Hi, everyone. Welcome to Women in Law. I'm Laurie Ehrlich. I'm the chief legal officer at Dioptra.

And I've been a champion of women in the professions for for a number of years. I was, one of the leaders for, the business resource groups at prior companies for for women, and I believe that when we pull together, we can do things well. And so I am very excited to get to deliver this CLE today.

So let's jump right in. So we're gonna cover, three areas today.

So first, we're gonna go over kind of women in law by the numbers, and then we'll talk about some of the challenges that we face as women in legal profession and then some strategies to improve success.

So let's start with the numbers.

So this is kind of a quick picture. Fifty seven percent of law students today are women, and fifty percent of law firm associates are women. But when we get into more senior roles like Fortune one thousand GCs and law firm partners, we're closer to a third.

So why is it that we drop from being more than half when we start out to a third or less at those most senior levels?

We're gonna jump into some of that history now.

So the first hundred years of women in law. In eighteen sixty nine, the very first woman was admitted to the bar, and, women were admitted to law school for the very first time in two states. Now you ask how could that be, admitted to the bar and then to law school. At that time, you did not have to go to law school in order to be admitted to the to the bar.

We had our first graduates from law school in eighteen seventy. And by the time we get to nineteen twenty, fifty years later, three percent, less than three percent of law students are women, and only less than one point four percent are lawyers.

Another fifty years pass. We're up to getting close to ten percent, of lawyers and law students.

And what we're finding is that women that are graduating from law school are not able to find jobs.

So give you a list of women that could not find jobs who graduated, between nineteen fifty and nineteen sixty. This include Sandra Day O'Connor, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Geraldine Ferreira, Janet Reno, Pat Patricia Schroeder, and Elizabeth Dole are some of the amazing women who could not get hired by law firms. And what the women did is they sued the law firms for discrimination.

And just to give a picture, there was a headline in the Harvard Law record in December nineteen sixty three called women unwanted and described a survey of law firms, which asked on a scale from minus ten to plus ten what characteristics are most desirable in applicants for law firm jobs. And being a woman was rated at minus four point nine, because and some of the reasons. Women can't keep up the pace, bad relationships with courts, responsibilities in the home, and they are afraid of emotional outbursts.

And so that women faced a lot of strong headwinds in finding jobs. So they sued, and they won.

And the first class action led to a number of other class actions, and women started finally getting to work as lawyers. So by nineteen eighty, about a third of lawyers are women.

Ten years later, still hovering. Almost forty percent of law firm associates are women, but only thirteen percent are law firm partners.

And then we're getting to the two thousands.

Fifteen, sixteen percent are women in leadership. We start seeing women as as state judges at a quarter of the state judges.

But as you see, it's very, very, very slow moving.

Okay. So the ABA released a report in twenty twenty four on women in the law, and they dubbed the last decade the decade of the woman.

And the reason they dubbed it so is because we hit in a decade ago, almost almost ten years ago, fifty percent of law students were lawyers. And by the time we got to twenty twenty three, fifty seven percent of law students are women.

But we're still hovering at a third of lawyers being leaders, not even a third.

And we're only having about forty percent of lawyers who are who are sorry. Female lawyers.

So even though we are outpacing men significantly in terms of the pipeline, we're seeing a lot of attrition, and that attrition is increasing.

So just giving you a a quick look at at what kind of the numbers show us over time.

We have so these numbers are our overall number is not broken down by race as well. When you start breaking down the number of women to include divisions based on on the different races, what you'll see is these numbers are primarily white women, and the numbers for minority women are pathetically low.

We have a lot more work to do for our groups, with intersectionality.

This is a graph showing the percentages of law students to lawyers to legal leaders. As you can see, for the first hundred plus years, the number of lawyers and law students track right up against each other. And then starting in the nineteen nineties, those numbers really diverge, and you see what what that shows us is that there's a lot of attrition from the number of law students to the number of lawyers. And that's necessarily law students not going into law. That's people also leaving the legal profession as after they've already started working in a legal profession.

And then the percentage of leaders is slowly creeping up, but nowhere close to matching the number of women in the profession.

Well, I think one thing to keep in mind that attrition is not always bad, And this is who is practicing as lawyers as opposed to who is practicing in the profession. And one of the things that we've seen growing a lot in maybe not as early as the nineteen nineties, but certainly in the current decade, is that there are a lot of alternate careers in law that are not lawyers. So there's legal ops. There's legal tech.

And so a lot of women lawyers are jumping into areas that they're finding more interesting. It's not always a push factor that's bringing women out of the law and into other areas. It's sometimes pull factors as well. Still, that being said, you know, this twenty five percent attrition means that women are starting out with a dream for a particular career, and that dream is being curtailed at some point within their career, whether it's for, whether whether it's because the workplace is uncomfortable or it's because they're not getting advancement the way they expected to grow, or they're making decisions, career sacrifices because they they can't do it all.

