It’s bad enough to be on the receiving end of tons of flackcrap, announcing the critically important news that some lawyer won a case or some federal agency managed not to totally screw up the job for which it exists. But once in a while, I open a press release for kicks to find that some publicist hit send after taking a massive dose of a forbidden narcotic. This one was special enough to share.
The new Legal Dream Team!
Hi Scott,
When you hear “dream team,” you’re likely to think of the 1982* United States Men’s Olympic Basketball Team.But what if we told you there was a legal “dream team” right in the heartland … this one comprised of all-women.
Meet Cathy Kelaghan, Pam Williams and Kathy Kiefer, who lead Anthem Insurance’s Legal Department, based in Indianapolis.
These three women agree that their legal department has done a great job of promoting women and supporting their personal and professional growth. In fact, 64% of Vice Presidents in Anthem’s Legal Department are women.
Cases in point:
· Kelaghan has found a work-life balance as Anthem’s in-house counsel, allowing her to be a wife, mother and advocate for animal welfare and mental health issues outside of the office. She feels her causes outside of the office actually assist her towards a better development path within the company.
· Williams began her career working for a judge, then went into private practice and eventually became Chief Deputy Prosecutor. She joined Anthem in 1998 and soon made a name for herself after she was heavily involved with the Managed Care Class Action lawsuits. She credits much of her success at Anthem to her mentor, Ray Umstead. Although he is now retired, they meet for coffee once per month. She pays it forward by serving as a mentor, both formally and informally.
· Kiefer received her undergraduate degree from Vanderbilt University and attended Cornell Law. She joined Anthem in 2006. Previously she had worked at a law firm and finds the work, and work culture, more satisfying at Anthem. While the work load is similar, the client structure is different. Working in-house at Anthem affords her to have more flexibility to attend her children’s after-school events and work from home if necessary. She values that this company recognizes the work/life balance needed to spend quality time with family and succeed at her career.
For more information on Anthem’s “legal dream team” contact me at the information below. We hope we can arrange for an interview.
Thank you, Alix
No, thank you Alix, because I can’t tell you how meaningful it is to me to learn that Kelaghan has found work-life balance, “allowing her to be a wife, mother and advocate for animal welfare and mental health issues outside of the office.” Who wouldn’t want to arrange an interview with her?
Try as I might, I can’t figure out what this pitch was about. Why would anyone, anywhere, ever, give a damn about these three lawyers? Who cares that Keifer has “flexibility to attend her children’s after-school events,” or Williams meets Umstead for coffee once a month. What would I ask in my interview, “so how do you take your coffee? Cream? Sugar?”
What this press release suggests, to the extent I can extract anything from it, is that Anthem is announcing that it has lots of women lawyers, who spend much of their time doing anything but law. And this speaks well of women lawyers?
Perhaps this is the difference between old school feminism, the archaic notion that women and men should be treated equally. That means they both get to work hard. That means they both put their responsibilities as lawyers ahead of the fun times they would rather be having. That means that these three lawyers, women all, are made to sound as if they’re worthless lawyers.
I doubt that to be the case. I have no clue whether these three lawyers wanted themselves to become the poster girls** for lawyers you wouldn’t want anywhere near your case. And yet, some flack made them out to be three women who care about themselves more than their responsibilities. Would there have been a press release to announce that 64% of vice presidents were male? What about 64% of vice presidents worked 20 hour days to serve the interests of the company?
That someone thought this was not only information they wanted out there, but out there badly enough to send it to someone like me, speaks volumes about just how skewed perceptions of law have become. If this is Anthem’s Dream Team, no wonder health care is a disaster. Was that your message, Alix?
*Yes, it wasn’t 1982, but 1992, which Alix cleared up in a second email in which she wrote:
The new Dream Team (since 1992-not 1982!)
Hi, please forgive the typo before…I was just so eager to get the pitch out about these awesome women 🙂
I suspect that the problem wasn’t eagerness, but cluelessness. But admitting she doesn’t know squat about men’s Olympic basketball would have totally ruined the pitch, and what’s truth got to do with it anyway?
**Uh oh, he did it again.
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I wonder if they only make 74% of the salary that the men make? You know, the ones who hang around and do the work.
Wow. you really don’t understand how sexism works at all. As women, despite being the majority gender, are historically marginalized for reasons that cannot be spoken aloud, they are entitled to full salary for partial performance to compensate for being traumatized by men on the street saying “hello” to them, holding doors open and receiving a disparate proportion of posthumous war medals.
“this one comprised of all-women”. Comprised of? And what’s an all-woman anyway? Am I guilty of neglecting nth generation feminism by not being familiar with the term? Am I in need of counseling?
Wait. Is your last question in any way connected to your penultimate question? I assume it’s secret gender language with which I’m unfamiliar. That happens to me a lot these days.
Somehow, Alix must have sent to the wrong “Scott.” Probably one of those auto-complete mishaps.
You could be right. It could have been intended for someone else whose name begins with “s.” Say, a Staci, perhaps.
Correct. I received this as well.
You know how sometimes people say, “but they’re not mutually exclusive”? Sometimes, they should be.
For what possible reason would in-house attorneys for a health insurance company need to promote themselves anyway?
And “The new Legal Dream Team!” Who was the old one? Was that OJ’s attorneys?
Apparently, the flack was unfamiliar with the phrase “dream team” as applied to lawyers. I was waiting for a third email correcting that typo as well, but it never came.
i don’t see the problem here. They are advertising that at Anthem, you don’t have to work as hard as you would at some other organizations. You probably don’t get paid as much, either. Would you criticize a competent lawyer who does his best for his clients, but only takes on enough clients to have a 35-hour work week, so that he has time to volunteer for animal welfare and mental health organizations?
