Accelerate Your Personal Success: Executive Presence

02.20.19 | Susan Duncan

Executive presence is comprised of the gravitas/aura you project, the ways in which you communicate, your appearance, the impression you make and your authenticity. It is an essential quality for leaders and critical for all who want to succeed – a combination of traits and behaviors that can mean the difference between advancing or remaining…

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Women: Communicate So You are Heard

12.06.17 | Susan Duncan

All of the research on gender bias and communications indicates that there are significant differences in the way men and women communicate. Men often are direct, women indirect.  For men, communication helps achieve a goal, provides an answer; for women, it is more of a process, they want to tell a story and make a…

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Women’s Success Strategies for Advancement

09.20.17 | Susan Duncan

Despite the progress women have achieved in general and in law firms, many women continue to express frustration about how to compete and be successful as they climb the career ladder.   Enlightened firms have tried to tackle unconscious bias through mandatory training and intentionally putting more women in management positions. Some clients have gone…

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Gender Bias and the Compensation Gap

09.15.13 | Susan Duncan

Our last post Why Aren’t There More Women Leaders and Why Should Firms Care? addressed many of the reasons that women are not advancing to top levels in their firms.  Many of the impediments and biases we summarized also can be found in the discrepancies between male and female compensation for equity partners. According to “Closing the Gap,” a…

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Succession Part 2: Transitioning to Tomorrow’s Leaders

08.06.13 | Susan Duncan

As noted in our previous post Succession Part 1: Holding onto Clients When Senior Rainmakers Retire, over the next ten years over 65% of baby-boomer, equity partners are expected to retire. (Since we focused on Transitioning Clients in that post, we will not address it again in this one.) Many of these partners likely also are…

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Can BigLaw Accommodate the Needs of Women?

08.07.12 | Susan Duncan

A growing number of women are placing a higher priority on having a high paying career than they did fifteen years ago. According to a Pew Research Study, while women have surpassed men in education achievement since 1999, 66% of women between the age of 18 and 34 now cite a high-paying career as high priority…

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