The supermodel of the eighties doesn't actually exist.

And so so there is work to be done here. But I do do wanna emphasize that choosing alternate careers is not necessarily a bad thing, that we have found our place. That's the better place for us.

So we saw the number of women is going up. We also are now can look at minority women in law, and we'll see that those numbers are going up as well. But there are much, much lower percentages that are even less reflective of our society's distribution.

The numbers, as you see yeah. Some are associates, and this is just law firms. So, obviously, there are many more minority graduates from law school. It's therefore more entering law school, but it does give us a sense of where it's going. So, you know, you see that there's a drop off, from summer associates to associates, and then there's a much larger drop off when you get to partnership.

But the numbers are trending upward. And as you see, there's the the speed, the acceleration seems to be improving The first eight years versus the next eight years, we have a higher, jump.

Some further breakdowns. So in twenty twenty three, when you look at partnership of four point eight six percent, of that, two point one percent are Asian women, one percent is black women, one percent is Latinx women, and point two six right. Sorry. Point six two percent is multiracial.

So it's not, you know, it's not equally divided across across minority women.

One thing to know is that women of color face the highest rate of attrition from law firms.

And some history, the first black female lawyer was Charlotte E Ray, and she graduated in eighteen seventy two, but was not able to succeed as a lawyer because there was a belief that black women were unqualified to be lawyers at that time.

That has not changed that did not change for many, many years.

Like the suits in the nineteen seventies, there's also been suits, from black women, facing challenges to their competence.

One of the early black judges was asked to recuse herself from a gender discrimination case against Sullivan Cromwell because she wouldn't be able to be impartial.

And this comes up again and again for minority women judges of being claims that they cannot be impartial in anything related to gender or race.

Of course, we don't ask whether men can be impartial on questions of gender and race even though they are also gendered and and raced.

So let's, take a step a little bit more into what these numbers tell us.

So despite more than a decade of a healthy pipeline of women entering the legal profession, women are still behind when it comes to leadership and attrition, and that's especially true for women of color.

So let's take a look at the why.

What are the challenges that we are facing?

So what is the problem?

A a professor employment professor at Florida International University College of Law wrote a book called Panes of the Glass Ceiling, which includes which discusses the unspoken beliefs behind law's failure to help women achieve professional parity. And what she found in as her studies is that there's a multiplicity of legal behavior and psychological phenomenon that together essentially winnow out and siphon off female employees from the corporate ladder and the workplace before they can attain the same status and power as men. And we're gonna go through not all of the ones she's identified in her book, but a number of them in the next couple of slides.

So here are some examples of some of those factors that are holding women the law down. So there's unconscious bias. There's harassment.

There's what's called the motherhood penalty.

There's a lack of supportive policies and imposter syndrome. And we'll go through through how each of these plays a role in in keeping women down.

So unconscious bias. I think, probably, everyone has had some training at this point on unconscious bias. Unconscious bias is when decision making and interactions are based on that involuntary mental shortcut, your your your fast acting brain rather than your slow thinking brain. And those mental shortcuts come from social norms and stereotypes.

So let's, take a look at at the next, slide on what the how the male and female stereotypes are.

In in and this is, you know, Western culture.

So male stereotype, independent, assertive, autonomous, decisive, strong, competitive, and task oriented.

And the female stereotype is nurturing, sensitive, communal, self sacrificing, emotional, and expressive.

So the ideal lawyer historically was a man. Right? So we women only enter the profession in the late eighteen hundreds, and it was very, very slow growth for the first over a hundred years. And so we've created a stereotype of what the ideal lawyer is.

So the ideal lawyer is devoted to the law, committed and always available, tough, aggressive, decisive, competitive, unemotional, forceful, authoritative. This is the nail stereotype.

So what happens is we have this double bind where women are told that they're not acting lawyerly enough. They're not exhibiting those ideal male lawyer behaviors, the assertiveness, the decisiveness, competitiveness, etcetera. And so they're told to act more like a man, essentially. They're not said it doesn't they it doesn't get said that way. They're told to be more confident, share your accomplishments, speak up at meetings, be firm, ask for what you want. But when women start to exhibit those more masculine traits instead of what we unconsciously expect from them, it becomes jarring to expectations and results in the creation of negative perceptions.

So when a man promotes his achievements, he's confident. And when a woman does, she's self aggrandizing.

If a man takes charge in a meeting, he's a leader. If a woman takes charge, she's bossy.

So you see that you have the positive viewpoint of one behavior being accorded to men and the negative viewpoint of the same behavior being accorded to women.

