Gender

Hot Women Lawyers

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This month’s issue of the American Lawyer includes a very interesting feature. The magazine identified 45 up-and-coming female attorneys under the age of 45, at Am Law 200 firms. These kinds of lists tend to be nothing more than a popularity contest, but Am Law seemed to do a thorough job in culling through a lot of nominees to come up with their 45 people. They put in a lot of work.

What caught my attention was Am Law’s stated reason for putting together the list:

Whether it’s “Dealmakers of the Year,” “Litigation Department of the Year,” “Big Suits,” or “Big Deals,” the pages of The American Lawyer typically brim with pictures of men. But time and again, we’ve come across remarkable women lawyers, many of whom fell outside of our deals-and-suits-heavy coverage. To give them their due, we decided to identify the best of the best among young women lawyers in The Am Law 200, and bring them together in a single issue.

Does that strike anybody as slightly patronizing?

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Lawyer of the Day: Dad Badgers Little Girl into Quitting Hockey Team

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They take hockey pretty seriously up north.

Is there anything more pathetic than a “sports dad”? You know, one of those middle-aged losers who takes his kid’s athletic competitions way too seriously because he wants little Junior to “be a winner” — a title the father undoubtedly never achieved in his own life? I hate these punks, and if I ever have children I’m going to really enjoy heckling the sports dads who heckle children (then getting the living crap beat out of me, and suing their pants off for assault).

In my limited experience with the sports dad, I’ve generally assumed that higher education is a great tonic to this phenomenon. I think that if you’ve actually accomplished things in your life (or if you at least have the intellectual curiosity to read about people who have accomplished things in their lives), you come to understand that a kiddie sporting event isn’t something to get all worked up about.

So when I read this latest story about a dad menacing a pee-wee hockey team, I was dismayed to learn that the culprit is a lawyer. A tipster sent in the story with the subject line “more proof that lawyers are a**holes,” but I had thought that lawyers only behaved badly around childhood sports when some kid takes a puck to the face and the lawyer/parent tries to sue the entire league into the ground.

I didn’t know that lawyers would use their powers to humiliate and embarrass little girls who weren’t playing all that well…

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Lawyers, Where Do Babies Come From?

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Hopefully you paid attention during middle school sex-ed, because you’re unlikely to learn about the birds and bees at law school.

According a recently released survey by Law Students for Reproductive Justice, only 18 percent of U.S. law schools have offered reproductive rights law courses over the last seven years. More specifically: there have been 37 separate courses and instructor-led reading groups taught at least once, offered at 32 schools located in 17 different states.

Is that good? As future legislators, jurors, advocates or defenders of reproductive rights, do you think you need formal training in the subject? Or is study of the overarching foundations of our legal system sufficient to allow you to take the next Planned Parenthood case that comes into town — or at least talk intelligently about it at parties?

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Discrimination Lawsuit Potpourri: Reed Smith and Akin Gump

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JoEllen Lyons Dillon

Pennsylvania legal circles are buzzing over a discrimination lawsuit filed yesterday in federal district court by a partner in the Pittsburgh office of Reed Smith. One source who informed us of the suit referred to “some really interesting allegations” against the firm.

A corporate and energy law partner at Reed Smith, JoEllen Lyons Dillon, alleges that her firm pays and promotes women less than men. Yawn; that’s definitely not “really interesting.” While unfortunate — or even outrage-inducing — if true, one could say the same thing about dozens, if not hundreds, of large law firms.

Far more interesting is Dillon’s claim that “work was diverted … to female attorneys who were willing to engage in sexual relations with members of [Reed Smith] management or with whom members of [Reed Smith] management had sought to engage in such relations.” Dillon alleges that because she “did not engage in such relations,” she was professionally penalized.

David DeNinno

Dillon decided instead to have “relations” with her husband, resulting in the birth of twins. After she took time off to take care of the two tots, “her total compensation decreased, by almost half,” according to the complaint. Dillon claims that when she objected to this pay cut, partner David DeNinno, former chair of the Business & Finance Department at RS, asked if she was “done having babies yet.”

That’s just for starters. Dillon claims to have more dirt on her firm….

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Quote of the Day: Unintended Consequences

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[M]ale lawyers do not want to travel with, have lunch with, or mentor women lawyers because they fear someone will mistake their intentions and accuse them of sexual harassment.

— law firm consultant Cynthia Calvert, in a blog post entitled Male Partners: Help Your Firm by Connecting with Women Lawyers.

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Biglaw Women Relegated to ‘Pink Ghetto’ (When They Can Be Found at All)

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A female attorney, bending over backwards.

