Just like food, concepts and the words that embody them, come in and out of fashion.
Right now, kale seems to be the buzzword for foodies; even out here in oven-like SoCal, billboards for fast food restaurants tout kale salads and similar items that leave me cold. (Don’t I wish; it’s helter swelter time in the Southwest.)
So, the concept/word/whatever you want to call it these days is “grit.” There’s a book on the best-seller list called Grit by Professor Angela Duckworth of the University of Pennsylvania.
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There have been op-ed pieces and articles on the subject of grit and whether it’s overrated.
Jeffrey Selingo, a professor at the University of Arizona, writes that two researchers at Harvard think that “grit” may not have all that much to do with the ultimate success of those who achieve preeminence in their particular fields.
For those of you too young to remember, there was a movie in 1969 called True Grit, starring the Duke himself, aka John Wayne, as Rooster Cogburn. (I am not making this name up.) The movie was a western, the story of a young girl who partners with a drunken U.S. Marshal (Wayne, who won the Best Actor Oscar in 1970 for this role) and a Texas Ranger (Glen Campbell) to find her father’s killer(s).
It’s unclear to me why all of a sudden, “grit” is in fashion. Hasn’t it always been around? Call it perseverance, persistence, determination, stick-to-it-ness….a rose by any other name….you get the picture. Why all of a sudden is this concept/term/word in vogue?
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Lawyers have it, to a greater or lesser degree. It is what keeps us going against the odds. It’s what propels us through law school and through the bar exam and into practice. It’s what motivates us to move forward when others might throw in the towel, give up, or move on to something else.
Examples of grit abound in our culture. It’s Scarlett O’Hara, shaking her fist and saying that she’ll never be hungry again. It’s Tim Robbins’s character finally getting out of prison in The Shawshank Redemption. It’s Jesse Owens at the 1936 Munich Olympics, and it’s LeBron James, keeping his promise to the people of Northeast Ohio in bringing home an NBA championship as he promised the folks there he would do. (No, I am not from Cleveland.) Grit is the ability to keep going (see John Belushi’s rant to his fraternity brothers in the movie Animal House).
Is there anything different about the term “grit” today than there has been for thousands of years? It may not have been called the same, but the principle remains: do the work, keep going, do the work, don’t give up, do the work, hang in there, etc. etc. etc.
However, today there seems to be a sense that women lawyers don’t have a sufficient supply of grit and/or they need help in using it to thrive in their legal careers. Really? I’m surprised. Granted, there are issues for women in the legal profession: witness the appalling lack of female equity partners at Biglaw firms (and other firms); witness the small percentage of women who are general counsels of Fortune 500 companies, and so on.
I think women who are in those positions and, in fact, every single woman in the profession has grit, has to have had grit in order to get wherever she is. Women were the minority of students in law school classes forty and fifty years ago. We came into practice in the Sixties and Seventies, even the early Eighties, when women lawyers were mistaken for court clerks, court reporters, social workers, victims, witnesses, secretaries (retired United States Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor can certainly speak to that), anyone but the lawyers handling the cases. (Please tell me that does not still happen.)
The ABA Commission on Women in the Profession has The Grit Project. The Project’s homepage describes the project this way: “The Grit Project educates women lawyers about the science behind grit and growth mindset – two important traits that many successful women lawyers have in common. By providing the tools to assess and learn these traits, the Grit Project enhances the effectiveness as well as the retention and promotion of women lawyers.”
There’s a Program Toolkit so that women lawyers can use “…grit and mindset to advance women in the law.”
I am of two mindsets (pun intended) about a project like this. On the one hand, I am all for anything that helps women advance in the profession; on the other hand, are we saying by such projects that women don’t have these abilities innately and need to learn how to cultivate them? As I said above, I think that any and every women who’s graduated college, made the decision, whether earlier or later, to go to law school, taken the LSATs, applied and been admitted wherever, run the law school gauntlet, and passed the bar is grit personified.
Forty years after I started practicing, women lawyers are still wondering how to be successful in law firms (note that it’s not just Biglaw, but smaller firms as well), and so, there is a Women in Law hackathon at Stanford devoted to how to help women advance in the profession.
Memo to all: if you think it’s just an issue at Biglaw or midsized firms, you’re sadly mistaken.
I really don’t think the answers are all that hard to figure out: it’s all about the business, cultivating it, getting it, keeping it. It’s about origination credit. It’s about who gets to do the work and the billable hours. It’s about lawyers (both male and female) who are in house promoting the use of women outside counsel (not just as place holders) and convincing their management that women lawyers are just as competent. It’s about giving women the chance to succeed, whether they are on a “Mommy track,” a “taking care of elderly parents” track, a “watching your kids grow” track, or whatever. Unless and until all that changes, I don’t care what words you use, what projects you have, what you think women lawyers allegedly lack, the bottom line is that you eat what you kill.
Jill Switzer is closing in on 40 (not a typo) years as a active member of the State Bar of California. Yes, folks, California, that state west of the Sierra Nevada, which everyone likes to diss. She’s had a diverse legal career, including stints as a deputy district attorney, a solo practice, and several senior in-house gigs. She now mediates full-time, which gives her the opportunity to see old lawyers, young lawyers, and those in-between interact — it’s not always pretty. You can reach her by email at [email protected].