And so I'll tell you a a story that I read as I was doing research for this.

A manage a a a career coach was working with a senior woman who, you know, she had done she had helped to write a brief that had won an argument to the Supreme Court. The managing partner sent out a firm wide announcement about how great it was and how how the case was so successful, and he included all the participants except for that one woman who was on the case. And, the coach encouraged the woman to bring it to attention, and she did. And he he wrote another message saying you know, including all the women that he had not been mentioned before and given credit to them.

And then he separately sent her a message scolding her for being a prima donna. And the week before this happened, she had been criticized by senior partner as lacking in confidence because she hadn't advocated aggressively enough for an assignment she wanted. So there's being told you need to move forward. You need to push.

You need to ask for what you want. But then when you say, hey.

You know? Look at me and what I did, and can I get credit for it? It's, you know, you're being you're being a taker instead of being a team player.

So that this is what is called the double bind.

So the other issue that we have is this confirmation bias that when we expect behaviors, we they when they appear, they have more value. And when there are behaviors that we don't expect, we don't remember them as well. So if you believe that women are less dedicated, every time a woman goes to, you know, take her kid to the doctor, it's an evidence that she's less dedicated. But if she, you know, works late works till three in the morning as we often do as junior law firm associates, that doesn't get remembered. What gets remembered is, you know, the one day that she took an hour out of the office to take her kid to the doctor.

And so we this confirmation bias and the double bind is really creating a lot of negative impacts on women in the in the legal field. And I'll say it's not just men that have unconscious bias. It's not like the men are being biased against women and the women aren't. Women also have bias, the same bias because we're part of the same culture. And in fact, I think my first anti bias training that I attended, they talked about how women are perceived either as competent or nice, women leaders. And I remember going, oh my god. I've been doing this with my boss.

And so we all have to be very conscious of the bias that we're experiencing.

So what are the effects of this unconscious bias on women lawyers? So first, there's this constant need to reprove competence because men are presumed competent until proven otherwise, and women have to prove it. And because, again, there's this confirmation bias that you don't remember as well the things you don't expect. And so if you don't expect women to be confident, the woman has to keep repeating it over and over again that it does not it doesn't get presumed once it's been shown once.

And then evaluations are compromised. So that double bind where you're told you should you should exhibit these behaviors, but when you exhibit those behaviors, it's perceived in a negative light. It means that every evaluation, you're pretty much failing because you're never meeting expectations.

And if you meet expectations, then you're not doing it right.

And, of course, if evaluations are compromised, promotions and work assignments are compromised. So there's this assumption that women are not dedicated. They're prioritizing family over work, or they're, again, not meeting those expectations since they have negative evaluations. And so they're not getting the choice assignments, and they're not getting the promotions.

And then workplaces can be very unpleasant because of microaggressions, so women being interrupted.

And when I talk about women being interrupted, they did a study on interruptions at the Supreme Court.

Sixty six percent of interruptions of Supreme Court justices are directed the women on the bench.

So women typically get interrupted more than men. Being underestimated, being asked to do things like get coffee. I was at a conference the other day, and women were sharing experiences that they've had. And the repeatedly, we heard being asked to, you know, go get somebody coffee, sitting down in the chair meant for the leader of the meeting and being told, oh, that chair is reserved for the leader and that assumption being made that they're junior or that they're secretarial services.

And then inappropriate comments on appearance or demeanor, all contribute to a lot of workplace dissatisfaction.

Okay. So now that that was unconscious bias, now we're gonna jump to the anotherhood penalty.

There are systemic disadvantages that women face in the workplace after becoming mother.

And those are particularly pronounced in the legal profession where usually there's this expectation that you are on call all of the time. And the client says, yeah, go do this. You have to go do this no matter what other commitments you have. And in fact, I, I myself went in house from big law after the head of my department told me that he had to miss his eighty person family holiday party because the client called, and he had to be out of town on Monday morning. And and I'll say, like, that was a turning point for me of saying I don't want this life.

But that is typical, behavior for for law firms, for legal profession.

So let's take a look at the motherhood penalty and numbers.

So and this is, you know, this is not my numbers. These are numbers that come from from various studies.

So money.

Mothers typically face overall in their careers a five percent reduction in wages each child that they have, whereas men's compensation typically increases after the birth of a child.

Over sixty percent of working mothers felt that they were perceived as less committed to their careers after having a kid, and twenty six to only twenty six to thirty percent of fathers felt that they were perceived as less committed. And I'll share one of those stories that I read in doing the research, where a couple worked at the same firm. And after they had a baby, the man kept getting excellent assignments, and the woman kept being told, oh, well, you have to focus on the kids, so we're not gonna give you this great assignment that's gonna require extra hours.

