Invisible Work

Multiple studies have shown that women tend to take on more so-called “invisible work” in the office. Invisible work includes tasks that benefit your employer but often go unrecognized and don’t lead to career advancement. Perhaps unsurprisingly, a Harvard Business Review study found women get 44% more requests to volunteer for this type of work.

While some articles talk about how women typically organize birthday parties or put together other morale-boosting events, I’m not sure this is the really the type of invisible work typically taken on by female attorneys. Instead, you may be assuming HR-related tasks or helping with DEI initiatives. (Whether they’re lawsuit-averse or making sexist assumptions about what women are good at, men often assign women these types of work.) You may be managing client relationships in a way that doesn’t give you origination credit. Or perhaps you’re in a government position and are doing a lot of public-facing work outside the courtroom. In my career, I did mentoring, prepared performance plans, and drafted sexual harassment and maternity leave policies. At one of my law firms, I responded to complaints filed with the state EEOC.

It may seem like getting assigned this type of work is beneficial because it puts you on the road to management, but very few of these things are measured by legal employers in considering performance. By assuming or being given invisible work without a change in title or (more importantly) in pay, you’re getting what the corporate world calls a “dry promotion.” You’re getting more responsibility, but it’s not costing your employer a thing.

It’s not hard to see—particularly in the law firm world of billable hours—how assigning women this work but not giving it equally to men has economic consequences. It also contributes to feelings of isolation and resentment among women, which can lead to burnout.

Show Me the Money (or the Title)

Many of the articles I’ve linked above focus on getting employers to more equitably distribute invisible work to men. While that’s a great idea, it’s not happening nearly fast enough. I’ve worked in male-dominated workplaces my entire career, but I can’t think of a single example of a man being asked to do mentoring, or manage a client relationship on a day-to-day basis. I’m not saying that I never knew a man who would be willing to do that type of work, but I can’t recall an employer ever asking a man to do it.

So if men aren’t going to get asked to do this work, what should women do when we are asked to do it? The first and most obvious suggestion is to ask your employer to explicitly acknowledge that this type of work is valuable to the organization by giving you a change in title or, more preferably, a raise.

Let’s talk about a change in title first. Getting a change in title or in pay not only signals to those within and outside your workplace that you are doing work that is valuable to the organization, it also forces your employer to acknowledge the previously invisible work you were doing. A change in title can also be a precursor to an eventual pay raise. Even standing alone, titles unquestionably matter because, as you advance, your advancement becomes visible—to your peers, your superiors, your clients, and your competitors (a/k/a potential future employers).

But getting a change in title is somewhat complicated in the legal profession. Corporate America has many different levels of hierarchy. The law, in contrast, tends to have job titles that encompass many skill levels, abilities, and responsibilities. In a law firm, you’re typically an Associate, Partner, or maybe Of Counsel. In government, before having the ultimate title at the top (Attorney General or District Attorney), you’re an Assistant Attorney General or Assistant District Attorney, then maybe you’re a First Assistant and then you’re a Deputy or Chief Deputy. In a corporation you’re an Assistant General Counsel, Associate General Counsel, or General Counsel.

While at certain places there are, of course, some unique gradations within those titles, they typically denote the length of time you’ve been there (such as Senior Associate), rather than an increased level of responsibility. In a law firm, making partner is a big deal: but if you accomplish that when you’re 35 or 40, there’s really no further title to strive for. (In some firms if you’re non-equity you can hope to become equity, but even that promotion may not be visible outside your firm.)

Given that, absent change in the profession, it’s difficult to ask for a change in title, you should be asking for a raise. Candidly, this is tough advice to give. I’m confident that, had I asked for a raise for doing any type of “invisible work,” I would have been told that “everyone” at my level did this type of work—a statement that’s easy for an employer to make when they don’t measure it. But if your workplace isn’t willing to pay you for work they’re asking you to do, that should tell you a lot about the work and the workplace.

And ultimately, if employers are not going to pay us for this additional work, we should refuse to do it. We should not be doing “invisible work” because if we’re not paid for it, it’s unpaid labor, plain and simple. Employers shouldn’t get credit for having a good culture or sponsoring DEI initiatives if it is primarily women who build those things, and employers won’t pay them for doing it.

Rants & Raves

• Rave. There’s a new podcast episode out for The Portia Project that’s worth your time. One of the messages I like best: we already know—and have data for—many of the changes that need to happen in legal workplaces to make them better for women. But things just haven’t changed. Want to know why I advocate banishing words like “executive presence,” or refusing to do invisible work for free? Incremental institutional change isn’t going to cut it.

• Rant. Breaking News (note the sarcasm). According to Bloomberg Law [paywall], women lawyers report much higher levels of burnout than men.

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