You Hate Gloria Allred 'Cause You Ain't Gloria Allred

Being a plaintiffs' lawyer, and doing a good job at it, is often vulgar and hard.

Gloria Allred (by Gloria Allred via Wikimedia)

Ed. note: Please welcome new columnist James Goodnow, who will be covering the world of plaintiffs’ lawyers for our pages.

Gloria Allred gives a press conference, people complain that Gloria Allred gives too many press conferences, and water remains wet.

This time around, Allred is speaking to a gaggle of reporters in her capacity as counsel for 33 of the 50+ women who have accused Bill Cosby of sexual assault. Allred is heading up a civil case against Cosby in California. Now that Cosby’s criminal charges have resulted in a hung jury pending retrial, many believe Allred’s case represents the alleged Cosby victims’ best chance at exacting some form of justice. So Allred, one of America’s most beloved, reviled, accomplished, self-serving, noble, media-hungry attorneys is doing what she’s known for: commanding a platoon of cameras and demanding attention for the victims she represents.

For as much sympathy as she elicits for her clients every time she gets in front of a camera, Allred produces at least as many eye rolls. Few attorneys have spent so much time so willingly embracing the spotlight as Allred has over the past 40 years of practice, and she’s amassed a rabidly hateful following as a result. Much of the vitriol boils down to one complaint: she’s just in it for the self-promotion. Gloria Allred is just a brand, they say, and every cause she picks up publicly becomes yet another opportunity for her to polish the reputation and name recognition she’s been cultivating for decades. No one can step in front of a camera for 40 years and not, at some point, be doing it at least partly for their own purposes.

And I’m here to tell you, that’s all true – and that’s okay. I come to praise Gloria Allred, not to bury her.

To most people, especially lawyers, stepping out in front of a camera to publicize and capitalize on someone else’s tragedy is vulgar. It clashes with the restrained, mannered image of the practice that many lawyers love to promote. Call it the Genteel Lawyer™. The Genteel Lawyer™ is the refined philosopher, shuffling quietly from place to place, taking care to be little-seen, but dispensing sage advice and fixing problems discreetly and quickly. The Genteel Lawyer™ doesn’t draw attention to themselves or their client. The Genteel Lawyer™ doesn’t make nice people watching the news think about awful things like injury, death, and sexual assault.

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If the Genteel Lawyer™ exists, they’re probably a defense counsel. Plaintiffs’ lawyers don’t get that lucky. The majority of a plaintiff lawyer’s practice is taken up fighting with insurance companies over compensation owed to injured clients. In my experience, on good days, calls with insurance companies are professional, constructive, and productive. On bad days, it can feel like an ugly cage fight, all haymakers, flying sweat, and post-concussive syndrome. Being a plaintiffs’ lawyer, and doing a good job at it, is often vulgar and hard. Lawyers like Gloria Allred bring that reality out into the public sphere, and force people to reckon with the consequences of an adversarial legal system that is designed around conflict and leverage.

As for the common complaint that Allred is only in it for the self-promotion, I have three words for you: get over it. When the Genteel Lawyer™ runs out of cases to work on, they can simply retire to their office and sit patiently on an overstuffed studded-leather chair next to a hand-cranked antique phone, waiting for their clients to call them with a new case. The Genteel Lawyer™ simply does their job well, and the clients come to them through…magic, I guess?

Plaintiffs’ lawyers like Gloria Allred don’t have that luxury. By its very nature, plaintiff-centered work is composed almost entirely of one-off relationships. Whatever it is that causes clients to hire a plaintiff lawyer, be it injury to themselves or loss of a loved one, it’s often the worst thing that they’ve ever experienced. That thankfully doesn’t happen every day. If and when a lawyer helps them get back on their feet, there’s no reason to believe they’ll ever need the lawyer’s services again.

But that means that for plaintiffs’ attorneys, resolving one case requires having to go find the next one, and the next one, and the next one, just to stay afloat. Some plaintiff-side attorneys find their new clients by advertising for them. Some carve out a specific niche and network for referrals among their fellow attorneys. When I see Gloria Allred in the media talking about the victims she represents, I just see someone who figured out her own way to skin the cat, working the endless hustle at the heart of the plaintiff-oriented practice. She can’t do the work she’s trying to do if she doesn’t have clients to represent.

It can’t all just be people’s distrust of self-promotion, though. The bile Allred stirs up every time she speaks is orders of magnitude stronger than that elicited by a typical self-aggrandizing lawyer. There’s something about her that sticks deeply in the craw of a certain segment of Americans.

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Part of it is likely that Allred shines a public spotlight on hard, ugly problems, the kind polite society typically doesn’t want to think about. Her practice focuses on thorny issues of gender, sex, and sexual violence that many would be happy not to think about. She’s also frankly a strong, loud, confident woman in a culture and an industry that still struggle with seeing those qualities expressed in a non-male context.

I’m struck that, of all the public figures I can think of to compare to Allred, none comes to mind so much as Kanye West, a man she sued in 2013 on behalf of a photographer he allegedly assaulted. Both Allred and West are polarizing figures that, in some circles, serve as walking punchlines. Both have a habit of popping up in the national conversation, perhaps more than would be ideal. Both command a spotlight anytime they want it. Both are geniuses with a microphone in hand – even if self-proclaimed on West’s part. Both have been fearless and unashamed to call out injustice as they see it. Both have inarguably left behind bodies of work that have shaped the generations that followed. As Yeezy himself put it, “Screams from my haters got a nice ring to it – I guess every superhero need [her] theme music.”

Gloria Allred doesn’t have time to be a Genteel Lawyer™. Forty years into her career, she still has a lot of press conferences to give.


James Goodnow

James Goodnow is an attorney, author, commentator and Above the Law columnist. He is a graduate of Harvard Law School and Santa Clara University. He regularly appears in the national broadcast and print media, including CNN, HLN, Forbes and more. You can connect with James on Twitter (@JamesGoodnow) or by emailing him at James@JamesGoodnow.com.