So same couple, same child, and the man got great choice assignments, and she kept asking for better assignments and better work and more work. And they kept saying, oh, no. No. No. You're you need to focus on your family.

And then overt bias. Sixty one percent of mothers in law firms reported receiving demeaning comments about being a working parent, whereas only twenty six percent of fathers receive similar types of comments.

And then time.

Mothers primarily are the ones who are responsible for arranging child care, scheduling doctor's appointments, making sure that everything that needs to happen for school is happening for school.

And so there's there's a huge extra pull, in fact, on mother's time.

So what are the effects?

Wage gaps, paid less, perception bias, assuming that mothers are less committed and so they get less good assignments, less promotion opportunities, burnout because of all the extra work that mothers are doing on the family side. They're much more likely than fathers to experience stress. In fact, mothers are much more likely to almost always or often feel overwhelmed by the things they have to do. Seventy percent of mothers feel that way, whereas only forty one percent of fathers feel that way. And feeling that the sense that their day never seems to end, sixty five percent of mothers compared to forty one percent of fathers feel that way.

Experiencing stress about parenting demands, seventy four percent of mothers compared to fifty four percent of fathers.

And this is, an ABA report on parents, in the workplace in the in law firms.

And then attrition rates. So many talented women end up leaving the legal profession because of unsupportive workplace cultures.

So reasons women surveyed said they were leaving, number one reason was caretaking. Fifty eight percent of experienced female lawyers are leaving law firms. And then, stress at work, fifty four percent leave for that reason. And then that emphasis on working your originating business, which often comes with demands of, going to evening networking events. And so there's there's, you know, that time away from the family being how we drive drive money in law firms.

So we're gonna jump into the third, pushdown effect, which is imposter syndrome. Imposter syndrome is that feeling that even though I have this job, someone's gonna discover that I don't actually belong in this job, and it disproportionately affects women in the legal profession.

So here are the effects of imposter syndrome. First is the silencing effect. The fear of being found out as an imposter discourages women from speaking up in meetings, advocating for promotions, taking on leadership roles.

One, report, a professor observed that in law school, while the male students tended to jump in to interrupt lectures, female students often preface their questions with self deprecating caveats such as, oh, I'm sorry I didn't get this or I'm really stupid, but and that the the actual quality of the work displayed by male and female students doesn't have a difference. It's just that we're we kind of step ourselves back, so that people don't think that we're, you know, So so that we're we're protecting ourselves, in order to make our points.

Women expect their hard work to be noticed, and men tend to shout out their accomplishments.

And then men are much more likely than women to ask again and again for a promotion, whereas women, once they're rejected, won't ask again.

So that's silencing effect of of not speaking up for yourself.

And then overwork because we're so worried that we're not doing things right. We tend to be more perfectionist, and we work, therefore, more than we need to. And that that's coupled with that unconscious bias where we constantly do have to reprove ourselves.

And then missed career opportunities because we're not pushing for ourselves. And and it's not just in asking for promotions.

There's been, there was a McKinsey study a couple of years ago that women only apply for jobs if they think they meet a hundred percent of the criteria for the jobs, whereas men apply if they think they meet sixty percent of the criteria. And so we're we are selectively choosing to keep ourselves from leadership positions by by self you know, kind of, like, self criticizing and and self, editing away from from opportunities.

So harassment, which you would think at this point we were no longer facing this, but we are.

So as early as last year, the study, showed that fifty percent of female lawyers said they experienced unwanted sexual conduct at work. Twenty five percent of harassed female lawyers don't actually report sexual harassment because they're afraid of retaliation.

And sixteen percent of female lawyers reported that they lost work opportunities as a result of rebuffing sexual advances.

As long as harassment is still continuing, it means that that work is going to be less pleasant. We talked before about at the beginning about attrition in in the in the legal profession.

If fifty percent of women lawyers are experiencing unwanted sexual conduct at work, It's not really that surprising that we have large numbers of attrition in the workplace.

So lack of supportive policies.

If we do not have policies in workplaces that help us to address the challenges that we've gone through, the unconscious bias, motherhood penalty, imposter syndrome, and harassment, we're not doing anything to to really fix the problems.

And so next slide, please. The the effects of that lack of policies, affects recognition. Seventy one percent of men are satisfied with the recognition they receive, and only fifty percent of the women feel like they're getting the appropriate recognition.

Advancement, sixty two percent of men report satisfaction with opportunities for advancement, and only forty five percent of women do.

Insufficient policies result in dissatisfaction and impossible situations when it comes to balancing personal responsibilities and work, which results in career sacrifices, stress, and burnout, and then attrition. So the percentage of women that stop practicing as lawyers is around twenty five percent of women are leaving the legal profession.

