Politics, Women's Issues

Nevertheless, We Persist

Women lawyers, like women in politics, must keep pushing until we are heard.

By Christine A. Rodriguez  
on

Senator Kamala Harris

Over the last week, while listening to the Senate testimony of Rod Rosenstein and Jeff Sessions, I had to stop myself from yelling at the television multiple times. Most of the time I was yelling, “You didn’t scold the male senator who just did that!” or something along those lines. I realized that I was most annoyed every time the committee chair, often at the prompting of another male senator, admonished Senator Kamala Harris for the manner and substance of her questions.

Today the Washington Post, along with several other news outlets, noted the disparate treatment of Harris, as opposed to other male senators who were as aggressive with their questions, yet allowed to proceed without a scolding.

Harris, a career prosecutor before she came to Washington, D.C., is accustomed to conducting tough cross-examination of witnesses. The questions she posed to Rosenstein and Sessions, as well as the way she posed those questions and pursued answers, should be all too familiar to any experienced trial attorney. Yet, as the Washington Post noted, she was criticized by several commentators, one of whom even described her inquiries as ‘hysterical.” The way Harris was repeatedly slapped down by the committee chair during these hearings was reminiscent of Mitch McConnell’s censure of Senator Elizabeth Warren earlier this year (“Nevertheless, she persisted.”). Harris, like Warren, was simply trying to do the job she was elected to do by her constituents, yet her male peers in the Senate seem to think that she should do that job less aggressively and perhaps a bit more delicately than her male peers.

This seems like a new and awful pattern to the world watching the news these days. It is shocking and outrageous to many political commentators and the general public alike. And, like most hot-button political issues these days, it is viewed in exactly the opposite way by liberals versus conservatives.

This is not, however, new to any professional woman, particularly female attorneys. This is often our reality. While women are slowly increasing their ranks in leadership roles in law firms and leadership positions in the legal profession, the numbers are still much too low. The 2015 Law Firm Diversity Benchmarking Report issued by the New York City Bar Association reported that 1 in 4 law firms had no women on their management committees and 1 in 8 firms had no women as practice group heads, among other deficiencies.

The lack of women in leadership positions, in law firms and in other areas of our profession, is one of the major reasons why women, no matter how experienced, talented, well regarded, and just plain excellent at what they do, are either not taken seriously by their male peers, jurists and other leaders or disregarded altogether, particularly in settings where they are the only woman in the room.

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I had this highlighted for me every day during a three-month- long trial two summers ago. I was defending my client with my female associate as my second chair, along with three male attorneys and one other female attorney representing each of the other four co-defendants. Our judge was male and the two prosecutors we were up against were male. The whole trial was contentious and hard-fought, yet the women would get cut off by the judge more often, and I, in particular, would have the toughest time getting the judge to allow me to advocate for my client. Several times, an issue I raised and had disregarded by the judge was then seriously considered when raised by one of my male colleagues. The male attorneys were allowed to ramble on during cross-examination, while the other female attorney and I were often interrupted, cut off, and rushed by the judge.

After a while, the group caught on, and for issues that we all agreed upon, we would nominate someone the judge would actually listen to, which was always one of the males. When I had to advocate for my client on an issue solely pertaining to him, more than once I had other lawyers who had been watching in the audience come up to me after and comment on how hard the judge was on me and how impressed they were that I was able to stay calm and gracious, yet still aggressively advocate for my client despite the judge.

I have lost count of the number of times that I have been the only female attorney in a courtroom, at a hearing, trial, or even a deposition. I have lost count of the number of times that I have been asked “Are you an attorney?” or “Are you the court reporter?” Until they realize that it will not do any good or stop me in my tracks, many of my male adversaries will interrupt me, inappropriately object to my questions, talk over me to a judge, or otherwise just generally try to shush or shoo me away. They do all that until they see that it will not stop me, that I persist and that I often win.

Unfortunately, like Kamala Harris, so many female attorneys have to deal with male peers, superiors, and jurists who shut them down before they get the answer to the perfectly legitimate questions they pose or raise the points they want to address. There is only one way to overcome this. Female attorneys must continue to advocate hard. We cannot wait until we are allowed to have our say. The ethical mandate of zealous advocacy requires us to keep pushing until we are heard. We also have to keep pushing for those seats at the leadership table. They will not be handed to us. We just have to take them. Then we cannot be simply shut down. Simply put, we nevertheless must persist.

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Christine A RodriguezChristine A. Rodriguez is of counsel to the firm Balestriere Fariello and successfully represents individuals and small businesses in all manner of employment discrimination, civil rights, criminal defense, civil litigation and commercial litigation matters. She also advises small businesses on all aspects of legal matters from contract to employee issues. You can reach her by email at [email protected].

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