Let's Make The Legal Profession Better For Women -- And The Society We Serve

All of us can make daily choices to improve the profession and thus better serve society.

happy women lawyersAll of us can make daily choices to improve the profession and thus better serve society.

Whatever your politics, you would need to be the proverbial ostrich to ignore the attention our nation is paying these days to the role and rights of women. If you’re on one side of what feels like a terribly bitter divide, it would be easy to lose yourself in despondence. And in a profession that has a non-political conservatism coursing through its DNA—we (rightly) revere stare decisis, but I don’t think the typical entrepreneur says, “Well, it’s been decided this way before so let’s do it that way again unless we have a very good reason”—it’s easy as lawyers in particular to think that things won’t change.

But if you want things to change, act and they will. Don’t just talk to your friends about it. Don’t simply complain about it. Don’t just post something to your social media (for the best commentary on that I’ve ever seen, check out this; yes, I understand that I’m writing a blog piece myself, so I may be subject to such criticism).

Whatever your level, man or woman, junior or senior, lawyer or other professional that works with lawyers, make the choices, every day, to make the profession better. And doing so is ethically required, or at least ethically sound, as seen by lawyers sometimes being disciplined for what they say.

What are those choices? In a sense that’s well beyond this tiny piece, save for the very obvious: treat everyone with respect; be kind—or demanding—with someone regardless of their gender; don’t be a prejudiced jerk. The Golden Rule—treat others as you would want to be treated—goes a long way toward answering how we should conduct ourselves and engage others in the profession. And these kinds of choices can extend to specific choices we make in the profession: who do we hire? Who do we promote? Who do we assign in a choice role on a case team? Who do we go to when we seek advice ourselves?

Making the profession better for women undoubtedly is better for society, and not simply because a more fair and just legal profession is a good thing, especially when the bar provides our society with a disproportionate number of our political leaders. When women are not involved in decision-making and judgment calls, those decisions and judgments won’t be as good.

I attended college eons ago, during a time when the residual fallout from the Sixties meant that universities drilled into our youthful college brains the view that men and women not only should be treated equally but, indeed, were the same in many ways. That made it easy to think that men and women look at the world the same way since, after all, we’re equal, right?

Sponsored

Remember again that we are in a profession where, outside of integrity, the most important thing we bring to the table is good judgment. All it takes to teach you that we have different perspectives as men and women is having kids. A friend of mine gave her two young boys and her daughter Barbie dolls. Within ten minutes the boys had stripped the dolls and were using them as swords in a game they invented where the goal was to behead the other brother’s Barbie doll. Her daughter wanted to talk to her mom about whose Barbie’s friends were.

Having several children, I’ve seen these funny but real examples of difference in worldview of boys and girls myself. I teach Law and Government at a school where I saw boys in the playground in a given grade in a circle, with two boys in the middle of the circle, each with one hand behind their backs as they tried to slap each other. Girls from the same grade were also in a circle, but giggling. When I asked the boys and then the girls the names of the games they were playing, they gave me the same answer: “Star Wars The Force Awakens!” I don’t know what they were doing, and this is admittedly a bit of a silly (if entertaining example), but even these little boys and girls were looking at the same thing differently.

It’s not that hard simply to make the choices every day to treat men and women with the same dignity and respect, and offering them the same opportunities and challenges. We’ll be better as lawyers for it. And we’ll better serve our clients and society.


john-balestriereJohn Balestriere is an entrepreneurial trial lawyer who founded his firm after working as a prosecutor and litigator at a small firm. He is a partner at trial and investigations law firm Balestriere Fariello in New York, where he and his colleagues represent domestic and international clients in litigation, arbitration, appeals, and investigations. You can reach him by email at john.g.balestriere@balestrierefariello.com.

Sponsored