And a higher percentage than men are choosing, not just it's not just about leaving the profession. It's also about where they're working. So women are choosing to their a much higher percentage of women working at small law firms or solo practices because they tend to have more balance, and more favorable conditions.

So in addition to the challenges we've discussed so far, there are additional challenges for women of color. The dual challenge of gender and racial discrimination exacerbate the barriers to advancement.

So some of the extra challenges that women of color face, leads off with intersectional discrimination.

Minority women report much higher rates of microaggressions and exclusion and tokenism than white women. The majority of majority, not some, not fifty percent, but the majority of minority women encounter overt bias, including statements like you don't look like a lawyer or request to fetch coffee or or provide secretarial services.

Black female associates are high women sorry. Black women associates are face even stronger bias than black men associates, Even though black female associates are hired in much greater numbers than black male associates, they are promoted to partner far, far less often.

And I'll share some of the stories from an ABA, study that was done in two thousand on women of color in the law.

So this is one some quotes from from women of color in the law.

Some of the barriers you can't do anything about, like misperceptions people have in their own minds about your race or your sex or your background. So you start by having to overcome those negative assumptions, stereotypes, and presumptions. And then there's this black tax of having to demonstrate outsized achievements just to get the same opportunities as everyone else.

It's not by accident that the firms at which I worked, every single black associate had at least two Ivy League degrees.

Not so true for majority associates.

Another one giving a sense of what it feels like.

The bias that I face as a woman of color has become the elephant in the room. It means I have to keep proving myself to clients, peers, superiors, subordinates even after each success. Sometimes others assume I'm not a threat because they don't see me as a real contender for business or leadership roles. I'm not seen as a viable team member until I prove that I am.

And then even once I get buy in from others, there are those who doubt my abilities or wait for me to fail. I feel like I have to try harder than white men. I feel like people don't give me the same tools to succeed or excel. I have to make my own way without these tools for success.

I face adversity even when I try to be normal. Being content is not an option.

And one last one.

I was not just a pushy woman, but an aggressive black woman. If I suggested a new path, I was told I was being argumentative even if the suggestions were valid. If I stayed quiet, I wasn't adding value. My hairdoices were scrutinized. It was called articulate and token.

Okay.

Another extra challenge is lack of support. So a lot of sponsorship and mentorship arise from the desires of individuals to support other individuals to whom they can relate. And because there are so few women of color in leadership roles, there are just fewer people available to provide sponsorship and mentorship that have a natural inclination to say this person is like me, and so I'm gonna help them succeed.

And then there's a burden of support. So studies have shown that black women specifically are and Latinx women are much more likely to be the breadwinner than a white woman, and they're often supporting a much larger family network. So more than just their kids, but their extended family as well. And they're also less likely to employ home helpers such as housekeepers and and childcare workers.

Altogether, that adds up to a much greater personal burden.

And then there are systemic inequalities. Pay disparities are worse for women of color than they are for white women. There's a clear underfunding of DEI initiatives, and then there's the backlash that we're seeing in the courts, and in public opinion on DEI legal decisions.

So, there's a lot of of caution where we where law firms used to try to achieve more diversity with quotas because of supreme court decision.

They're they're now scared to do that.

So it's there's a lot of there are a lot, of societal challenges that are that are extra for women of color.

So what are the extra effects? So attrition.

A much higher percentage of women of color consider leaving the legal profession than white women.

And then there's a lack of inclusive environments, which contributes to those higher attrition rates for minority women and then much greater stress. So there's extra stress from being constantly pushed to conform. It was called an inclusion tax where you have to look the part. And that part, just like we've talked about women in general being told to act more like a man, women of color are being are expected to look more like a white woman, in terms of how they dress, their hair, etcetera.

And then there's more stress from microaggressions. Again, there's a higher rate of microaggressions when you have intersectionality and additional, race discrimination or bias.

And then there's stress from constantly having to reprove competence. So where women in general are perceived as less competent than men, women of color are perceived as less competent than white women, And then stress from those additional family and community responsibilities.

So what do we do about all this? Let's go into our strategies.

So the first is working together. Systemic problems can't be fixed solely by the efforts of the affected community. So everybody needs to work together to lift women up. And let's just take a moment.

Why do we wanna lift women up? So we there's a lot of studies out there that talk about how diverse workplaces lead to better results for everybody. And so women being fifty percent of the percent of the population, we there should be an expectation that women would be fifty percent of the legal profession as well. And since we're hovering at thirty eight percent of the legal profession, we're we're not there yet.

And it's and it's not good for society in general that women are not an equal, portion of of the legal profession.

