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ABA Journal
by Becky Beaupre Gillespie and Hollee Schwartz Temple
July 2009
Job jolt could change your life for the better.
Economic meltdown, thousands of lost lawyer jobs, big-firm careers teetering on the brink: What could be worse for an attorney trying to build a successful and balanced life? Or, really, what could be better?
Economic collapse is perhaps the ultimate wake-up call, and experts say this year’s crisis has created a unique opportunity for lawyers to re-examine priorities and create a better balance between work and life. While transitions are admittedly uncomfortable and disruptive, for the many lawyers experiencing what psychologist Ellen Ostrow calls “life on a conveyer belt,” job insecurity or loss can provide a life-changing jolt. |
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ABA Journal
By Leslie A. Gordon
February 2009
So many legal careers are "like runaway trains," says Ellen Ostrow, a Silver Spring, MD-based lawyer coach who also has an office in Washington, D.C. Attorneys…who take time off are “wise enough to decide if the train is one they want to be on before too many years [go by.] They are usually smart enough to know they need to take a step back and really regroup and think about the track they want to be on.” |
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Darling Hill
October 15, 2008
Ellen Ostrow, a Lawyer Life Coach, has just relaunched her web site Lawyers Life Coach. Check it out for a great list of resource books on realizing your dream life in the law, and while you’re there, don’t miss her ”Opting Back In” Coaching Group. |
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Pink Magazine
July/August 2008
By Michele Cohen Marill
For some people, life with a backdrop of inner happiness might sound unattainable, or maybe even contrary to the conflicts and challenges that drive their careers. Lawyers, for example, are notoriously unhappy. By definition, their work is adversarial. They work long hours. In a survey of job satisfaction and general happiness, they rank below other professions despite their higher income and job prestige. |
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The Complete Lawyer
2008, Vol. 2, Number 3
The Complete Lawyer Interview: Ellen Ostrow
Conducted By TCL Editor, Don Hutcheson
If you work from your strengths and enjoy good interactions with your colleagues every day, your odds of becoming a healthy lawyer grow dramatically. You may even add 8 years to your life.
To begin this discussion on the topic: Are You A Healthy Lawyer?, we sent each professional we interviewed a copy of an op-ed article from The New York Times entitled "Our Sick Society." (May 5, 2006, Editorial Desk, Paul Krugman) The columnist commented on a recent study in The Journal of the American Medical Association that said, and we summarize: |
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Counsel to Counsel
June 14, 2007
By Stephen Seckler, Esq
Just before the New Year, Ellen Ostrow had a great piece on change. She discusses some of the barriers we all have to making change and talks about the importance of confronting our resistance to change.
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Arrive
By Joanne Cronrath Bamberger
March/April 2007, 26-31
Ellen Ostrow, a career consultant from Silver Spring, MD, hears similar tales of woe. She says increasing numbers of established workers as well as a rising number of younger workers are saying, “Thanks, but no thanks” to the golden handcuffs of partnership. |
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Washington Lawyer
December 2006
By Joan Indiana Rigdon
The reason so few partners take advantage of part-time schedules is that there is often a gap between the written policy and how it is practiced, especially at midsize and small firms.
"There are firms that have written policies that look terrific on paper," says Ellen Ostrow, a Silver Spring, Maryland, psychologist and life coach who specializes in counseling lawyers. "[Yet] I've seen women try to use the policies and be told that there's no such thing as a part-time partner, or be told that the only practice that can realistically fit in reduced hours is a trust and estates practice, or be told that they've manipulated the firm into thinking that they were going to be a contributing member and that's why they had been advanced to partnership." |
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Judicial Branch
October 30, 2006
By Justice Peter T. Zarella
Dr. Ellen Ostrow, the founder of Lawyers Life Coach, LLC, an organization established primarily as a resource for women lawyers, recently wrote an article (in volume 77 of Wisconsin Lawyer) entitled, 20 Ways to Become a Leader. The practical advice contained in this article is not gender specific, as it focuses upon challenges of a human nature. In her article, Ostrow offers the following advice:
"Become the sculptor of your own career and life - not the sculpture.
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New York Law Journal, The Gender Gap
September 29, 2006
By Melissa McClenaghan Martin
It's a problem no one wants to talk about, and yet it is one of the greatest barriers to the advancement of women attorneys. Carolyn Buck Luce, co-chair for Ernst & Young's Professional Women's Network in the Northeast and leader of its Global Pharmaceutical Sector calls it "the Goldilocks problem."
"Women attorneys are criticized for being too little of this or too much of that; not confident enough or too confident; not aggressive enough or too aggressive; not ambitious enough or too ambitious. But women are seldom just right," said Ms. Luce, who also chairs the Hidden Brain Drain, a task force that helps employers retain women.
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