jessie's Recent Blog Posts

Are Female Attorneys More Responsible Members of the Profession?

Submitted by jessie

We spend a lot of time on this site talking about the places in the legal profession where women are underrepresented. Well today I happened to glance through the November issue of California Lawyer and noticed the section of the magazine which described all the disbarments and other disciplinary actions taken by the California State Bar Association or California Supreme Court in 2012. Of the 117 disbarments, suspensions, and probations, only 6 (roughly 5%) were of women attorneys.

Normally, when people ask me why I am so determined to advance women to positions of parity in the profession I talk about equality and "our daughters" and the like. But maybe I'll just start citing this statistic instead!

And Many More ... (Happy Birthday Ms. JD!)

Submitted by jessie

Six years ago, when we first launched the site, each Ms. JD board member chose a tag line for their profile that was supposed to express why they wanted to be a part of Ms. JD. Mine was, "because I want an old girls club."

Ms. JD has become that and I am so grateful to be a member.

I am grateful because we really do have an incredible network that delivers precisely the kinds of benefits and support I was imagining when I used that phrase, but it's not just another version of the old boys club. The whole point of the old boys club is that it was exclusive. Ms. JD has managed to confer the same connections and opportunities for its members while remaining open, transparent, and totally inclusive.

Better still, the connections among Ms. JD's members aren't based on pedigree but on shared experience. Whether you connect to Ms. JD's network by helping raise funds to send women to law school in Uganda, as a blogger among our Writers in Residence, or as an attendee at a film screening on your campus - the connections formed through Ms. JD are more than skin deep.

Pulling Back the Curtain on the 16%

Submitted by jessie

It's easy to get complacent about women's progress in the profession. It's easy because on the one hand things aren't so bad - after all you look around and see amazing women filling the junior ranks of the profession ready for advancement and success. And it's easier than not being complacent, because nothing ever seems to change anyway - we've been at the same 16% of equity partners, professorships, GCs, etc. etc. for more than a decade.

And then you have lunch with a friend. And you hear about blatant acts of discrimination inflicted with no other purpose but to curtail the horizons of women lawyers simply because they are women. And you watch complacent fade in the rear view mirror as you realize that behind that 16% is an army of deserving but disappointed women.

So what you ask was the story that got my blood boiling? I'll tell you. After the jump ...

UT Dean Sager Resigns Amid Allegations of Gender Discrimination in Faculty Compensation

Submitted by jessie

Last week, Dean Larry Sager was asked to resign as the Dean of the University of Texas Law School. The law school community is in uproar over the allegations of a gender wage gap at the school and the disclosure of a series of forgivable loans from the Law School Foundation to various UT Law faculty, including Sager. Professor Stephanie Lindquist has been named interim dean.

I don't know any more about the facts of this case than you will after having read the linked articles, so I'm in no position to comments on the merits of the allegations. But here are some things to keep in mind: study after study confirms that the wage gap persists among academics and professionals as it does in every other sector of the economy. So no surprise if that were also the case at Texas. So far what has been disclosed is that 8 of the top 10 earners on the faculty were men. One of the two women in the top ten is Sager's wife. Not a great start.

A second, related line of research confirms time and again, that the presence of a critical mass of women on compensation or executive committees making salary and bonus decisions is a significant wage gap shrinker. Here again the facts look bad for Texas where there has long been a concern about the underrepresentation of women on budget and compensation committees.

For all the unanswered questions that remain, this story is worth paying attention to now because it exposes another place where attorney compensation is vulnerable to old-boys club maneuvering and gender bias.

Reaching Gender Parity in My Lifetime: A Lesson in Basic Arithmetic

Submitted by jessie

Ahh, December. 'Tis the season to be announcing new partnership classes. And bemoaning the persistent gender gap in positions of leadership in our glorious profession.

As you've no doubt heard, women represent a distinct minority of women partners at large law firms. And their scarcity serves as a proxy for the issues facing women in every sector of the profession, where women have represented a static below-20% in virtually every category of leadership (tenured faculty, federal judges, general counsel, etc., etc. ).

Every year new partnership classes are announced. Sometimes they include women. Sometimes they include lots of women. Sometimes they do not. And when this is the case, I hear people say, "well there must not have been anyone qualified." And that it's ok "because the last two years they promoted a number of women." Or something to that effect.

But it's not ok. If there are no qualified women in your law firm that is not a random occurrence over which the firm had no control. That is a major epic failure. And should you find yourself in that position you must ask yourself, what did I do to chase them all away?

So lets forget the, "ho hum there must not have been any decent candidates" argument and turn instead to the "well it's ok because we promoted women last year" line. If every single year the majority of the people you promote to your partnership are not women you are simply failing to seriously address the staggering gender gap in your current partnership. At the current rate of promotion women will achieve gender parity in another two centuries. When my great-great grandchildren are dead.

I am not willing to trust that someday eventually in someone else's lifetime this will work itself out. Are you?

Gender Differences at the Deposition

Submitted by jessie

I participated in my first deposition last week. (At least) two totally harmless differences between the men and the women in the room were apparent.