So although there are things that we need to do as a community as a whole, there are also things that we can do as individuals. So I I don't have a slide on it, but what I would encourage people to do, there are a lot of associations for women in the law. So, for example, if you're a general counsel, there's a women's general counsel network.

There's the women's bar association. There are there's community. And one of the things that keeps us back is not seeing role models. And so there are being part of these communities gives you a safe safe space and gives you role models and mentorship opportunities because mentors don't have to come from the places that you that you work. Mentors can also sit outside of where you're working.

Another thing is don't be afraid to ask questions. I remember early in my career, I didn't ask questions. I had a lot of imposter syndrome, and I thought, oh, if I ask, people will realize I don't know what I'm doing.

And what I discovered once I started feeling brave and started asking questions is that I wasn't alone, that other people had the same questions I had. And I was able to to become, empowered to not just ask questions that would make it easier for me to do my job, but actually create new ways of doing things that that helps solve some of the the areas that I had had questions about.

Another thing that you can do as women is do prepping before meetings to make sure that you know where you feel strong and make sure to participate in those moments where you feel strong.

And even though, you know, what we're doing when we advocate for ourselves is we're changing perceptions.

And so even though there's a lot of that negative you know, if a woman advocates for herself, she's being, you know, self aggrandizing, or if she's taking a leadership role, she's bossy.

The more we do it and normalize that behavior, the more the stereotype changes and becomes this is this is expected behavior.

But it is a journey, and, yes, it can have backlashes, which is why we all need to be working together and not just, doing it on our own.

So what do we do? How do we lift us up? So we need to do work on anti bias. We need to create psychological safety. We need to have zero tolerance when it comes to bad behaviors. We need to have supportive policies, and we need to have fair pay. So we're gonna go through each of these.

The first is anti bias work.

So in most companies now, anti bias education is an annual training that you receive much like security and confidentiality.

But a lot of times that training, it's just that one time. And when you you we don't create habits to improve how we work without real practical exercises and meaningful strategies, at at specific moments, the moments that are that are most likely to be career affecting.

So what are those action steps? So one is the education, the self implementation. It's not just about doing a training once a year. It's about bringing it into your everyday interactions, practicing active listening, going through a self reflection exercise when you do interaction when you interact with people, and then recognizing and challenging stereotypes openly.

So that means if you see something, say something. You know? Don't don't just know that, oh, that wasn't great the way, you know, Bob interrupted Sally. Say, Bob, I think Sally was speaking.

And and then, of course, like, if you hear Bob say, oh, well, you know, Sally has to go home to her kids. You know, say, well, do you know that for a fact? You know, don't don't just let it slide. And for yourself, question like, oh, did I just do that in that meeting? How can I make it better next time?

And then decision making strategies.

So you wanna we need to standardize hiring evaluation and promotion criteria, and then as much as possible, introduce blind decision making for hiring, pay, and promotion.

So the idea is how do we strip out bias from the moments that determine what someone's future is going to be? And having objective criteria as opposed to a gut feeling about somebody is more likely to bring equality to those decisions.

And then celebration.

We need to make women in the law normative.

So the stereotype of the lawyer is not that traditional male set of of characteristics, but is inclusive of women's characteristics as well. So ways that we celebrate you know, so mentorship and sponsorship are two ways that we can celebrate women in the workplace, but also appropriate public credit and giving you know, some public credit would be like, hey. Sally just had a great idea. Let's talk about Sally's great idea. And then sorry. I don't know why I'm choosing Sally. It could be any woman's name.

And then acknowledging that value of of the female specific strengths. So when you say, you know, let's take the so so celebrating the value of female specific strengths, let's find moments where where that female stereotype is be in play in a way that's positive to the to the engagement. So take communal. If the firm is trying to build, a strong team and a woman is part of that effort and using that more stereotypical strength of being sensitive and communal and, expressive with the team, let's celebrate those traits that made it successful that are those more feminine stereotypical strengths so that the definition of what success means is not defined purely by the male stereotypes.

Psychological safety is very important in combating imposter syndrome.

So you want to, in the workplace, create spaces where everyone is encouraged to speak and feels valued when they do, and that will reduce the likelihood of self censorship and provide a platform for everyone. So kind of the women tend to internalize those that gender schema that we were talking about before. I'm not good enough. I'm not I'm not doing what I'm supposed to be because I'm not a man.

Not tough enough, not aggressive enough.

And so we need to reduce that anxiety.

And so one way that we could do that, for example, is by, you know, having meeting protocols where everyone is encouraged to speak and everyone's given space to do so.

And making sure that everybody and not just and this is not like I mean, this is beneficial for everybody in the legal community, not just women.

We know from other studies that when everyone feels like they can speak and that they won't be criticized for speaking, that you will get more ideas shared and more opportunities to deliver better outcomes.

