SBM Blog

Analysis: For Top Schools, African-American Enrollment Correlates Positively With Perceived Quality

The news about diversity in law schools and in the legal profession generally is not encouraging, so any good news, no matter how tentative, is worth noting. University of North Carolina law prof Al Brophy at The Faculty Lounge takes a look at African-American law school enrollment and rankings and tentatively concludes:

At one level this reveals that right now African American student enrollment is positively associated -- though only in a very small way -- with perceived quality for the U.S. News top tier schools.

The post also includes a list of the top 25 (PDF) schools with the highest African-American student enrollment.  Two Michigan schools make the list -- Cooley Law School and University of Detroit/Mercy.

Even At Yale Law School, Gender Differences Still Drive The Conversation

The point of paying attention to what's going on at Yale Law School is Yale's persistent recognition at the top of the academic law school heap. So what's going on with women law students at Yale? This just-released study (PDF), "Yale Law Women SpeakU," highlights gender differences in class participation and assertiveness in seeking references and recommendations. The relative reticence of the women law students has not decreased, and in some respects has increased, compared to the same study conducted a decade ago. Reticence appears to disadvantage women law students in participation on law review and in climbing the partner track. To the extent that Big Law culture values an assertive style, the Yale data may explain the relatively slow gains in leadership roles that women have been able to achieve in the Big Law firm world. If assertiveness and aggressive style are necessary to provide excellence in legal services and to market one's abilities then by all means, women should be taught in law school how to acquire the necessary skills and style. But, on the other hand, what if the assertion that greater assertiveness by women lawyers is important to success is just like the insistence two decades ago that women must dress like men in the courtroom to be successful -- an empty assumption whose basic purpose is to perpetuate the status quo (a status quo that looks increasingly vulnerable in its own right)?

Diversifying the profession can't just be about gender and racial equity. Surely we can be a profession that embraces a variety of styles in service delivery. Which brings us to the best-selling new book, Quiet: The Power of Introverts, by Susan Cain. Judith Warner's review of the book describes its premise:

Many of the self-avowed introverts she meets in the course of this book, which combines on-the-scenes reporting with a wide range of social science research and a fair bit of “quiet power” cheerleading, ape extroversion. Though some fake it well enough to make it, going along to get along in a country that rewards the out­going, something precious, the author says, is lost in this masquerade. Unchecked extroversion — a personality trait Cain ties to ebullience, excitability, dominance, risk-taking, thick skin, boldness and a tendency toward quick thinking and thoughtless action — has actually, she argues, come to pose a real menace of late. The outsize reward-seeking tendencies of the hopelessly ­outer-directed helped bring us the bank meltdown of 2008 as well as disasters like Enron, she claims. With our economy now in ruins, Cain writes, it’s time to establish “a greater balance of power” between those who rush to speak and do and those who sit back and think. Introverts — who, according to Cain, can count among their many virtues the fact that “they’re relatively immune to the lures of wealth and fame” — must learn to “embrace the power of quiet.” And extroverts should learn to sit down and shut up.

Introverts may be an odd audience for a book about power and leadership — concepts that necessarily involve the tiring and unappealing prospect of having power over, and leadership of, other people. Jonathan Rauch, a contributing editor at National Journal, tapped into the inherent humor of this contradiction some years ago, when he wrote a much-read meditation in The Atlantic on introversion. Rauch dreamed about the dawning of an “Introverts’ Rights movement,” the slogan of which might someday be “Please shush.” He got the tone just right: “Remember, someone you know, respect and interact with every day is an introvert, and you are probably driving this person nuts.”

Maybe those quiet women (and men) law students at Yale (and elsewhere) are on to something. Let's start listening.

Pipeline to Power in Your Pocket

Forbes highlights a new mobile app, the WomenLawyerApp, being designed by three women LawWithoutWalls students to "provide women lawyers with a 'networking assistant' giving them easy access to current news and events, information on women’s legal organizations, and, research & development in the legal field -- a " one-stop shop to find all the best legal practices along with networking, rain-making, and, origination-credit getting information within the same program in a user-friendly, aesthetically-pleasing manner."

