Where power flows like nail polish

(Correction: Because of a reporting error, a Page One story Monday about networking events geared to women executives gave the incorrect name for the owner of the G Spa. Her name is Gretchen ''Gretta" Monahan.)

Enough with the Celtics games and cigar bars.

That's what female partners at the law firm Mintz Levin Cohn Ferris Glovsky and Popeo were thinking when they planned a networking event exclusively for women. No sports outings, no poker nights, no golf tournaments, no guy talk, no men. Instead, they chose a venue they suspected would be uniquely appealing to the fairer sex: a spa.

So at the G Spa on Newbury Street last Thursday, life sciences attorneys and technology executives enjoyed an evening of complimentary boutique services, wine, hors d'oeuvres, and dessert. For many women there, the goal, besides socializing, was to engage in some deal-making. Why not combine patents with pedicures, mergers with massages?

''Despite the fact that I consider myself fairly hard-nosed when it comes to business, I do enjoy pampering and putting on a pretty dress and going out, and I think a lot of us are like that," said Mintz partner Ingrid Beattie, who organized the event. At the spa, said Beattie, who received a manicure that turned her fingernails a sparkly red color called Urban Express, ''you can have your nails done and talk to other people at the same time."

In the decidedly un-girly legal industry, women's initiatives like this one are becoming more common. Sullivan & Worcester sponsored a flamenco night at the Four Seasons last month as a women's marketing event. Day, Berry & Howard hosts women-only book clubs, wine tastings, breakfast seminars, and volunteer activities for female-focused charities such as breast cancer walks and Rosie's Place. It also runs a women's golf tournament that offers a clinic for women who want to learn the game or improve their skills, and it is considering visits to museums, ballets, and operas. Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom has held all-women client-lawyer resort retreats for several years, with high-octane female executives and politicians as guest speakers.

Historically, law has been a male profession in which women struggled mightily to make inroads. Many aspects of the business pose particular challenges to women, including a compensation system that rewards the ability to bring in new clients. Many female attorneys say traditional networking events, where client relationships are made, often cater to men. Certainly there are many women lawyers who eagerly attend Sox games or spend afternoons on the links, but others find little appeal in business outings where the talk centers on batting averages and golf handicaps.

Some female lawyers, particularly more senior ones, say they were reluctant in the past to express their lack of enthusiasm for those events or draw attention to the ways they are different from men. But now, rather than simply adapt to male-oriented networking, they are honing their business development skills in more feminine settings.

''For years and years people said, 'The guys are going to a Bruins game, and that's what you should be doing for marketing,' " said Danielle Vanderzanden, a partner at Day, Berry & Howard who heads the firm's Women's Initiative. ''But if you don't happen to be into ice hockey, that doesn't work for you. So people should make different choices based on what interests them."

At G Spa (whose owner, Greta Cole, is a Mintz client), guests registered in advance for facials, massages, manicures, pedicures, and reflexology. Downstairs, in the salon portion of the two-level spa, the room felt like a hip cocktail party, with bright lights, a thumping techno beat, ringing laughter, and nearly two dozen women drinking wine, socializing over manicures and pedicures, and exchanging business cards. All the while, elegant hors d'oeuvres circulated: butternut squash and apple bisque, and pumpkin flan with caramel-anise sauce.

Near the manicure station, conversation among a quartet of prominent women in the life sciences industry -- Beattie; Leslie MacGregor Levine, director of intellectual property at Harvard University; Helen Maslocka, chief executive of MedCool Inc., a Wellesley medical devices company; and Marie Lossky, a research manager at Partners HealthCare -- flowed effortlessly from the joys of being pampered to technology transfer to husbands to the rising cost of legal services. They discussed ways to get innovations out of laboratory settings and into the public domain, and they shared tales about their families. In some cases the women had lawyer-client relationships; in others they knew each other through their children's schools.

Upstairs, the mood was entirely different. The lights were low, the music serene, and plush couches provided settings for quiet chats. In the privacy of small, curtained rooms, women received facials and massages. In one room, the connecting curtains were pulled open to let Rosemary Allen, a Mintz partner, and Frances Toneguzzo, director of licensing at Massachusetts General Hospital, talk during their treatments.

The two women hadn't met before, ''but now we're best friends," Toneguzzo joked. ''Traditional networking events are geared towards men," she said, ''but here you can speak more frankly, you can speak about different topics, and it's business as well."

At the end of the night, which ran from 5:30 until nearly 9 p.m., guests left with gift bags that included citrus clarifying shampoo and anti-aging hand and cuticle cream. The event cost between $5,000 and $10,000, on par with what Mintz spends on other marketing events, outings, and sponsorships, according to Gina Addis, the firm's public relations director.

As the crowd thinned, Beattie, the event organizer, admired her professionally polished nails (which, she noted, are usually painted by her 10-year-old daughter) and said that the 300 flower bulbs she had intended to plant this weekend would just have to wait. But, she added, ''hopefully I'll get some business from this, somewhere, somehow."

Sacha Pfeiffer can be reached at pfeiffer@globe.com.