O.K., I’m going to hog the microphone for Chapter 6, but remember, the CodeX Book Club is for you! So if you’ve found an important book that will help our community move forward on our missions—or if you have wasted time and money on a wannabe—ping me with a succinct review (100 words ideal): mbay@codex.stanford.edu.

★★★★ Unfinished Business Women Men Work Family, by Anne-Marie Slaughter (@SlaugherAM). Random House.

Anne-Marie Slaughter appeared on CBS This News during her book tour and as soon as the segment was over I put it at the top of my shopping list. Slaughter has just launched a think tank, New American Foundation, after a career as a Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University. She also served as Director of Policy Planning for the U.S. State Department from 2009-2011 under U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Unfinished Business is the perfect ying/yang to Lean In (Sheryl Sandberg). Combined, the two books provide concrete, pragmatic, nuanced, realistic and crucial tools to correct the dismal equality problems in Big Business (including law) for both women and men. (Slaughter makes a point to keep the book generic to any business but it seemed especially resonate to corporate and academic America.)

I’ve always been obsessed with the anthropology and power of language in framing perceptions of “reality”—and Slaughter focuses heavily on the need to change the existing vocabulary to get rid of descriptions and stereotypes—such as “work-at-home dad”—that undermined the difficult decisions and options that families must make during child-bearing years. She also acknowledges that caregivers may also be addressing elder care for family members and sometimes both simultaneously.

Another theme is how caregiving simply isn’t valued appropriately in our current culture, and those who provide third-party caregiving are almost always paid poorly.

The book deeply explores the frustrating and nuanced challenges we all face in our efforts to identify the often-subtle barriers and opportunities. She provides tools and tactics to help women and men—and work environments—push forward to become much more successful and humane.

There are NO easy paths, but Slaughter offers concrete ways that we can all start walking faster. Bravo!!!!

AUDIO EXTRA

I was delighted to participate last week with three amazing women, on Monica Phillips’ “Powerful Conversations” Oct. 20 radio show (Spark Plug Labs: Voice America). Click to hear “2015: The Evolution of Women and Technology in Big Law.” Not surprisingly, I spent most of my time raving about Unfinished Business.

Participants included:

•Moderator Phillips, the president of Spark Plug Labs, is based in the San Francisco Bay Area. She is a speaker, leadership coach, connector and consultant. Her career has included marketing executive posts with Steptoe & Johnson; Troutman Sanders; Ross, Dixon & Bell; and Blank Rome.

• Elaine Johnson James is a partner at Berger Singerman in Boca Rotan. A trial and appellate advocate (Fortune 100 companies, corporations, real estate, government and individuals), her  “firsts,” include the first black person to be editor-in-chief of a Harvard Law School law review.

• Erica Concetta Pagano is associate director and Eversheds Fellow at LawWithoutWalls and a lecturer at Law at the University of Miami. (She has participated with CodeX Futurelaw.) She studies cross-cultural communication and the impact of creativity and technology in the changing legal landscape.

Other reviews of Unfinished Business:
• The New York Times (Elaine Blair)
• The Independent (Lilian Cunningham)
• Refinery29 (Lindsey Stanberry)
• CNN Money (video)

Monica Bay is a Fellow at CodeX and a freelance journalist for Bloomberg BNA Big Law Business. She is a member of the California bar. Twitter: @MonicaBay  Email: mbay@codex.stanford.edu.