Pipeline to Power: What It Takes

Blogging about an event in which you're a participant is a skill I have yet to master.  Michigan State University College of Law's Gender and the Legal Profession's Pipeline to Power presented just that challenge.  After two days of reflection on a well-conceived, constructed, and conducted symposium, here are some observations:

• If Harvard Law professor Nancy Gertner, Stanford Law's Deborah Rhode, and Michigan's own Julia Darlow are typical, the women at the forefront of the breakthroughs that began in the seventies remain passionate and committed to achieving equality. I didn't see any weariness, discouragement, or mellowing -- just energy, determination, wisdom, and humor.
• There was an explicit recognition that although lift-off to gender equality has taken place (the pipeline has been almost half full of women admitted to practice for a significant period of time), orbit has not been achieved. The statistics offered in the keynote address by Yale Law's Linda Greenhouse, who asked whether the pipeline is half full or half empty, underscored that point, and Rhode's opening plenary address built upon it.
• Depressingly, the same concern about a balance between professional demands and family life that dominated much of the conversation about gender and the profession in the seventies continues to be a dominant part of the conversation today.  The law has addressed the old manifestations of overt discrimination, but discrimination today is more opaque and thus in some respects more difficult to address. Maryland School of Law's Paula Monopoli description of the ways in which the pipeline thwarts female scholars provided powerful illustration of the problem. 
• In the "as if that isn't bad enough" vein, the symposium addressed the additional difficulties women of color face in navigating the pipeline to power. Iowa College of Law's Angela Onwuachi-Willig (a Michigan Law grad) made a particularly forceful argument for the intrinsic value of having judges of color represented on the bench, even when the judges themselves reject the importance of their race (e.g., Justice Thomas).
• The evidence that the pipeline is "leaking" women before they reach positions of power is irrefutable, but there is no consensus about cause. Side conversations at the symposium explored  whether the main problem is the pipeline itself or the ambiguous ambition of the women within it. Nancy Gertner tends to the latter view, lamenting that women take themselves out of the pipeline in order to prepare for a hypothetical family life before even trying to compete within the traditional structure. (Note to self and Nancy: Those of us who have done it know it can be done; have we failed to emphasize the joys, or overemphasized the difficulties?)
• One hopeful sign concerning the persistent work/family life balance problem is that the concerns are now shared by many young male lawyers, an observation reinforced by thoughtful comments from some of the many male law students at the symposium.
• Women in the judiciary became a major focus of the symposium. Syracuse College of Law's Keith Bybee suggested that the media's infatuation with the dichotomous view of judges as either impartial arbiters or partisan policymakers has disadvantaged women in the selection process, and he advocated seizing the initiative by questioning why women should not be on the bench. Tulane's Sally Kenney's fascinating overview of women on state supreme courts reinforced the emerging theme that gender equality in the legal profession has not yet achieved orbit. The  record includes evidence of reversals and deterioration in progress.
• Suk and Gertner had one of the most memorable interchanges of the symposium. Gertner's plenary address included the assertion that recent jurisprudence has effectively killed Title VII. For example, discrimination suits have little chance when otherwise relevant evidence is dismissed as "stray remarks," and discriminatory acts are "spliced and diced" into inoffensive bits of evidence (if you're not offending on a continuous basis, then sporadic outbursts of discrimination don't count).  Suk wondered whether the anti-discrimination law framework is up to the task of providing meaningful relief, because it does not recognize many of the drivers of disparity, including the impact of our present scheme (or lack thereof) of family and medical leave. 
• MSU College of Law continues to impress with its innovative, interdisciplinary, international approach to tackling major issues in the legal profession. Princeton's Carol Greenhouse offered a memorable anthropologist's view of the Sotomayor confirmation hearing and Cardozo Law's Julie Suk hooked us on a provocative quota theme and then took us on a whirlwind world-wide tour of approaches to the work-family conflict. And of course, the symposium's leaders, Hannah Brenner and Renee Knake, were particularly bold in reaching outside of the academy to invite the three living past women presidents of the State Bar, and our current President, Julie Fershtman, to offer their perspectives on the pipeline to power.
• Speaking of a promising developments in the pipeline to power, Brenner and Knake are examples themselves. The new generation of women scholars was in evidence everywhere at the symposium, and even online -- Brenner and Knake recruited Pace Law's Bridget Crawford to live-blog the symposium. Find the results here.
• What didn't get said? One question that remained unasked and unanswered at the end of the day was whether the presistent upheaval in the market for legal services offers a realistic opportunity to remake the legal profession in a manner that provides for a better work/life balance and thus encourages all lawyers in a path to both power and happiness. How about a new symposium, MSU College of Law -- "Toward a Sustainable, Sensible, and Satisfying Norm"?

A Study in Contrasts: Women and the Michigan and Indiana Supreme Courts

Prior to the replacement of Justice Maura Corrigan by Justice Brian Zahra, Michigan was one of three states in the nation with a female-majority high court. (The District of Columbia made four). Almost all state Supreme Courts today have at least one female Justice, in sharp contrast to the gender balance of state Supreme Courts just a decade or two ago.  And from the reports about who is in active contention for nomination by the Michigan Democratic and Republican parties for the November election it looks like the presence of women on the Michigan Supreme Court is not a passing phenomenon. (Justices Stephen Markman and Brian Zahra are running for reelection. The seat now held by Justice Marilyn Kelly, who is barred from running for reelection by Michigan's constitutional age limit on judicial positions, is also up for election this year.) Michigan Democrats, meeting this weekend in Lansing, will consider petitions endorsing Wayne County circuit judge Connie Kelley and University of Michigan Law School professor Bridget McCormack. Gongwer News is reporting that Southfield District Judge Shelia Johnson will also receive an endorsement. On the Republican side, Oakland County circuit judge Colleen O'Brien has launched a website in support of her candidacy for the Michigan Supreme Court.

