New York Times: From Stay-at-Home Moms to Back-to-Work Lawyers:
Since 2007, the Pace University School of Law in White Plains has been running a program aimed at helping lawyers who had left the field — typically stay-at-home mothers — re-enter the legal profession. Called New Directions,
the course consists of 11 weeks of classroom refresher training and
then an 11-week internship working as a lawyer in any of a number of
settings, including law firms, government and nonprofit agencies and
corporate offices. Pace offers two sessions a year, typically of 12 to
18 lawyers each. About 95 percent are women, and the average age is
about 50. To date, 150 people have completed the training, with about
half going on to paying jobs as lawyers. The cost is $7,000;
participants may qualify for retraining grants of up to $3,000 from the
United States Department of Labor. Other schools offering similar
programs include the American University Washington College of Law Lawyer Re-Entry Program. That course is six days, spread over three weeks, and costs about $1,500; there are no internships. The University of California Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco also has a program.Following are interviews with three women who completed the Pace New Directions program.
- Cheryl Schacht (J.D. 1984 Cleveland Marshall)
- Jeannette Rossoff (J.D. 1983, Boston University)
- Cynthia Wells (J.D. 1984, Vanderbilt)
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