But if we make people feel less than when they speak, they're going to speak less, and you will lose those ideas. And so creating a safe space for people to ask questions that maybe they feel are stupid or that they feel will show that they're not that they don't get it, if you make it safe for them, then they will share more and probably ask the questions that everybody else has but are too scared to ask. And so creating that psychological safety is is just great for for successful workplaces.

So we've talked about some of this already. Meeting protocols so that that fear of being found out, we don't speak up. So how do you create full participation is is key to to making sure women are heard. And then mentorship is the idea of I see other women, in roles like mine, and they are showing me how I can get there too or allies that are helping me to to become stronger in the areas where I need to improve, and then sponsorship, which is much more important than mentorship. Sponsorship is standing up and saying, this person should be moved forward.

And that kind of of advocacy for women in the legal profession is going to go very far in in equalizing the number of women leaders to men leaders. And then training for women on self advocacy and resilience and managing self doubt, helps with that conquering that imposter syndrome.

So harassment I mean, it it shocks me that we're still talking about this. It's not acceptable. It's not acceptable anywhere. It's certainly not acceptable in the workplace.

And in order to combat it, workplaces have to acknowledge that it's still happening and encourage women to report when it happens.

And then most important, take swift action when it does to make sure that everyone understands there are no second chances when it comes to harassment. It can't be like, oh, you know, there was harassment in this case, but this guy is a really important rainmaker, so we'll just give him some coaching and let it slide. Creating that sense of tolerance of bad behavior is going to push women out of the profession.

So supportive policies.

Data shows that when legal employers implement policies that are focused on supporting women, mothers is particular that the policies make a positive impact on the retention and promotion of women.

Let's go through some of the policies that make a difference.

So flexible work arrangements. This has really changed with COVID. So pre COVID, there was FaceTime was a concept that was prevalent in law firms. You had to you didn't wanna you wanted to get there before the partner and leave after the partner.

COVID created that remote work environment, and I think most law firms are, you know, are seeing attendance hovering hovering more in person attendance closer to sixteen percent instead of a hundred percent these days. And so it's been very positive for for women in in the legal profession where you have balancing a lot of responsibilities with children and work and love us and the sandwich generation, so care for your parents as well.

And it takes out when you're working remotely, you don't have the same issue with microaggressions in the workplace.

And so having that ability for flexible work arrangements is one of those policies that makes a large difference in women's satisfaction.

And related to that, parental leave and child support. So normalizing not just women, but men taking parental leave, and we're seeing a lot more neutral gender neutral leave policies in the workplace. But it having those, helps take out the stigma around around family care.

And then most important and we saw this a lot.

Although COVID allowed for remote work, there was a huge drop off of women in the professions because they end up being the primary childcare providers during COVID.

And as we are now back in the offices, we still have a problem with having affordable child care and emergency child care. And so having you know, there's there are daycare services now where you can have emergency drop off. And so enabling that for for women in the workplace helps a lot with being able to balance the stress of work and family.

And then diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. So making clear commitments to address gender bias, pay gaps, equitable career progression. So the that implicit bias training that we talked about before and making sure that it's mandatory.

And then not just, again, doing the training, but exercises that are that are continuous.

Leadership and management training specifically for women, but also leadership and management training on managing against your own implicit bias and making decisions, and reviews, and then monitoring metrics and holding people accountable to meaningful metrics. So metrics around attrition, promotion, salary bonuses, work assignments, and making sure that that there's not a disparate impact on on the women in your team or the women in your company, and then having affinity groups, so that you feel a sense of community.

And then written standards and procedures. So, again, clear criteria for promotion, work assignments, and client succession means that we have less of those gut reactions and more of the objective, are people doing what they're supposed to be doing? Have they earned this?

And then work life balance. So policies that discourage emails and calls and meetings during evenings and weekends and that allow for those middle of the day personal activities, goes a long way towards satisfaction in the workplace for everybody. Again, these are like even though the goal of a lot of these policies might be to increase satisfaction for women, What we know is that they increase satisfaction for everybody.

Fair pay.

So, again, this is like harassment. It's it's hard to understand why we don't have fair pay today, but the legal profession is still grappling with pay disparities between men and women.

And if we want women to stay in the legal profession, we have to make it financially worthwhile to do so.

You can see the disparity here. So this is kind of income level, the percent of people at that level who are men versus percent of people who are at that level as women. So if we start at the bottom, you'll see that there's it's pretty equal in terms of the percentages.

But as we get into more lucrative pay scales, you see many, many more men than women earning substantial amounts of money.

So how do you achieve that fair and equal pay? You do regular pay audits, making sure that your compensation practices are are fair, standardized pay scales, objective criteria. So you have standardization in law firms for the first years of associate pay except for the bonuses, which should be tied to objective criteria.

