Blog 37

Blog 37

“Charting Our Progress” is a report released by the American Bar Association. In this report, the ABA states that, even though we all wish it would, time will not remedy the problem of under-representation of female lawyers. English agrees with this point and states that we must work to get rid of the gender gap ourselves. It is not something that will just go away on its own.
One big problem is the old school male attorneys. They were very much against the idea of women beginning to practice law. However, their reasons were not necessarily that they just did not want women practicing. Some felt that females were not strong enough to deal with practicing law. They tend to say that women are too nurturing to be good attorneys. However, this seems to make them better because their clients tend to believe them quicker than they do male attorneys.
It is also believed that women should not practice law because they lost too much time having to take care of their family. My answer to this is that the game of practicing law be slowed down. Also, concessions can be made to alleviate this problem.
Many female lawyers find it necessary to work part time. This is felt to be a big problem. They are then viewed as not being serious about their profession. Perhaps if the husbands would help with the family more, wives could commit more time to their profession.
In spite of old school male attorneys not being crazy about letting women into the field, the number of women going to law school increased from twenty-two percent in 1988 to forty-seven percent in 2003. Also, Fortune 500 companies that had female attorneys as their general counsel rose from 5.9 percent of the companies to 23.1 percent. I feel both of these increases are pretty substantial. (Word Count – 309)