Attorney and author Yolanda Young once alleged that Covington & Burling — her former employer and current adversary — had a “staff attorney ghetto.” Now, the National Organization for Women Lawyers (NAWL) wonders if there are so many female staff attorneys that the position is turning into a “pink ghetto.”

I don’t know much about life as a staff attorney or living in a ghetto. But I believe high debts, high stress, and low public regard are endemic to both. The difference is that you can usually find an apartment in the ghetto without spending tens of thousands of dollars on three years of education. Raise your hand if you would trade in your J.D. for a nice set of rims.

Obviously, things are tough for everybody during this recession, but a new NAWL report illustrates that things are especially tough for female attorneys. And not just for the obvious reasons. Sure, women are still criminally underrepresented in law firm partnerships and management positions. But we knew that already.

The exciting new type of discrimination that women face involves the one attorney job where they make up the majority…

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Diversity Issues To Consider Before You Accept Your Offer

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There are two ways to make diversity mean something to Biglaw partners. The first involves clients caring about whether or not their legal counsel has made a commitment to diversity. The second involves incoming and lateral talent caring about whether or not they go to a diverse workplace.

But for people to make informed decisions about these issues, they need hard numbers.

Thankfully, we’ve got some hard numbers. Thanks to the hard work of the people at NALP and at Building a Better Legal Profession (BBLP), we’ve got some statistics showing that diversity is taking a hit, thanks to recession — but the pain isn’t being spread to all firms evenly.

This is news you can use, especially if you’re considering going to a handful of firms that we’re about to mention….

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Halloween Harassment

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Don't pull a Prince Harry this Halloween.

I hate this holiday. I hated this holiday as a kid for personal safety reasons. As an adult, it’s pretty clear that Halloween has devolved into nothing more than an excuse for girls to dress up as sluts and guys to be racist. That’s what it is, the one day where everybody can get away with their inappropriate or insensitive fantasies (unless you are Prince Harry).

The problem is, not everybody is on the same page. For instance, if I see a person dressed up as a “tribal chieftain” in some kind of get up that would be offensive on any other day of the year, I laugh it off. In exchange for my restraint, when I see a girl dressed up as “Booberella” I’m going to make lecherous comments I’d normally save for when she was out of ear shot. Quid pro quo, mofos; I’ll put my cards away if you lay down yours.

But not everybody thinks like me. So be careful out there this Halloween. For you edification, the Connecticut Employment Law Blog has compiled a list of horrors from Halloween past….

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The Price of Getting Pretty: Productivity

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Ed. note: The following piece was authored by The Legal Tease, of Sweet Hot Justice fame. Check out her other musings from Sweet Hot Justice here.

Let’s say you just woke up. After working at the firm until midnight last night, you’re already underslept and overtired and now you have to haul your ass out of bed and get ready for another day at the firm. You either:

(A) Get up; brush your teeth; spend 10-15 minutes prepping your face, hair and bod; get dressed in the dry-clean-only version of the same basic outfit and shoes that you would wear if you were going to the park for a weekend stroll; and leave for work.

or

(B) Get up; brush your teeth; spend 45-75 minutes prepping your face, hair and bod; get dressed in the diametrical opposite of the outfit and shoes that you would wear if you were going to the park for a weekend stroll; and leave for work.

In other words, you’re either (A) a man or (B) already screwed before you get out the door. Because if you have two X chromosomes and work at a law firm, you’re always going to be inherently less productive than your XY counterparts by sheer virtue of the fact that you have to get ready for work every morning. Even if you couldn’t care less about your appearance.

Unconvinced? Let’s take a look at how the actual numbers shake out….

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When Your Firm’s Secretaries Could Be Cast in Mad Men, Your Firm Has Some Problems

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Sorry fellas, this is your past, not your future.

Don’t worry, I’m not going to ruin the season finale of Mad Men for those who still have it sitting in their DVRs.

Instead, I’m here to remind people that Mad Men is a television show set in a time long since past. Much to the disappointment of white males everywhere, those days are gone and never coming back.

Of course, nostalgia (and the cultural memory of a time when white men were in unquestioned positions of dominance) is a powerful thing. It must be sad to know that winning the birth lottery doesn’t pay off quite as much as it used to. But that’s no excuse for trying to force an anachronistic worldview upon your current working environment. Society has moved on; at some point living in the past stops being “traditional” and starts getting “obsolete.”

And maybe even “illegal.” That’s the argument a former secretary at the firm of Honigman, Miller, Schwartz and Cohn is trying to make. She clams that the firm’s “old-school” policies created a hostile work environment and caused her to suffer a physical injury.

According to the secretary’s lawyer, administrative assistants at Honigman are required to strut to work in high heels…

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