Meanwhile, across the border, Indiana's Supreme Court is one of just four all-male state Supreme Courts in the country, and an upcoming vacancy is creating pressure on Governor Daniels to appoint a woman, who would be only the second female justice in the history of the court.

Note: this post has been edited to correct an inexcusable error in describing the composition of Michigan's high court. In fact, Michigan had one of the first female-majority high courts (Justices Weaver, Kelly, Corrigan, and Hathaway), but the replacement of Justice Corrigan by Justice Zahra obviously changed the gender balance.

"Hierarchical, Impersonal, and Isolating"

Yes, we're talking about you, BigLaw. That's the assessment of a 50-something new lawyer of her stints as an associate in two NYC BigLaw firms.  She describes her experience in the Careerist.  Best quote:

I felt like the woman who gets involved with a man that her friends had warned her to avoid; she thinks she can handle the guy because she's been around the block. Wrong.

HT: ABA Journal

An Originalist (Lite) Argument for 14th Amendment Equal Protection for Women

In an upcoming paper, "Originalism and Sex Discrimination," a well-established Federalist Society scholar teams with a new law grad to take on the "truism" that originalism cannot justify the Supreme Court‘s sex discrimination cases of the last forty years. Prof. Steven Calabresi and Julia Rickert dedicate their paper to Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Antonin Scalia, "from whom we have both learned so much." The paper argues that the history of the 14th amendment establishes that it forbids the imposition of caste systems and class-based lawmaking, not just discrimination based on race. While conceding that the Framers and ratifiers of the 14th amendment did not understand sex discrimination to be a form of caste or of special-interest class legislation, the paper argues that original expected applications of a text are not the last word on its reach.

The Upside of Sexual Harassment

According to Vanderbilt University law and economics professor Joni Hersch writing in the American Economic Review, EEOC data indicate that women who work in jobs where there's an "average probability of sexual harassment" are paid 25 cents per hour more than women who work in environments where they don't have to put up with sexual harassment.  Makes for an interesting help-wanted ad...

HT: Legal Week

"Firestorm" Over ABA Headline About Female Legal Secretaries Preferring to Work for Male Lawyers

The ABA Journal story "Not One Legal Secretary Surveyed Preferred Working with Women Lawyers -- Prof Offers Reasons Why," which SBM Blog reported on here, has raised enough of a ruckus that ABA Journal has done a follow-up, "Legal Secretary Study’s Findings Spark Controversy, Engender Debate."

The original story reported on a survey of 142 legal secretaries at large law firms. Some critics found the headline of the first story misleading because 47% of the secretaries surveyed expressed no preference about working for a man or a woman.  That was a point made by Mary Cranston, chair of the ABA Commission on Women in the Profession, who said that the headline played into stereotypes by suggesting that women bosses are more difficult. “Going down that path on the sensational side was disconcerting,” she said. Victoria Pynchon, the author of She Negotiates, who worked as a paralegal before she became a lawyer, told ABA Journal:

I think your story was so controversial because you named the elephant in the room. And the elephant in the room is not the relationship between women and their secretaries. The elephant in the room is that the legal profession is deeply and intractably biased against women. And women lawyers can’t talk about it. It’s a toxic topic. If you talk about gender bias in a law firm, you will be punished for it. You will suffer ridicule, shock, denial. You will be labeled a whiner or a troublemaker or, God forbid, a feminist.

Working for the (Wo)Man

The ABA Journal goes there in "Not One Legal Secretary Surveyed Preferred Working with Women Lawyers -- Prof Offers Reasons Why."  Among the prof's reasons:

Batlan wondered if legal secretaries’ attitudes toward women lawyers is influenced by societal expectations. “For a woman to serve a man is an arrangement that conforms to and reproduces dominant and traditional, although contested and changing, gender arrangements,” she writes. “Gender structures tell men that they are entitled to women's help and that women are supposed to freely give it.”

Other possible reasons: Men still have the power in law firms, and legal secretaries want to work for those in power. Or women lawyers may be more abrupt because of tensions created by conflicts between work and family. Or female lawyers may perceive that the secretaries are willing to do more work for male than women bosses, creating frictions.