But then once you hit partner, it's it's much less it's not as standardized. It's individual.

And then equitable opportunities. So making sure that your pay often coincides with what work you're doing. And so if women are not given as choice assignments, they won't get paid as much.

And then advocacy and accountability. So there's there's a lot of studies out there that talk about how men ask for raises, men ask for promotions, and women expect to be seen and and offered.

My own personal experience is other people around me were asking for pay increases, and I didn't because I just thought that people valued me and were gonna pay me fairly. And then I discovered that I was being paid at the very bottom of the pay scale for my level even though I was rated at the top ten percent for my level. And so we have to ask for ourselves, and then we have to hold organizations accountable for delivering on those commitments.

So that's and now we'll look a little bit about, the challenge of around intersectionality.

So the unique challenges we've talked about before facing minority women in law that stem from intersectionality, The compounded barriers of race and gender are amplifying that inequality that we saw. So by addressing those since these systemic layers intentionally, we can build a more inclusive and equitable legal profession. So let's talk about some of those specific strategies on the next slide.

So strategies include improving access to effective and engaged mentors and sponsors. So we have to create more structure around making sure that everybody has mentors and sponsors and cultivate relationships because there's always you know, until you get to know somebody that looks different from you, they are other. And so we need to create more opportunities for for senior leaders to rub elbows with with junior people who are different from them. You know, we still have a little bit of that old boys' club, golf outings, etcetera, where women don't always feel like they can be equal participants.

And so if we create more opportunities to get to know each other, we will find more naturally occurring mentorship and sponsorship across racial and gender divides.

And then we need to incorporate an intersectional approach for addressing diversity and gender. So there's a lot of the pro women initiatives that you see in the law, don't account for the different experiences that women of color and white women experience. And they tend to be very much more about the white woman's journey than about the journey of women of color.

And then in general, just create a more inclusive culture in the legal profession. So policies, practices, procedures that really promote diversity and inclusion and foster workplaces that that value the unique needs and priorities of minority women.

And let's take a moment and talk about strategies for individual success. So we what we've talked about so far are strategies that the community as a whole should be adopting to create a more equitable legal profession.

But there's also things that we can do as an individual because society will take a while, and we don't need to wait for that slow sea change for us to succeed. There are successful women at every level and from every background.

So individual strategies include, quite frankly, network, network, network, network. Don't forget to network.

In your own organization, so if there's business resource groups, those are very valuable joining yeah.

Participating on a on a social level as well as well as a work level in your own work in your own office, but also in the broader community because you never know where your next mentor sponsor is gonna be. Mentors and sponsors don't necessarily have to be from the same organization as you. The sponsors are more effective when they're from the same organization if you're looking to be promoted within the organization, but sponsors can also help you with lateral moves.

So don't don't limit yourself just to your own company.

And so part of that broader community is join organizations that support women lawyers. There are a number of organizations such as Nas the National Association of Women Lawyers, the Women's General Counsel Network, and also lots of local women's bar associations. And these, communities provide additional opportunities for networking and also additional resources, to help us to grow as individuals, to help us learn things we don't know that we need to know, to be better lawyers, and then break the habits that hold you back. So figure out your strategies for combating imposter syndrome.

How can you tell yourself that you are good enough and believe in yourself? And don't let those moments of of I'm not good enough usurp usurp what you're doing. And know that no one's gonna see you as clearly as you see you. I know that for me, I used to think I was I was doing good work, and people would see that I was doing good work, and I'd be rewarded accordingly.

But the truth of the matter is I no one saw what I was doing as well as I saw what I was doing. And my failure to step forward and say, hey. This is what I'm doing meant that it just didn't get accounted for.

And so make sure that you get yourself that credit that is due for the work that you're doing.

And then let's just summarize where we are.

So where are we? We're better. We're better than we were. There are more women in the legal profession today than there ever were before. There are more women in leadership roles than there ever were before, but we're not there yet. The there's still not an equal the law is not still not an equal and inclusive profession. And so there's work that we can all be doing to change that, and we should all be taking the steps to create that more inclusive society, to see each other, to celebrate each other, and to take the steps forward that we need to take as individuals to be in the place that we want to be.

So sources for for, there's a a lot of research out there, that I relied on for this. And so I've included the references if you anyone want to go look at the studies in the back. The two ABA studies, one on parenting and legal profession, and one on, women in the legal profession have a lot of great data in there. But there's also data you know, the the, National Association of Women Judges has statistics on judges year over year.

The the Women's Bar Association has statistics every year. The National Association of Law Placement has statistics.

There's a lot of data out there that tells the story of where we are as women and where we're going.