Lisa Damon Featured in Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly
"Band of sisters: Gradually, women move into top slots at state's big firms"

The April 30, 2007 issue of Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly highlights and honors the 10 women managing partners in Lawyers Weekly's annual listing of the state's 100 largest law firms. The article, "Band of sisters: Gradually, women move into top slots at state's big firms," notes: "Lisa J. Damon, managing partner of the Boston office of Seyfarth Shaw, is the first woman to have reached that level of authority at any of the nine offices of her firm (although the New York office has a woman sharing the MP job with a man.) She achieved that milestone not long after she and several other Day, Berry & Howard lawyers left that Boston firm and, she says, came up with "a vision of how we wanted to run a law firm — that we wanted it to be less like a law firm and more like a business." Says Damon: "We were looking for a place that was open to a new way of doing things ... instead of a traditional law firm model that's very hierarchical. For me, the vision is incredibly important and is what drives me every day." As for her emergence as Seyfarth's managing partner post in Boston, Damon makes no mention of her gender. "I think it was a natural evolution," she says. "I kind of ended up with the leadership job." Even though so few other women have advanced into MP jobs, Damon insists that the several who have do represent progress. "I would venture to say that, until fairly recently, it was probably me and just Regina Pisa," Damon, 50, says, referring to the nine-year managing partner at Goodwin Procter. If it be true, as is often said, that "it's lonely at the top," then some of the women managing law firms in Massachusetts are combining forces to create what they hope will be a supportive network. Damon, at Seyfarth Shaw, is taking the lead in that effort. "My goal is to get everyone together and see where it's going to go," she says, when asked about a possible support group for the female MPs.