Blog 33

Blog 33

We all believe that women have made fantastic strides in the legal profession. To the naked eye, it looks like they have. However, a 2008 study by the National Association of Women Lawyers (NAWL) shows that female attorneys still do not get the same caliber positions as male attorneys do. The women are still bypassed for management positions or partner positions in the law firms of today. I believe it is just a short matter of time till we see women as firm partners and managers, but it has not happened yet on a large scale. I think part of the reason for this is because there are still a lot of “old school” male lawyers in practice that still do not believe women can effectively practice law. Once this “old school” mentality is out of the firms, I believe we will see women advance much more rapidly.
Seeing Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sandra Day O’Connor on the U.S. Supreme Court showed that progress is definitely being made in the area of women and law, but there is still a long way to go. Where women attorneys have come from is phenomenal, though. I think of how Sandra Day O’Connor said in her NPR interview that she tried hard to get a position in a firm when she got out of college. People would continually tell her they had no openings. There was one firm she really wanted to work for. The head of that firm had once had a woman lawyer. After he told her once that he had no opening and also no where to house her, she went back home and wrote him a letter explaining how much she wanted to work there. She did finally get the job, but shared a room with one of the secretaries. One of the partners in the firm was the attorney general in 1981 that recruited her to the Supreme Court, William French Smith. (Word Count – 324)