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Adventures in Law: Leaving the rat race
By Jennifer McGuiggan, Communications Coordinator
After practicing at one of Pittsburgh's largest law firms and then serving as in-house counsel for a group of companies, Elaine Cribbs Rizza had learned a lot about the practice — and pitfalls — of being a lawyer in various settings. She found her niche in 1993 when she started The Rizza Group Professional Corporation (www.rizzagroup.com), a small law firm specializing in the areas of business law and ERISA compliance and defense.
Rizza liked some of the aspects of working in a big law firm, but was frustrated by the lack of work-life balance. "I never wanted to go back to a big firm," she says. "The hours are just unbelievable." She recalls one instance in which she went to work Wednesday morning and came home Friday night. "You make a lot of money, but you have no life," she explains. "The problem is that if you want to have a family, it's almost impossible to succeed in a large law firm because of the hours."
Next, Rizza tried her hand as a lawyer for a group of companies, but found that she missed the variety and self-accountability of working at a law firm.
After discovering that neither large firm nor corporate law work matched her desires, Rizza took a summer sabbatical. During this down time, she and a friend considered opening a card shop at the newly built Pittsburgh International Airport, but abandoned the idea due to a grim financial outlook. At the same time, Rizza's husband began prompting her to open her own practice. "I realized I had this education and I should try to use it," she says. "So I basically gave it a try and I found my niche — and that's being in my own firm."
Initially, Rizza had some reservations about her new venture and was concerned about getting clients. Her fears proved to be unfounded, though. How long did it take to find her first client? "Maybe a week," she says.
Owning her own law firm offers the flexibility and variety that Rizza craves. She says that she enjoys doing so many different things each day, from marketing and running the business to practicing law. "If I find one thing horribly frustrating, I go do something else. I'm driven. I work all the time. I love what I do," she says.
As a service business, The Rizza Group is part of a national trend. The largest share of women-owned firms are in the service sector (53 percent or 3.3 million), which include business services, engineering services, and professionals such as lawyers, doctors and accountants. (Source: Center for Women's Business Research)
On the other hand, law is still a male-dominated field. For example, while law schools are full of women (next year's graduating class at Rizza's alma mater, Emory University School of Law, is nearly 55 percent women), women comprise only 16 percent of partners in law firms.
Conversely, all of the lawyers at The Rizza Group are women. This wasn't a conscious decision, says Rizza, who's more interested in hiring candidates based on their qualifications than their gender. She notes that while they have had one male attorney on staff, not many men apply for jobs with her firm.
Rizza sets high standards for her seven employees, but offers equally strong respect and benefits in return. "It's become like a family — all of us worrying about each other," Rizza says with a laugh. "We have very few rules. I just assume that everyone's a professional." In fact, there are no set hours, no predetermined number of vacation or sick days, and no dress code. She says that she almost ends up nagging her employees to take vacations.
Rizza hired her first employee after being in business for a year and found that becoming the boss required learning some new skills. The largest obstacle she has overcome, she says, is "learning to delegate, because I'm such a worrier that everything be done perfectly that it's hard to hand it off to somebody. But I just have absolutely wonderful employees that I can trust, so it becomes easy."
In her experience, Rizza has found that one in three employees will work out well. "The hardest thing was just finding good employees. Just to find people who had the right work ethic and a real attention to detail, because that's what we do here."
Rizza sits on the board of the Washington County Chamber of Commerce, a group that has named her their 2003 Outstanding Woman in Business. Rizza is also on the board of the United Way Washington County and is President of Leadership Washington County, a program designed to strengthen county leadership by helping class members develop an in-depth understanding of a wide variety of issues in the county.
Rizza's plans for the future are well under way. "Two years ago," she says, "we had a firm meeting and we came up with a long-range plan of where we wanted to be in five years. Two years later we already accomplished everything." So what's next? "I think what we want to do is make the business more profitable," says Rizza.
November 2003 |
