what she said back to her.” She digs vampires and aliens: “My husband and I binge-watch offbeat shows, most recently ‘What We Do in the Shadows’ and ‘People of Earth,’ which I’m heartbroken was not renewed for a third season.”18 ONE McGUIREWOODS | Summer 2021 JOURNEY Surf’s Up During Lockdown Jen Om remembers her first day at The William Warren Group vividly: It was the start of the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown. She went into the office to get her computer and she hasn’t been back since. After four years with McGuireWoods in Charlotte and Los Angeles, Om made the move in-house in March 2020, joining WWG — a national real estate developer and self-storage company based in California — as corporate counsel. “Everyone is navigating unfamiliar waters with the pandemic, and then on top of that, I was part of this new company in an industry I never worked in before,” says Om, a 2014 Wake Forest University School of Law graduate who became an associate with McGuireWoods the following year. The in-house transition “was hectic at times, but I’d think back to a conversation I had with Rebecca and realize everything is going to be fine,” recalls Om, referring to her McGuireWoods mentor, partner A Conversation With Jen OmONE McGUIREWOODS | Summer 2021 19 JOURNEY SNow, more than a year later, Om is soaring at WWG — and socializing with colleagues who share her love of surfing. “It has been nice working from home during the pandemic. Our company is in Santa Monica and there’s a culture that embraces outdoor activities. Three or four days a week I surf in the morning. I’ll often see co-workers in the water, so it’s a work socialization thing, too. Then I’ll log on, answer emails and get to work.” McGuireWoods recently spoke to Om about her time with the firm’s debt finance team, diversity and inclusion in the legal industry, and an unexpected part of her WWG job: broken elevators. Jen Om, corporate counsel, The William Warren Group Next >