Now, it seems they believe that this sort of work environment appeals to women more than to men. I wonder where they got that idea.
Ok, Ok, perhaps all else being equal, a lawyer who works more hours is a better lawyer because of the extra hours spent practicing. However, I hypothesize that the average competence gain from the extra hours worked (for reasonable starting values) is much smaller than the width of the competence distribution across lawyers, so all else is not even close to equal.
No, it’s not about developing competence.
Flackcrap.
Google tells me that you just coined it.
Great word.
Thank you. I’m kinda proud of that one.
Although “flackrap” is even better.
Meh.
I notice a similar impulse among some women journalists to jettison their privacy and who cannot keep their personal lives out of their writing, both print and social media. And who showboat how much they have in common with each other. Boring, but they have a following.
It’s fine for them because they never took an oath. They don’t have clients. Maybe that’s where these girls are getting the idea.
They have a significant following. I’m not sure what it means, but I suspect it’s not the best possible thing for feminist thought.
They represent a subset of feminist thought that we or at least they, and those who agree with them, are special and have special entitlements. They embarrass themselves IMO because they do not think like adults.
We are not special and we do not have special entitlements. Women and men are different and complementary, and we are equals. Subversive, how true.
Two of them are on a mommy track, it appears. I have no problem with the mommy track because it’s good for their kids. As long as potential clients know, that is.
That’s insane. When I have a new OC I generally Google them. Some bios at least give the appearance of competence: “Sally leads her practice group, has won 12 state supreme court cases in the last three years, and routinely handles all major litigation in her area in both state and federal courts.” I have never yet run into an OC whose bio focuses on extralegal volunteer activities. I’m not sure how I would be inclined to treat them but I doubt I’d assume the best. Which is to say, this effort to “help” is actually hurting.
But then again as Wilbur put it, who would possibly try to promote an in-house legal team which you can’t hire anyway? Heck, you can’t even find their real bio on Google, and I tried.
I wonder if these women–who appear to have some decades since they passed the bar–are aware of this?
I was hoping you could explain what purpose was served by sending out this PR. It clearly eludes me.
This looks like an HR recruiting PR release trying to attract more job applicants. Read interview in the last sentence as job interview.
Dev.null? You untrustworthy shit. But I suspect you’re right about it being an HR recruiting piece. Female? Hate to work? Then Anthem is for you. And you no doubt hang out at SJ to find out all about us.
Could I work there? I’m not female, and while I don’t actually hate to work, I’d be happy to stay at home as much as they wanted. I’m not a lawyer, so I would also not be working when in the office. I like coffee and animals, and I know a few people with mental issues.
Hook me up.
You might be overqualified.
Or it’s a PR piece to show that Anthem is a cool company that respects feminists, and therefore are good guys, and therefore your Congress-critter should totally support our interests over those greedy patients just trying to rip us off by insisting we actually pay their doctor and hospital bills like we promised!
Your file is sitting right in front of me as I work out this idea I have about mentoring mental health patients through the animal adoption process. Meet the Daydream team.
I bet there would be significant demand for such mentoring, oddly enough.
Why would an insurance company from the Midwest want to hype its legal team’s extracurricular activities to a Criminal Defense attorney in New York City? The only answer I can think of is that they were hoping you’d publish their promotional blurb on your blawg, which you did, with the expectation it would make them look good, which it didn’t.
SHG: Perhaps they sent it to you mistakenly thinking you are a woman.
I do have nice legs, you know.
Do you really know that Alix is a Dude instead of a Dudette? Or is that just a misogynistic assumption by you? Women PR flacks can do stupid things too, you know.
I’m prepared to take the risk.
WHY? Because, because we can! My PR Flack Boss said to send this out, and SHE as well as I have absolutely no knowledge of how the LEGAL world works so therefore a NYC Criminal Defense Attorney gets a copy. Oh and to also massage the egos of those who have been crackflacked (the “crackflackees”?).
I just wonder how many ADAs also received same
I think I’ve figured this out. It’s cunningly subtle.
Anthem is my health insurer, it’s pretty sucky. The primary purpose of a health insurer being to screw its insureds, this is saying that the Anthem lawyers don’t work as hard at screwing insureds as do other insurers. Hence, relatively speaking, Anthem is a less sucky insurer.
More effective once one thinks about it than saying that Anthem is a good insurer. That would be laughable.
You know, that goes along with my idea for the presidential campaign: I suck less than the other guy. It’s a winner approach.
Clearly that’s a winning approach. Just look at the last n elections, where n is any number you want it to be.
Maybe a Fault Lines Cross by Ana Sofia Walsh, something that ensures “Alix” will never contact you again…
Be nice to Ana. I think she’s great.
She is great, but she calls herself “Linky Lady” and probably will ask about the practice of law rather than the color of Kathy’s kids’ soccer uniforms. Intense, direct sunlight by someone who isn’t even a “senior managing editor” will have Anthem PR biting their nails to shreds in no time.
Not exactly. Somebody gave her that nickname. Someone I feel rather close to.
FWIW this is relatively common recruiting verbiage in my industry. The PR person writing the email doesn’t know the technical stuff so they fill it with fluff about company culture. I’m not sure if anyone really takes it seriously.
“…in my industry.” Highly relevant information that changed my life.
I like to keep you informed.
Maybe all that time devoted to animal welfare is why a quick Google search for “Anthem insurance legal department” returns headlines such as “Anthem Blue Cross broke law more than 700 times, official says;”
“Two Covered California health insurance plans misled consumers, regulators say;” and “Top 279 Complaints and Reviews about Anthem” (rating 1.1 out of 5 stars).
Strikingly, Anthem’s biography of its general counsel, Thomas Zielinski, fails to mention his community activism, instead focusing on silly things like relevant experience.
But he’s a man (and somebody has to defend that mutt of a company).