Old Lady Lawyer: Ageism Knows No Age

It isn't just young people guilty of ageism.

A good friend of mine, a millennial (yes, we old lady lawyers do have friends that are younger than we are), in practice for ten years, complains that the dinosaurs among us treat the millennials with a lack of respect. Given the example she provided, I think she’s right. For purposes of this column, let’s call her Jane.

Here’s the fact pattern (sorry, old habits die hard). Jane was at a women’s networking event (see a previous column about my dislike of the term “networking”) and she felt that the older women lawyers (and, to be fair, not all of the women at the event were lawyers) were dissing her, purely based on age, years in practice and comparative lack of experience. She felt that the older lawyers in the room were patronizing, condescending, and talked at her, rather than with her.

The topic of age can be a sneaky one. It can arise in subtle ways and not so subtle ways. Just as I think many dinosaur lawyers will admit (if not to the world, at least to themselves) that they’ve either witnessed or suffered age discrimination, younger lawyers are also feeling the sting. Yes, for lawyers under forty, there’s no claim, but there’s still the sting of feeling “not as good as,” “you don’t know what you’re doing,” and the like.

At the meeting Jane attended, the older women lawyers in the room talked about their beliefs in “integrity and honesty,” as if the older women had a monopoly on those virtues. Whether Jane read it correctly or not, she felt that the older women were, by implication, concluding that the younger lawyers in the room didn’t necessarily have those traits. She was outraged.

Other comments made Jane feel insignificant; based on the conversations, she thought that the older lawyers would never refer matters in her areas of expertise. Jane practices in a brand new area of law that didn’t even exist ten years ago, let alone when the older women lawyers started practicing, but areas that are vital in today’s interconnected world.

Jane also wonders why is there a need to say how many years in practice in an introduction? Is that an attempt to make younger lawyers feel inferior? I can answer that one, but only for me. I think that for lawyers who are still practicing after thirty or forty or even fifty years, that number is something to be proud of. I don’t do it out of any intent to intimidate with superior knowledge, especially when there are newer lawyers practicing in areas of law that older lawyers are clueless about. In my case, lawyering has been long and hard work, but years in practice is worth a mention. I’m happy I’m still here. However, I get Jane’s point.

So, here’s some consciousness-raising advice from Jane: don’t treat younger lawyers as if they don’t exist. Don’t treat younger lawyers as if they don’t share the values of older lawyers, e.g. that they lack integrity and honesty. Don’t make ageist comments such as “I’m taking notes, but you’re young so you don’t need to do that.” (For the record, I’ve taken notes my whole legal career; what careful lawyer hasn’t?)

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Appreciate that younger lawyers are practicing in areas of law that are brand-new and that attract lawyers to those fields of practice because they have grown up with and understand technology, which we didn’t. Our idea of technology was an IBM selectric typewriter (still beloved with many fond memories), carbon paper, a Wang word processing machine, and that new-fangled machine called a fax.

There were no practice areas such as internet law, data security, privacy and the like. It’s lawyers like Jane and her colleagues who have ventured into these disciplines and made them theirs. They are the subject matter experts, not us with rare exception, and the fact that they’re young lawyers shouldn’t be a deterrent to working with them on those kinds of matters and even referring those matters out to them. It’s respecting their knowledge in fields of law that we couldn’t even have imagined ten to fifteen years ago.

Many years ago, in the 1960s, which I remember, but many readers probably don’t, in the context of the Free Speech Movement (Google it) in 1964 at the University of California Berkeley, Jack Weinberg (Google him, too), who was an activist in the FSM, said “Don’t trust anybody over 30.” Based on Jane’s experience, which left her disheartened about the lack of support from older women lawyers, should that sentence be revised to read “Don’t trust any lawyer with over 30 years in practice?” I don’t think so. There are many things that we dinosaurs and younger lawyers can collaborate on and refer to each other; the issue is how to break through both sides of the ageist Maginot line.


Jill Switzer is closing in on 40 (not a typo) years as a active member of the State Bar of California. Yes, folks, California, that state west of the Sierra Nevada, which everyone likes to diss. She’s had a diverse legal career, including stints as a deputy district attorney, a solo practice, and several senior in-house gigs. She now mediates full-time, which gives her the opportunity to see old lawyers, young lawyers, and those in-between interact — it’s not always pretty. You can reach her by email at oldladylawyer@gmail.com.

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