Unimportant gender difference number one: men have a different bathroom. The practical implication in a deposition where the propounding attorney is a woman and the deponent and opposing counsel are both men? Whenever things are getting interesting the male counsel defending the deposition can ask for a bathroom break, visit the restroom with his client, and spend 15 minutes in there coaching him on how to answer.

Unimportant gender difference number two: men always announce they need to go to the bathroom. On the record. This was pointed out by the court reporter. When women need a break they go off the record and take a break. When men need a break they declare it under oath.

There are gender differences that matter and these aren't them. But they're differences nonetheless.

Remembering Frank Kimball

Submitted by jessie

Over the weekend the Ms. JD family received the sad and shocking news that Frank Kimball passed away. Frank joined our community as a speaker at Avenues to Advancement, Ms. JD's 2009 conference in Chicago. Since then, Frank was unendingly generous in his support of Ms. JD, writing blog posts, hosting events, touting Ms. JD to the hundreds of law students he spoke to each semester, and, of course, sharing lots and lots of pinot noir.

For me, Frank was a cheerleader both personally and professionally at a moment when I needed it. Working from the west coast for a national organization means lots of early morning phone calls. His were the welcome ones. Frank was incredibly funny, a gregarious storyteller, and utterly selfless in helping Ms. JD connect to the members of his vast network.

I am so grateful to have a record of Frank's charm and guidance here on this blog. Please take a look at what he had to say.

Who Do You Expect Will Discriminate Against You?

Submitted by jessie

Above the Law's David Lat recently posted the news of a discrimination suit brought by an associate against Ropes & Gray. Before sharing the details of the suit, Lat introduces the firm:

Of course, many top firms have excellent lawyers. The Ropes attorneys were also… nice. They were polite, and genteel, and not difficult to deal with (in contrast to some of their co-counsel). They met my expectations of what lawyers from an old white-shoe firm should be like.

In light of this overall Ropes & Gray “niceness,” it’s a bit surprising to see discrimination claims lodged against the firm.

Nice people don't discriminate. This is a commonly held view, but one with which I fervently disagree. Perhaps, nice people don't intentionally discriminate, but everyone discriminates. Implicit bias is pervasive. Maybe nice people are more attuned to it and quicker to catching themselves in the act. Maybe nice people are more likely to take corrective action when bias comes to light. But maybe not - you can be perfectly polite while assuming that a young mom with small children probably doesn't have time for a high-pressure deposition out of town.

Catalyst's "Missing Pieces: Women and Minorities on Fortune 500 Boards"

Submitted by jessie

In 2004, as part of the Alliance for Board Diversity, Catalyst surveyed Fortune 100 boards for gender and racial diversity. 6 years later they've released an update and increased the survey to include the Fortune 500. The results are troubling:

In the last 6 years the number of Fortune 100 seats held by women has increased from 202 (out of 1,195) to 218 (out of 1,211). But virtually all of these seats were taken from the share of seats previously held by African-American men, who lost 42 seats on Fortune 100 boards in the last 6 years while white men now hold 32 more seats than they did 6 years ago. So overall, boards are no more diverse today than they were in 2004.
The numbers are even worse in smaller companies. White men represent 77.6% of Fortune 500 directors. Women represent only 15.7% of Fortune 500 directors.
In the Fortune 500 there are only 15 companies with at least one member from each U.S. Census group (men, women, white, African-American, Asian/Pacific Islander, Hispanic). Only 1, Avon, has 30% or more women directors.
94.9% of board chairships are held by white men int he Fortune 500.

Frightening stuff. To download the report, click here.

Reflecting on Lists: Their Power and Their Price

Submitted by jessie

I've had a lot of time today to contemplate the power of lists. First, I heard from Patricia Sellers, Editor-at-Large at Fortune, who rose to prominence with the promulgation of her Most Powerful Women list. Then I spent a breakout session with academic leaders bemoaning the toxic effect of U.S. News Top Law Schools list on legal education. I finally got back to my hotel room to review the freshly released Yale Law Women 2011 Top Ten Friendly Firms list.

The first of these lists represents an important marketing tool for professional women. The Fortune list gave female executives the kind of visibility their male counterparts had been enjoying in trade publications and traditional media outlets for generations. Meanwhile the issues raised by the dominance of U.S. News are well-documented. The problems with the rankings of law firms on the basis of their family friendli-ness is slightly less talked-of, and so I would like to take this opportunity to explain why I believe these efforts do us all a disservice.

The firms on these lists may be doing relatively better than some of their competition in the promotion and retention of women, but they are still often terrible to women, especially women of color. Just look at the number of women of color in leadership positions or the wage gap between majority and minority partners and you quickly realize these institutions cannot be characterized as the places MOST receptive to women's professional ambitions. No institution that fails to promote women of color is a good place for anyone of any gender to work. When we say otherwise we marginalize the issues facing women and women of color in the profession.

Law firms are great for a lot of things. They are a place to work with accomplished, expert practitioners. They are a place to work on high-stakes, high profile matters. They are a place to gain access to clients and networks with powerful resources. They are a great place to make a comfortable income with relative security. They are places where majority women, though to a lesser extent than majority men, will find success.

But as far as I'm concerned, to describe any workplace with less than total parity as the BEST place to work is to concede the battle for equality.