Women’s Issues

The Best Law Firms for Diversity

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Ebony and ivory, billing together in perfect harmony.

We’ve talked a lot in these pages about the value of diversity. It’s important to clients, it’s important to law firms, and it’s important to the legal profession as a whole.

Given the significance of diversity, it’s not surprising that several organizations and news outlets focus on it, especially with respect to large law firms. In the past few weeks, we’ve discussed diversity data from Building A Better Legal Profession and from the American Lawyer, for example.

Today brings news of more diversity rankings, this time from the ranking gurus over at Vault. They’ve compiled a list of 25 best law firms for diversity.

Which firms made the cut? Is your firm on the list?

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Who Are America’s Best-Paid General Counsel?

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Which GC took home the most cash in 2010? For the first time, the winner was a woman.

Corporate Counsel just released its annual list of the highest-paid general counsel in the land. On the whole, the news is good: “If last year’s GC Compensation Survey showed the aftereffects… of the deepest trough of the recession, this year’s results show that chief legal officers made steady gains and recovered some momentum.”

This year there was at least one surprise: a winning woman. For the first time since the inception of the survey in 1994, the highest-paid general counsel on the list was a female attorney.

Who topped the list, and how much did she make? Let’s take a look….

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Grin and Bare It: Stripping Out of Your Suit at Firm Events

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Damn, check out the girls from corporate. Schwing!

It’s almost the middle of summer, and it’s hot as hell outside. Partners are starting to relax a little bit, and collars are getting unbuttoned. You think you might have seen someone sporting a pair of flip-flops at the office, but that one was probably a mirage. All of this can mean only one thing: the moment that you’ve been dreading has finally arrived. The invitation to the firm summer party is coming for you — and it might involve a pool or beach.

But do you really want to wear a bathing suit in front of these people? Maybe while you were busy shredding documents this spring, you got distracted and ditched your ab-shredding routine. Maybe while you were trimming the fat from your briefs, you neglected your cottage cheese thighs. And maybe, just maybe, you were lucky enough to graduate from “law school hot” to “law firm hot,” and you’re worried about your colleagues ogling your grand tetons.

Is there such a thing as bathing suit etiquette for a Biglaw summer bash? Apparently there is, so prepare to be de-sexified (as if you’re not undersexed enough as it is)….

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She Wore an Itsy, Bitsy, Teeny, Weenie, Third-Degree Bust Burn Bikini…

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For women, summertime is full of difficult decisions: Which swimsuit should I buy? Which sandals should I wear? Do they match my swimsuit? Are my sunglasses too big? Are they making me look like a bug? How should I wear my hair? What time should I go lay out? How much sunscreen should I wear? Should I wear any at all? Ohmigod, my skin is orange… do I look like Snooki?

But for some women, these important decisions take a back seat to the ultimate goal of getting a tan. Some women are like honey badgers: They’re just crazy. They don’t care. They don’t give a sh*t. They just want to lay out in the sun, be it on the beach, beside the pool, or on a rusty old lounge chair in their backyard. Sunburns be damned, because they just want to catch some rays.

And this, my friends, is where the trouble allegedly started for Robin Corrente…

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Supreme Court Rejects Nationwide Class Action Against Wal-Mart

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We just learned, via the SCOTUSblog liveblog of today’s proceedings at the Supreme Court, that Wal-Mart v. Dukes has been decided. Here is some background about the case, one of the most closely watched of this Term, and here is the opinion of the Court.

Justice Scalia wrote the opinion of the Court, which was joined in its entirety by Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Kennedy, Thomas, and Alito. SCOTUS reversed the Ninth Circuit and held that class action certification should not have been granted in this case, brought on behalf of hundreds of thousands of female Wal-Mart employees who alleged a pattern and practice of pay and promotion discrimination by the giant retailer.

Justice Ginsburg filed an opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part, which was joined by Justices Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan. What did RBG have to say?

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Lawsuit of the Day: Putting the ‘Man’ Back in Manicure

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Somewhere in America, another man who has been embarrassed by an overpriced manicure is clapping (albeit carefully, so that he doesn’t chip his nail polish).

Norris Sydnor III, a 43-year-old Maryland man, is suing his nail salon for $200,000 after being charged $10 for a manicure, when women beside him were being charged only $9 for the same service. A judge issued an injunction on June 15 which ordered the salon to stop charging men more than women. A trial is set for July 21.

When I first read about this lawsuit, I was jealous, because my manicures usually cost $15. I want a $9 manicure, and I don’t want to have to drive to Maryland to get one. My jealousy, however, turned to rage when I found out that Sydnor’s lawyer, Jimmy Bell, is comparing his client to Rosa Parks.

Is this guy seriously suing over one dollar? And is his lawyer actually comparing him to one of the revolutionaries of the civil rights era? The answer to both of those questions, sadly, is yes, and I’m pissed off about it. In fact, I was so pissed off that I actually did some research about this lawsuit. And boy, am I glad that I did…

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Women Are Not Sex Objects; Cocktail Waitresses, On The Other Hand….

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Does anybody really want to see grandma in this?

I have to do something I hate doing. I have to give Gloria Allred some publicity. Sure, I have to mention her only in order to say that I think she’s wrong and using the plight of women to further her own fame. But I still have to mention her, which is what she wants. It’s a great system she’s set up for herself: she wins even when people talk about how ridiculous she is.

