Through a jointly organized series of panel discussions, Fordham Law’s Corporate Law Center and Stein Center for Law and Ethics are addressing the challenges and opportunities these changes are presenting to law students and practitioners.

“The Business and Ethics of Managing a 21st Century Law Firm” kicked off a three-part series on Jan. 28, with a panel featuring James Bernard, LAW ’95, partner with Stroock & Stroock & Lavan LLP, Scott Green, CEO of Pepper Hamilton LLP, and Bruce MacEwen, president of Adam Smith, Esq.

The series will continue with “New, Smart & Ethical Business Models” on Feb. 25 and “The Impact of Technology on the Future of Law Firms,” on March 18.

Sean J. Griffith, the T.J. Maloney Chair and Professor of Law and director of the Corporate Law Center, said the idea for the series was born partly out of conversations with John F.X. Peloso, LAW ’60, senior counsel of Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP and an adjunct professor of law.

“The individual firms that had merged to form Dewey & LeBoeuf were both large and old traditional New York law firms. They were very distinguished, and the combined firm was one of the top earners of law firms in the country,” Griffith said. “When it fell apart, people started asking, ‘Did they do something we’re doing? Do we have to think differently about law firm management?’”

Among the changes buffeting the law field right now are technological advances that have made it less important to be physically present when working with a client.

“It wasn’t that long ago when I was in practice in a mergers and acquisitions law firm. We would do a transaction, and junior lawyers like me would go to some place and comb through piles and piles and boxes and boxes of documents, and review all these low-level details concerning the transaction,” Griffith said.

“Nowadays, all that can be done via computer, sitting in your office, or alternatively, you can outsource the whole thing to highly trained individuals on other continents.”

Bruce Green, the Louis Stein Chair in Law and director of the Stein Center for Law and Ethics, emphasized that for lawyers with an entrepreneurial streak, changes like the outsourcing of document review—which clients are now demanding as a way to lower costs—can present an opportunity.

“Somebody who has legal expertise has to design the computer programs. If the work is outsourced to lawyers in lower-cost jurisdictions, somebody has to supervise the lawyers who are doing the document review. Somebody has to create the institutions and oversee and market [the institutions]that are doing this work,” he said.

“Law school doesn’t conventionally recruit for entrepreneurs; they go to business school. But you need a little bit of that business school sense of entrepreneurship in today’s environment.”

There are also potential pitfalls too, which is why ethics is a major component of the series. Green noted, for instance, that in Australia, nonlawyers can invest in law firms, and in England, nonlawyers are allowed to partner with lawyers to provide legal services. Neither practice is permitted in the United States.

“There are things that challenge our conventional norms nowadays in a way that wouldn’t really have come up in a period of greater stability and less technological change,” he said.

“So it’s an interesting time to ask the ethics question. We see some internal debate within the legal profession about whether we ought to rethink some of our traditional norms.”

Silvia Hodges, Ph.D., director of research services at TyMetrix Legal Analytics and an adjunct professor at Fordham Law, moderated the Jan. 28 session. In her classes “Law Firm as a Business” and “Law Firm Marketing,” Hodges emphasizes that practicing law is more than just mastering the technical aspects of the field.

“Clients . . . really want value and efficiency from law firms. There are now more and more small firms embracing knowledge management and project management. The challenge is to really deliver things the way clients want them, and not pretend to do business as usual,” she said.

“Lots of law firms struggle with having to deliver value at a lower cost than what their cost structure is because they’re not organized and managed that way. That’s the biggest struggle.”

Female executives still have plenty of barriers to break down, and they need women in leadership roles to help them do it, according to Ellen M. Hancock, GSAS ’67, a prominent executive in the high-tech industry.

“Women have to work harder to get ahead,” said Hancock. “Is that fair? Absolutely not. But I believe it to be true. We have to prove ourselves more.”

The former chairman and CEO of Exodus Communications shared lessons learned over her four-decade career in the Oct. 4 Gannon Lecture, “Progress in Corporate America: Diversity and Governance, a Personal Perspective.”

Hancock spoke frankly about the glass ceiling, the mommy track, and the need for more women in governance positions.

“Stereotypes exist and women have to overcome them,” said the Bronx native, who earned a master’s degree in mathematics from Fordham. “We are accused of being too aggressive or not aggressive enough.”

Women are often seen as female first and business partners second, she said, noting that articles about her include too many references to her age, her hair color and her religion.

Hancock provided some sobering statistics: Women make up 47 percent of the national labor force, yet they represent 14 percent of Fortune 500 executive officers, 16 percent of the board seats for those companies, and 3 percent of their CEOs.

Indeed, when Hancock served on the 16-person executive group at IBM, where she spent 29 years, it was “me and 15 guys,” she said. “I was often the only woman at business meetings.”

When she left IBM, Hancock continued to make her mark in such high-tech firms as the National Semiconductor Corporation and Apple Computer, Inc., where she served as chief technology officer. While Hancock was at the helm, Exodus Communications, an Internet systems manager for dot-coms, broke NASDAQ records for consecutive quarter-to-quarter revenue growth.

Just as Hancock wants respect for the time she’s put in, she cautions women that taking time off will come at a price. Women who take the “mommy track” she said, should not expect to return to work at the same level as their peers who have not spent time away.

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Hancock encourages women to seek new and different opportunities, even if it means a sacrifice on the home front. She remembered a mentor she had at IBM who offered her a challenging position in the company’s new North Carolina office. She was reluctant, she told him, because she’d just put a down payment on a new kitchen in her Connecticut home.

“‘Ellen,'” she recalled him saying, “‘I really don’t care about your kitchen. I care about your career.'” She accepted the position and has “seized every opportunity since.”

Women serving in governance positions can help create a more diverse corporate America, said Hancock, who serves on the boards of Aetna, Inc., Colgate-Palmolive, Santa Clara University and Marist College.

“There are data indicating that a company is more attentive to their female employees and to diversity issues if they have a female on the board,” she said, adding that some studies suggest a correlation between female trustees and higher profits.

Grooming women for success, said Hancock, should start early.

“Young girls are not encouraged to aspire to careers as managers. We should all be concerned by that fact,” she said.

In contrast, she credits a Catholic education—including several all-girls schools—with helping her rise to the top.

“I had female role models. The secretary was a female. The treasurer was a female. The president was a female. And so, I left college not realizing there was a problem,” she said.

Sponsored by the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and the Fordham Corporate Law Center, the lecture drew several law students—many female.

“I always think about that, how I’m going to have a kid and do this,” said Italia Almeida, a second-year student at Fordham Law. She was heartened by Hancock’s success. “Forty years of breaking barriers—it’s inspiring.”