|
律师也有苦日难熬的时候。但那不是因为发生经济萧条，而是因为放假。据美国律师协会(American
Bar Association)的调查，大多数美国私人执业律师一星期都要工作60个小时以上，几乎每个星期都是如此。每周40小时的工作制被认为是“兼职”；如果再短的话，那就完全是缺乏责任心了。
|
These
are tough times for lawyers. Not because of the economy - because of the
holidays. According to the American Bar Association, most US lawyers in
private practice work 60 hours, or often much more, nearly every week. A
mere 40-hour week is considered "part-time". Anything less is
simply unpatriotic.
|
|
但每天工作12个小时的律师做不了圣诞曲奇，他们甚至连上街买的时间都没有。在这样的人家，如果圣诞老人在给他准备的那杯牛奶旁，还能找到一块不新鲜的姜汁饼，那他真算十分幸运的了。
|
But
lawyers who work 12-hour days do not bake Christmas cookies. They scarcely
have time to buy them. Santa will be lucky, in such households, if he gets
a stale ginger biscuit beside his glass of milk.
|
|
正是这种拼命工作的思想抚育了我，以及众多像我一样年届不惑的中年人。但如今这种思想却遇到了后继乏人的难题。美国的年轻一代自私地主张，自己在工作之余有生活的权利。老一辈的律师可能还乐意侍奉那位善妒忌的“工作情人”，但年轻的一辈，不论男女，都开始在其它地方寻找新爱了。
|
This
cult of overwork - the cult that raised me, and so many of my middle-aged
contemporaries - now has a recruitment problem. Younger Americans are
unaccountably demanding a right to life after work. Older lawyers may
still be happy to service the jealous mistress. But younger ones, male and
female, have begun to look for love elsewhere.
|
|
能证明的数据比比皆是：超过一半的美国应届毕业生表示，他们最高的职业目标是“在个人生活和事业之间获得平衡”。这或许终究是个难以实现的梦想，但上一代人却连这一点都羞于启齿。而且，即使是那些曾一度热爱法律的人，也逐渐为了“生活方式的原因”而抛弃了他们的情人，比如说，为了能在工作日看一看孩子醒时的模样，或是可以决定是否要烘烤圣诞曲奇。
|
The
statistics are everywhere: more than half of recent US college graduates
say their highest professional goal is "attaining a balance between
personal life and career". That may be the impossible dream but it is
the kind of fantasy that earlier generations would not have dared to
utter. And even those who have once embraced the law are increasingly
forsaking their mistress for "lifestyle reasons", such as the
right to glimpse their children awake on weekdays, or the right to refuse
to bake Christmas cookies.
|
|
最近，一群策划生活方式的革命者在美国华盛顿特区的一座教堂大厅里举行了一次聚会，商讨一条通往工作生活两和谐的新路。
|
Recently,
a small cell of lifestyle revolutionaries met in the parish hall of a
Washington, DC, church, to plot a new path to work/life harmony.
|
|
一群牙牙学语的婴孩和爱发脾气的蹒跚稚童在他们母亲的陪伴下来到了会场，在他们的一片合唱声中，由首都的女性律师协会(Women's
Bar Association)举办的“在家执业律师”论坛("Lawyers at
Home" forum)开场。论坛在吵闹的背景声中介绍了“工作安排新思路”，换句话说，是如何在不牺牲事业的前提下缩短工作时间的技巧。
|
Struggling
to hear above the chorus of burbling babies and tetchy toddlers who had
accompanied their mothers to the hall, the "Lawyers at Home"
forum of the capital Women's Bar Association took instruction on
"alternative work schedules", or the art of working less without
sacrificing your career.
|
|
她们的要求同女权运动一样历史悠久。工作、孩子和自家烘的曲奇，一样不少，她们都想要。但和我们这群已是更年期的革命者不同，这些年轻的母亲不单是要和男人一样的工作权利，她们要的还多得多：她们要像母亲一样的工作，也就是说，工作强度不能那么大、不能那么没人性，总之一切都要减轻。
|
Their
quest is as old as the feminist revolution. They want to have it all: the
job, the children, the home-baked cookies. But these young mothers -
unlike my own generation of menopausal revolutionaries - are not just
demanding the right to work like men. They are asking much more: the right
to work like mothers - less intensely, less pathologically and just
generally less.
|
|
一些人声称她们的总体考虑是基于道德：就算做母亲的是律师，孩子也有偶尔看看母亲的权利。但这种说词自然不堪一击：如果孩子的母亲待在家里，他的权利就不会受到侵害了。
|
Some
make a moral case for their holistic vision: that children have a right to
see their mothers occasionally, even if the matriarch is a lawyer. But
this case, of course, is easily rebuffed: the child whose mother stays at
home does not have his rights violated.
|
|
幸好还有个从法律上变革生活方式的商业理由，这是由美利坚大学
“职业生涯法” (WorkLife Law)课题组的辛西娅•托马斯卡尔弗特(Cynthia
Thomas Calvert)于当天的论坛上提出的。她认为，很多年轻一代的律师主要是为了生活方式的原因而离开律师事务所，其中许多还是男性。“这不是一个妇女问题，它更是一代人的问题，”她说，“这是一场‘战后婴儿潮合伙人’与‘X一代’的较量。”
|
Luckily
there is also a business case for a lifestyle revolution in the law and it
was made in the church hall that day by Cynthia Thomas Calvert, of
American University's Program on WorkLife Law (sic). According to her,
younger lawyers are leaving law firms in droves, often largely for
lifestyle reasons - and many of them are men. "This is not a women's
issue, it's more of a generational issue," she says. "It is the
Baby Boom partners vs the Generation Xers."
