Two Leading Lawyers Who Are Making A Difference

Congratulations to Lisa Linsky and Bernadette Harrigan on this well-deserved recognition!

Capitale on the evening of the Women’s Event (photo by Donna Aceto)

Twenty-five years ago, after increased awareness of the issue of sexual harassment led to the election of several women to the U.S. Senate, pundits dubbed 1992 the “Year of the Woman.” Today, with issues of sexual assault and gender discrimination dominating the headlines, some are wondering whether 2017 or 2018 might be the next “Year of the Woman.”

How much progress we see will depend in part on how much women mobilize and organize to advance their interests. Here in New York, I’m optimistic — especially after attending last weekend’s Women’s Event of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Center. The Event showed how both women and the LGBTQ community are united and motivated right now to speak out against injustice.

The gala, a fabulous evening of cocktails, dinner, and dancing at the glitzy Capitale event space, raised more than $500,000 to benefit the Center’s programs for lesbians, bisexual women, and transgender people. The Event recognized women in the LGBTQ community who are making a difference, including Chirlaine McCray, First Lady of New York City and winner of the Visionary Award, and Sara Ramirez, Tony Award-winning actress and winner of the Trailblazer Award.

As a legal journalist, I was most focused on the two lawyer honorees: Bernadette Harrigan, assistant vice president and counsel at MassMutual Financial Group, who won the Corporate Impact Award, and Lisa Linsky, a longtime litigation partner at McDermott, Will & Emery, who won Community Impact Award. (Disclosure: I am honored to call Linsky a friend, and I was a guest at her table for the event.)

Harrigan, a native New Yorker, played a major role in creating programs for lesbians at the LGBT Community Center in the 1990s. She eventually moved to Massachusetts, where she has worked since 2007 as in-house counsel to MassMutual — but over the past decade, she has maintained her ties with the Center and continued to support its work. In a videotaped testimonial, Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey, the first openly gay state attorney general elected in America, praised Harrigan for her 35-year track record of social justice work.

Sporting a pink “pussy hat,” Harrigan took the stage to deliver her acceptance speech. She recalled her work in New York’s LGBT community in the late 1980s and early 1990s, during the AIDS crisis, when “people were afraid to touch us — and would even kick the crap out of us.” The LGBT community needed a safe space, and that space was the Center, which Harrigan played a major role in developing. She also formed a group called “Women and Friends Productions” — and “we were fierce, before that was a thing.”

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Gwen Marcus and Lisa Linsky (photo by Donna Aceto)

Gwen Marcus presented the Community Impact Award to Lisa Linsky, whom she accurately described as “the lesbian Kevin Bacon — with connections a lot closer than six degrees.” It’s so fitting for the Community Impact Award to go to Linsky because, as Marcus noted, “Lisa is all about community — she knows everyone, and everyone knows her.” I couldn’t agree more with Marcus’s explanation of how Lisa builds community: “She collects people, gay and straight alike, as long as they do good — like her.”

And Linsky does a great deal of good. She was the first partner in charge of firm-wide diversity efforts at McDermott Will & Emery, as well as the founder of the firm’s LGBT Committee. She currently serves on MWE’s Pro Bono and Community Service Committee, and her own pro bono efforts over the years are too extensive to recount here. Highlights include her work for the Mattachine Society, a D.C.-based nonprofit that brings to light the hidden histories of LGBT Americans (including rampant discrimination against LGBT individuals who worked for the federal government); her authorship of many amicus briefs, in support of such causes as workplace equality and the freedom to marry; and her service on several boards, including those of Lambda Legal and the Center. For all of this work, Linsky “has won more more awards than Susan Lucci has ever lost,” as Marcus so delightfully put it.

Accepting the award, Linsky delivered a powerful speech reminding the audience that the history of discrimination against women and LGBT individuals — a history she has helped expose, through many channels — could very well be repeating itself. She offered a harsh indictment of the Trump Administration’s policies on LGBT individuals, including its attempt to ban transgender individuals from the military and its support for the baker in Masterpiece Cakeshop.

But opponents of the administration should not lose heart, Linsky urged. Times have changed so much since the “Lavender scare” of the 1950s. The LGBT community is strong, active, and supported by powerful allies. Many individuals, both gay and straight, “are looking injustice straight in the eye and saying, ‘not on my watch'” — like Linsky’s friend Edie Windsor, who passed away earlier this year (and who was the subject of a moving tribute at the Women’s Event).

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Citing Edie Windsor, Linsky urged the audience to take the following steps: (1) show up, don’t just sit on the sidelines; (2) tell your stories, to inspire people to join the fight against injustice; (3) support candidates committed to justice and equality; (4) volunteer (for organizations like the Center); and (5) be grateful.

“Count your blessings,” Linsky said, “tell people that you love them, and live by Edie Windsor’s motto: never, ever postpone joy.”

Congratulations to all of the honorees of the LGBT Center’s Women’s Event, especially Bernadette Harrigan and Lisa Linsky. If we follow in these lawyers’ footsteps and support the quest for equality and justice, then perhaps every year will be the Year of the Woman.

P.S. I’m still on parental leave, hanging out with my son, so don’t expect much more from me until I return to Above the Law in my new role next month. See you in December!

Women’s Event [The Center]
Lisa A. Linsky Community Impact Award at Women’s Event 20 [YouTube]
Women’s Event 20 [Edge Media Network]
The Center’s Women’s Event After Party Sponsored by Hot Rabbit [Go Magazine]


DBL square headshotDavid Lat is editor at large and founding editor of Above the Law, as well as the author of Supreme Ambitions: A Novel. He previously worked as a federal prosecutor in Newark, New Jersey; a litigation associate at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz; and a law clerk to Judge Diarmuid F. O’Scannlain of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. You can connect with David on Twitter (@DavidLat), LinkedIn, and Facebook, and you can reach him by email at dlat@abovethelaw.com.