Law Isn't Retail: Gender Expectations In The Legal Workplace

The more we educate our male colleagues and give them tools to avoid sexist behavior, the closer we will get to changing gender expectations for women in the practice of law.

lawyer woman sadEd. note: This column is part of Law School Transparency’s podcast mini-series about women in the law. This week’s theme is the legal profession’s leaky pipeline. Learn more here.

Before I was a lawyer, I never felt like my gender limited what I could accomplish. Of course, I knew women before me had fought tirelessly for greater equality. I wasn’t naïve to the fact that there is still progress to be made. But it felt like we’d won the war.

When I finished law school and started practicing, it was the first time in my life that I challenged gender expectations. Up to that point, I’d spent most of my life as a student. In progressive Seattle where I grew up, no one ever suggested that I shouldn’t pursue an education because I’m a girl (my law school was more than half women). Before practicing law, I held jobs such as selling clothes at Nordstrom and my competency as a sales associate was never questioned due to my gender.

Any incident of sexism felt isolated. If a customer, co-worker, teacher, or fellow student treated me differently because I’m a woman, it seemed well-established within our culture that they were the one violating social norms and that they were in the wrong.

Things changed when I entered the legal profession. I’d only been practicing for a few months when the male opposing counsel on one of my cases refused to shake my hand. When others in the meeting seemed confused by his behavior, he said, “You don’t shake women’s hands, you hug women.” I’d never experienced anything like that in a professional context, and I had no idea how to navigate the situation. I certainly wasn’t willing to hug the guy.

Another example early on in my practice involved a conference call with 14 other attorneys, where I was the only woman. The attorney orchestrating the call referred to me as “beautiful” instead of calling me by name. When I explained an idea I had for how the case should be handled, I was completely ignored. Thirty seconds later, one of the male attorneys on the call repeated my idea. The man who had just referred to me as “beautiful” gushed about how brilliant the idea was once it came from a man.

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On the surface, these anecdotes may seem like mere annoyances — and not the type of thing that limits a woman’s ability to practice law. However, constantly needing to prove that we belong in the club adds a layer of difficulty in advocating for our clients.

When you tell people to imagine what a lawyer looks like, most will picture a man. Whether conscious or not, the idea of a female lawyer still challenges many people’s gender expectations. And, unfortunately, sexism seems to be more socially accepted when directed at women in traditionally male roles.

I’ve been in practice about six years now, and I continue to encounter both overt sexism and implicit bias in a professional context. I work in a small office with three male lawyers. When I share these happenings with them, they often offer to step in and address the situation. However, there’s something that makes me uneasy in allowing a man to fight my battles for me. Well-intentioned as they may be, I fear that it would reinforce harmful gender stereotypes to have my male superior step in. I’m still not sure this is the right way to look at it, because women alone can’t fix the problem.

I don’t have a magic solution for sexism in the legal profession, but I can say that I have become much more effective in navigating professional relationships marred by gender bias. Recently, opposing counsel on one of my cases called me “emotional” when I was speaking to him in a calm and measured tone, where I refused to give in on an issue in the case. (I later succeeded in obtaining summary judgment in my client’s favor on the issue.) I didn’t directly say to the lawyer, “you’re sexist for calling me emotional,” but I drew his attention to the fact that he probably would have handled the situation differently if I were a man. Since then, our interactions have improved greatly.

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At one point, the idea of women in higher education challenged gender expectations. At least in my experience, that’s not the case anymore. Hopefully one day, subtler sexist behavior directed at female lawyers will also be a violation of social norms. To get there, female lawyers don’t have to climb on our soap box every time we encounter the slightest indication of gender bias, but it’s important not to just let it go. The more we educate our male colleagues and give them tools to avoid sexist behavior, the closer we will get to changing gender expectations for women in the practice of law.


Marissa Olsson is a personal injury attorney with Kraft Palmer Davies, PLLC in Seattle www.admiralty.com