|
|
但X一代的不满足却更费钱：卡尔弗特认为，更换一个有两至三年工作经验的合伙人要花费20万至50万美元，这包括招聘并培训离职的律师及其继任者。不光如此，其它的代价也不小：律师事务所经验知识的损失，客户的丢失，以及因磨擦加剧而导致的士气低落和效率降低。更有甚者，挑上法律这一行的人，大多都不会完全脱离这个行当，他们或是进政府当差，或是到企业作法律顾问，而且他们一般都不可能雇佣曾令他们大失所望的那个事务所。
|
But
the discontent of the Xers costs money: Calvert says each second- or
third-year associate costs between ,000 (£114,000) and ,000
to replace (including recruiting and training the departing lawyer and his
or her replacement). And there are other costs too: loss of institutional
knowledge; loss of clients; and the loss of morale and productivity that
comes with high attrition. What is more, most of those who choose life
over law do not leave the profession altogether: they move to government
jobs, or to in-house law departments,swheresthey will scarcely be likely
to hire the firm that disappointed them in the first place.
|
|
然而具有讽刺意味的是，这些失去众多年轻律师的事务所并不是没有挽留这些人的措施。从美国律师协会最近公布的数据来看，大约95%的律师事务所允许其律师以兼职方式工作，但事实上只有3%的律师真的那么做了。
|
Ironically,
the same law firms that are losing so many young lawyers also have the
means to keep them. According to recent figures from the American Bar
Association, some 95 per cent of firms allow attorneys to work part-time,
but only 3 per cent of lawyers actually do so.
|
|
这是为什么呢？一部分是因为，我们这些做母亲的认为，小孩应该尝尝我们小时候吃的苦：要是我们不能什么都有，凭什么他们就该有。以兼职方式工作的律师认为，他们经常被埋怨、诬蔑，或是被剥夺晋升的机会。他们是什么都有了，只不过代价惨重。
|
Why?
Partly because we matriarchs think the youngsters should suffer as we did:
we could not have it all, so why should they? Lawyers who work part-time
say they are often resented, stigmatised and denied promotion. They can
have it all - but only at a high price.
|
|
但在这个世上，在所有法学院有一半女毕业生，而大多数女生最终都会成为母亲的情况下，律师事务所所坚持的每周超过60小时的工作制最终是在侵害很大一部分人。年轻一代的母亲们并不愿像她们的父辈那样工作：早上孩子没起床就出门，晚上孩子上了床才到家。
|
But
in a worldswhereshalf of all law school graduates are women - andswheres
most women eventually become mothers - law firms that insist on more than
60 hours a week end up alienating a big part of the workforce. The younger
generation of mothers does not want to work like the older generation of
fathers: leaving home before the children are up and returning only when
they are safely in bed.
|
|
他们认为，半天、半周或半年工作制完全是可行的，这不是出于道德要求，而是作为一种商业建议。就像在高尔夫球场能找到新客户，游乐园也一样可以。“小孩子最能帮助打破僵局了，”辛丽娅•卡尔弗特说道。况且，客户十分讨厌更换律师，只要他们能确保自己的律师在若干年内不换，可能情愿她并不是随叫随到。
|
They
think it ought to be possible to work for part of the day, or part of the
week, or part of the year, not as a moral imperative but as a business
proposition. New clients can be found on the playground just as well as on
the golf course: "Kids are such a great ice-breaker," says
Cynthia Calvert. And existing clients hate changing lawyers so much that
they may be willing to accept one who is not available every moment of
every day, as long as they can be sure she will remain with them for some
years.
|
|
这不光是为了孩子，这是为了生活。年轻人提醒得对，女人不该像男人一样工作，男人自己也不该那样工作。长久以来，美国人就一直有着这种病态的工作观念，尤其是法律职业，再没哪个行业像它这么严重的了。如何解决这个问题，不是妇女一个人的事，而是我们大家的事。
|
This
is not just about children. It is about life. The youngsters are right to
remind us that it is not healthy for women to work like men. Nor is it
healthy for men to work like men. Americans have long had a pathological
relationship with work, nowhere more so than in the legal profession.
Fixing that is not a women's issue - it is one for all of us.
|
|
作者简介：帕提•沃德米尔（Patti Waldmeir）是金融时报法律和社会问题专栏作家，尤其关注知识产权、就业法和其他涉及商业及大众关注的法律问题。在移居华盛顿之前，她曾长期在非洲工作。1989年至1996年期间，她任金融时报驻约翰内斯堡记者站负责人，报道了南非向民主化转型的过程。
|
Patti
Waldmeir writes a column about law and society [for the Financial Times],
focusing on intellectual property,employment law and other legal topics of
interest to the business and general reader. Before moving to Washington
D.C., she worked extensively in Africa, covering the transition to
democracy in South Africa as Johannesburg bureau chief from 1989 to 1996.
|
|
译者/方志燕
|
