I'm often hesitant to tell people I'm an attorney. Suffice it to say the achievement of graduating from law school and passing the bar is dampened by finding oneself the butt of many many jokes. But in Memphis, I find myself asserting my professional status more because otherwise I find folks assume I'm a secretary.

When people ask what brought me to Memphis, I alwasy say my job did - that I moved here to work for a Federal Judge. I get varying responses, "you're his assistant?" "his secretary?" "a paralegal?" These assumptions were not restricted to those unfamiliar with clerkships, but shared by a number of the security personnel and lawyers in the courthouse as well.

The misconception that I'm a support staffer as opposed to a lawyer isn't offensive in the abstract, but it is clearly related to my gender. Upon learning that I was a clerk, not an assistant, one older man exclaimed, "how times have changed!" His reaction was in good humor, but telling nonetheless.

But, in a less happy episode, a friend had to endure another lawyer's rant about "lawyerettes" when she told him she was an attorney herself. The bitter complaints by this senior counselor were particularly striking for their irrationality: he made sure to mention how brilliant the female attorneys he'd worked with had been and to clarify that what really bothered him was their gender, plain and simple. Though I imagine it's not unquie to Memphis, this is a sentiment I never encountered before coming here. It's bizarre and infuriating.