One of my most rewarding experiences ever was chairing the Commission on Women in the Profession. It was an honor and truly unforgettable: great people, great projects, and a great shared commitment to improve the status of women lawyers. From launching the first Women in Law Leadership Academy and the Managing Partner and General Counsel Leadership Summit for Women in the Law to inaugurating the Oral Histories of Women Trailblazers project and the Women of Color Research Initiative and hosting the memorable 15th Margaret Brent Women Lawyers of Achievement Awards luncheon, my Commission colleagues and I helped move the dial. Our predecessors and successors have been equally ambitious and dedicated. Still, I am struck by how much must be done during the next 20 years to reach our goals.

Despite recent dramatic increases in the number of women lawyers, bar and media focus on the need to shatter the legal profession's glass ceiling, and the introduction of many wellintentioned programs to deal with these problems, women lawyers still encounter significant difficulties in three areas: (1) professional satisfaction and true equal opportunity, (2) leadership advancement, and (3) positive work climate.

Women comprise about 50 percent of law school enrollments, but they continue to report the perception that the profession treats them unfairly or is less welcoming of them compared to men. There is not a single statistic or survey that says women lawyers have achieved equality in terms of pay, position, power, or opportunity. According to the National Association for Legal Professionals, by 2005, 81 percent of minority women associates had left their jobs in private law firms within five years of being hired. Women - especially but not solely limited to women of color - continue to experience inadequate mentoring, exclusion from important social and professional networks, harassment or demeaning incidents, stereotyped behavior, and biased performance evaluations. These detrimental interactions, both subtle and overt, individually and collectively, limit women's options and opportunities to succeed.

Exacerbating the situation is the fact that career building and child rearing are competing priorities for many women. Inexplicably, the legal workplace hasn't capitalized on the tools of technology, flexible scheduling, and job sharing to resolve time-crunch problems. The predominant business model continues to demand high billable hours and in-office presence. And although managing partners estimate they lose $400,000-plus in investment expenses when a productive associate departs prematurely, the prevailing feedback is that utilizing a firm's reduced-hours program guarantees a woman's marginalization - tantamount to a job Siberia.

Compared to corporations like Ernst & Young, GE, Shell, and McDonald's, which have successfully instituted nonstigmatizing, flexible arrangements to retain women, the legal profession lags behind. The key: unequivocal commitment from top management, coupled with thoughtful work/life balance initiatives and sustained insistence on multidimensional lives from lawyers themselves.

On the leadership front, stalled progress is evident: For more than six years, the percentage of women partners in major law firms and the percentage of women general counsel of leading companies have been stuck at 17 percent and 16 percent, respectively. Women typically are not groomed for roles of influence - for instance, they are more likely to be appointed to law firm diversity and associate life committees than to compensation or management committees.

Against this backdrop, the Commission's greatest challenge is to overcome the myth that "women have made it" simply because the demographics/critical mass argument has receded. The bar must encourage the requisite changes in culture and economics to realize the full potential and talents of its membership. When women lawyers no longer report persistent inequality, when most work environments are inviting and accommodating, and when women have risen - if they wish - to their fair share of leadership positions in the profession, then perhaps the Commission can scale back. Until then, ideas, resources, and energy are needed because the work must go on.