Wednesdays are for Women Lawyers
Appealing in Nevada will henceforth devote Wednesdays to reporting on the world of women and the law – especially women lawyers, here in Nevada and elsewhere.
This is a subject near and dear to me, since, in case you hadn’t noticed, I happen to be both a woman and a lawyer.
Women who happen to be lawyers face challenges unlike those faced by men, resulting in a need to make choices that men simply don’t need to make. For example, I daresay very few men attend law school while pregnant, as I did. Although the pregnancy did not have a negative effect my class rank (in fact, I advanced in rank), the birth of my daughter in June, between my second and third years of law school, did preclude my acceptance of a summer clerkship similar to those taken by my peers. My subsequent employment choices: i.e., government and academia also reflected certain realities wrought by my status as a parent (including seven years as a single parent).
I do not regret the choices I made. I have a wonderful daughter, now an adult, with whom I have a good relationship. My employment choices enabled me to volunteer in her classroom, be an assistant Brownie leader for her troop, coach her sports teams, and for most days during middle and high school, be home when she came home from school. I was, and am, a terrific mom, as she tells me every now and again.
When she went to college, I went to work in a law firm. My employment choices also shaped the lawyer I am today, including what a lawyer with what I immodestly consider to be exemplary writing skills.
But my choices also mean that here I am, with nearly 22 years of experience, serving as “of counsel” in a fine firm with an excellent reputation – where more than half the partners have less legal experience than I do. Some of them less than half the experience I have!
(Lest anyone think I am maligning my firm about the partnership situation, let me say here and now – I have never asked to be considered for partnership here, and do not have any present intention of doing so. You could say I have commitment issues. Also, I recognize that the same dissonance I experience with the concept of “partners” being younger than I, also occurs with the concept of doctors, and even - yikes! – judges who are younger than I.)
Nevertheless, I must wonder – had a partnership in a firm been my goal, could I have achieved partnership and still have been the great parent – the great mother - I believe I was? Frankly, I doubt it. But that’s just me.
I recall being told by the then Dean, Betsy Levin, that my class at the University of Colorado – Class of 1987 – was the first class of that school to admit more women than men. I do not know, but I would lay serious money that more of my male classmates are partners in firms than are my female classmates. (Please –classmates, if you are out there – enlighten me!). In fact, I would hazard a guess that male partners would outnumber female partners by 2-1 or more. This is a guess, but it is an educated guess. Just take a look at the male/female ratios in firms.
So maybe it’s not just me.
There is no one reason why this is true. And, as indicated, among those reasons are freely made choices. But the next post will list what is surely another one of the reasons.
Meanwhile, please chime in with your thoughts.
