Blog 26

Blog 26

There are several roles that men play in assisting women in the practice of law. Sadly, female attorneys sometimes feel the need to have a male attorney on their team to help win support and trust in her team. Female attorneys have been known to have male attorneys give their closing arguments in trials just because the male voice will be believed and respected much more than the female voice. Though there have been great strides over the last couple of decades in women performing the same jobs as men, our culture still tends, in a large part, to put more trust in males when it comes to the area of law. There are many female attorneys in practice that are as good as or even a lot better than their male counterparts, but our society still tends to be chauvinistic and lean toward the males. Because our society is no longer a society where one salary is sufficient, women are now in the workforce far more than ever before. Unfortunately, women are still not accorded the praise they deserve for doing their jobs so well.
Sadly, female attorneys may have to fight for power when working with male attorneys on a case. English shows us this in relating the story of a Washington, D.C. female attorney that had to fight not only the male attorney for power, but had to figure out some way to be heard by the client. The client was looking at the man and giving him the power.
One way in which males need to help females is by not asking the females to get them their cup of coffee or a Danish or something like that just because of the gender differences. I am a male secretary and I can tell you that this idea goes both ways. It may not be so much that the female is asked to get these for the male because of her gender, but because of her title. If, in a law firm, a male attorney asks a female attorney with less seniority than him to get him something, it may be partially because he feels he is too good to do this because of his seniority. I am often asked by males and females alike to do these kinds of tasks just because of the comparison between my title and their title. I realize this may not strengthen our argument, but this is the way I see it. Unfortunately, this may never end. (Word Count – 416)