But I can’t ignore Allred here because now she is messing with something near and dear to my heart: scantily clad cocktail waitresses in Atlantic City. That’s right, I live on the East Coast. That means I can’t easily get to Las Vegas or New Orleans. That means occasionally I have to go get my gambling fix in A.C. If you’ve never been to Atlantic City, imagine Vegas after the apocalypse: everything is broken and rundown and more desperate-looking. It’s pathetic. And you feel pathetic while you are there (until you start hitting some points and the table gets hot and you find yourself nailing a hard ten and it feels like the whole casino gives you a high five).

One casino was doing something about that depressing ambiance. It was getting rid of all of its old cocktail waitresses. Believe me when I tell you that this is an important move. Imagine sitting in A.C. down a grand at 4 a.m. and starting to think to yourself if there is any Swingers potential and then your watered-down drink comes back only it’s brought to you by a woman old enough to be your grandmother. And so instead of trying to figure out how to have sex with the waitress, you’re sitting there kind of thinking of how your mother would disapprove if she saw you in that moment. It’s enough to make you want to kill yourself.

It’s certainly enough to make you want to stop gambling. And now along comes Gloria Allred, trying to tell people that 50-year-old cocktail waitresses at casinos are still sexy, and can’t be fired….

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Non-Sequiturs: 05.27.11

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* And finally, a law student sues a law school for its allegedly misleading post-graduate employment information. [Law School Transparency]

* A “leading business lawyer in Germany,” reportedly a partner at Linklaters, allegedly attempts to evade paying taxes on his new lederhosen. Now is the time on Spockets when we dance. [Roll on Friday]

* Score one for anonymous emails! [Law & Technology]

Paul Simon

* DSK gears up to blame the victim. [WSJ Law Blog]

* Female lawyers arguing over women having children and taking maternity leave. I think I’m going to read this post, go with my boys to see The Hangover 2, and then hit up Rick’s. [Vault]

* First-time Tennessee bar exam takers who graduated from the University of Memphis Law School passed the bar. All of them. As Successful Troll might say, congratulations to all of the soon-to-be-employed Memphis Law grads! [The Commercial Appeal]

* A patent attorney from Drinker Biddle helps Paul Simon out with a song. [Reliable Source / Washington Post]

* Deporting immigrant same-sex partners is just cruel. [In The Arena / CNN]

New Data on Law Firm Diversity

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The good folks over at Building A Better Legal Profession — a national grassroots movement that we’ve written about before, which seeks market-based workplace reforms in large private law firms — have updated their online directory and rankings of law firms with new information for 2011. The updated rankings shed light on which top law firms are excelling in such areas as diversity and pro bono work, and which ones still have some work to do.

Let’s look at some highlights from the new data, on such subjects as diversity, partnership, and associate attrition….

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Quote of the Day: In Da Club

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If I were in their role and in their position, I probably wouldn’t understand it either, that a club really can’t attract minority members.

– Judge Gilbert S. Merritt Jr. of the Sixth Circuit, commenting to the New York Times about two of his colleagues on the court — Eric L. Clay and R. Guy Cole Jr., both African-American — and their strong reactions against a bankruptcy judge’s membership in an all-white, all-male country club.

(Judge Merritt is also a member of the Belle Meade Country Club, although an honorary one without voting privileges.)

It’s a Man’s, Man’s, Man’s World

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Every summer when I was in Biglaw, a new crop of summer associates would roll in, and I inevitably would be assigned a female summer to mentor. Presumably the intention was for us to bond over our mutual struggles of being women at a law firm. Every fall the same arrangement would take shape again, this time with a first-year associate. Within a week they would each inevitably ask some variation on the same question: “Have you found that being a woman has made it tougher for you at the firm?”

I always hated this question. I’m not sure if I’m lacking something that normally comes with having two X chromosomes, but it never occurred to me to go into my career asking this question right out of the box. So, my answer was always a simple “No.”

I’m not suggesting that sexism isn’t a real problem in law firms. There are countless horror stories to back this up. Biglaw is still an old boys’ club and doesn’t show any signs of changing any time soon. We all know that going in.

But I don’t think that female lawyers do themselves any favors by starting with an expectation that they will be slighted. I never stopped to question whether things were tougher for me as a woman because I was too busy trying to do a good job to spend time searching for ulterior motives. If you make being a good associate your top priority, you’ll likely be too busy to wonder if you’re getting as many assignments as the guys are.

That said, there will be times when legitimate issues of sexism arise. And when they do, there are good and bad ways of dealing with it….

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Judge Allowed To Belong To All-White Club (Because He’s Trying Really Hard To Make It Better)

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Does this sign also mean no blacks or women allowed?

It’s the ruling that is splitting the Sixth Circuit apart. A federal bankruptcy judge, George Paine II, belongs to an all-white country club in Nashville. But there is a pesky judicial code of conduct that says that judges “should not hold membership in any organization that practices invidious discrimination on the basis of race, sex, religion, or national origin,” according to the New York Times (gavel bang: ABA Journal).

That seems cut and dry to me. An all-white, all-male country club sounds a hell of a lot like an organization practicing “invidious discrimination.” But I’m not on the Sixth Circuit.

And the Sixth Circuit essentially told Judge Paine: guys in my high school used to belong to discriminatory clubs all the time, it was no big deal.

In a 10-8 decision, the circuit decided to allow Paine to continue his membership in the club and on the bankruptcy court.

So that code of judicial conduct means what exactly?

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