Women of the Missouri Court: First Event to feature the only four women who have served on the Missouri Supreme Court

In all of Missouri’s history, only four women have served on the state Supreme Court.  The Women’s Law Association (WLA) at the University of Missouri School of Law hosted the first event ever to feature and honor these four women.  On Wednesday November 12, 2008 Judge Ann Covington, Judge Mary Russell, Judge Patricia Breckenridge, and current Justice Laura Stith sat on a panel together at the Law School to discuss the journey women have in the legal profession and future progress. 

The judges spoke for over an hour to a courtroom packed with law students and professors.  In all the years of statehood, Missouri has only had four women sit on its highest court.  Yet, all four of those women have been in my lifetime.  That has to provide tremendous hope and aspiration to young female attorneys and law students.  All four women attribute the newfound diversity in the state's judiciary to the Missouri Court Plan, a nonpartisan system of appointing judges, rather than by political appointment or election.

The Cravath Model Is Failing - Nothing New to the Bottom 80.

According to Professor William Henderson, Indiana University School of Law, and a study from Bell Laboratories, top performing associate attorneys can "evaluate problems from the viewpoint of customers and manager," take initiative, rely on more experienced coworkers, and build consensus.  The study then goes on to further that these skills do not necessarily correspond to law school class rank.  In fact, "researchers found no relationship between [attorney] performance and various social, psychological, and cognitive abilities.  http://www.abajournal.com/weekly/cravath_model_that_created_have_and_have_not_law_grads_could_implode

The ability for lower-ranking law students to become high-performing attorneys may be news to big law firms, but for those of us in the lower eighty percent, it's what we rely on every time we check our grades.  This is also what clients unwilling or unable to pay the six-figure salaries awarded to associates at big firms rely upon in all of their legal endeavors.    I have spent this summer clerking in a seven-attorney law firm in a county which bridges the gap between rural and suburban, hardly a Sidley or a Shook, Hardy, and Bacon (neither of which would have granted a student like myself - somwhere around the top third mark - an interview).  In this firm and in similar firms in the area I have observed some of the most talented attorneys practice their craft.  I have seen them succeed in cases against those big firms that may have passed on these small-town attorneys' resumes years ago and that passed on mine last fall.  Class rank is not the only marker of a lawyer's ability.  It is about time firms realized it.

Number 63 and Abandoned: A Rant From the Forgotten Eighty Percent

I’m not in the top twenty of my class. I’m not even in the top twenty percent of my class. In fact, by definition, the majority of my law school class is not in the top twenty percent of my class. Yet, we keep being forgotten by our professors, our deans, and perhaps most noticeably, our career services offices.

Ms. Stiletto, Meet Ms. Rubber-heel

I understand the stereotypical female shoe fetish. I understand the draw to higher arches, slimmer heels, pointier toes, shinier patent leather. In a profession where office dress is often highly regulated, a woman's shoe is where she expresses both her power and her femininity. When, Ms. Stiletto, a powerful female professional, marches into a room in a 5 inch black pointy-toed stiletto, you can almost hear the click of the heels say "I am woman, hear me roar."

Ms. Stiletto, I highly admire you and your shoes, but I am not one of you. I've tried, but my feet hurt and my balance is lacking. With my one-inch high, thick, rubber-heeled, square-toed shoes, my feet thank me at the end of the day. I'm able to glide around a large office, bound up or down the stairs with ease and without a loud clack.

However, Ms. Stiletto, when I enter silently into a room, I see you glancing at my feet. I can see your judging eye. The men in the room rarely notice my shoes, but you do. They are not the ones thinking that I am too unconfident or timid to wear a bolder, "girlier" shoe. This is girl-on-girl judgment, and I'm standing up against it. I am standing up to say that my thick, low-heel diminishes neither my femininity nor my position as a viable professional.

[More after the jump]