Women Lawyers Push for Further Gains on Many Fronts

A busy Encino environment and land-use attorney, Janice Kamenir-Reznik, takes half an hour from her practice each day to drive her 5-year-old daughter and a car full of classmates home from the kindergarten across the street from her office.

Kamenir-Reznik can take time for car pools without checking with her firm’s senior partner because she is the senior partner.

At 36, she balances a Sherman Oaks law practice, a nearby Encino home and parenting chores for their three children with her husband, Benjamin Reznik.

Just added to the demands of her 18-hour days is the presidency of the California Women Lawyers, an organization created nearly 15 years ago when few women achieved such well-blended family and career success.

About 19,000 women lawyers pay up to $60 a year to support the organization, which still works for the same purposes stated by its founders:

“To advance women in the profession of law, to improve the administration of justice, to better the position of women in society and to eliminate all inequities based upon sex.”

The group has written friend-of-the-court briefs advocating affirmative action, abortion rights, parental leave and comparable worth and criticizing discriminatory clubs. The organization has also drafted and lobbied for legislation relating to reproductive rights, equal education, spousal support, sexual assault and child care.

Mere Handful

Today, women are rapidly moving into the mainstream of California’s legal community--50% of law school graduates, 25% of the state’s 114,200 lawyers and 15% of the state’s 1,330 judges are women.

Although neither the women lawyers’ Sacramento headquarters nor the State Bar of California could determine how many women lawyers the state had in 1974, two of the group’s early members recalled that there were never lines to the ladies’ rooms at Bar conventions then as there are now.

When Justice Joan Dempsey Klein of the state’s 2nd District Court of Appeal served as founding president of California Women Lawyers, she was a Los Angeles Municipal Court judge and then one of a mere handful of women on the bench. When she completed law school in 1955, only two of the 90 in her class were women.

When Margaret M. Morrow joined the firm of Kadison, Pfaelzer, Woodward, Quinn & Rossi in 1974, only two of its then 26 lawyers were women. By comparison, her new firm of Quinn, Kelly & Morrow, which she and other departing Kadison lawyers recently formed, has nine women among its 21 lawyers.

“It is a lot more comfortable feeling today than it was back then,” Morrow said. “The numbers of women being graduated out of law school, being hired and being promoted to partner is increasing dramatically, and with that has come the security and the network of colleagues we lacked 10 to 15 years ago.”

Despite the significant movement of women into the mainstream of the legal profession, women Bar leaders agreed at a recent meeting that the California Women Lawyers organization is still needed to promote women’s issues.

Morrow is the second woman president of the nation’s largest voluntary Bar organization, the 25,000-member Los Angeles County Bar Assn. But acceptance of women by the larger, all-purpose Bar groups, she said, does not negate the need for California Women Lawyers.

“There is a pattern of successful integration into the general purpose Bar association,” she said. “But the general association must take positions that satisfy most of the members some of the time. It is hard for a Bar association like that to take a strong active voice on women’s issues.”

Kamenir-Reznik brings to her new job as chief advocate for the women’s group a lifelong interest in social and public-interest issues. Brought up in West Los Angeles and the Pacific Palisades, she earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology at UCLA in 1973 and a joint master’s degree in social work from USC and in Jewish communal studies from Hebrew Union College in 1975.

More interested in lobbying and working for civil rights causes than in one-on-one counseling as a social worker, she became director of the Commission on Soviet Jewry for the Jewish Federation Council of Greater Los Angeles.

Married just after their college graduation, Kamenir-Reznik watched with interest as her husband completed law school and set up a solo practice in zoning and land-use law, with emphasis on pro bono cases (representing litigants without fee.)

“I had never thought of law as being the change vehicle in the way I thought of social work,” she said. “But watching Ben alerted me that we were doing the same things.”

So she enrolled in UCLA Law School, graduating in 1982 just before giving birth to their son Yoni, now 6.

Together, she and her husband expanded their new firm, Reznik & Reznik, employing four additional lawyers. They also expanded their family, adding daughter Devorah, now 5, and son Sampson, 18 months.

Kamenir-Reznik’s agenda as president of California Women Lawyers adheres to the organization’s purposes:

- To advance women in the profession of law and improve the administration of justice, she intends to continue the group’s effort to get more women appointed to the bench.

- To better women’s position in society, she will work to expand child-care facilities throughout the state.

- To eliminate inequities based on sex, she hopes to survey any discrimination problems that may remain for women pursuing legal careers.

Reviewing judicial appointments, the new president gave Gov. George Deukmejian high marks for his appointment of about 100 women judges over the last six years.

In that time, she said, 25% of the 398 women who applied for judgeships got them. That was slightly higher than the 23% ratio of the 2,333 men who applied.

As more women lawyers earn the experience required for the bench (five years’ law practice for Municipal Court and 10 for Superior), it appears likely that the percentage of women judges will increase. But the women lawyers do not intend to leave that to chance.

“The (Deukmejian) Administration sends us the message, ‘Get more women to apply,’ ” Kamenir-Reznik said. “And that is one thing for us to work on . . . particularly in rural communities.”

While women lawyers can afford the $150-$200 a week to hire child-care help in their own homes, they know many working women cannot.

So another major goal for Kamenir-Reznik and California Women Lawyers this year is to develop more child-care facilities for low- or middle-income parents.

Kamenir-Reznik’s goal is to train lawyers of both sexes to work on a pro bono basis to obtain permits for child-care facilities in residential areas.

Strong Support

She wins strong support from Morrow, who personally urges all lawyers to take pro bono cases and who sees child care as a primary issue for all working women.

“There are only 20 to 25 spaces for every 100 children who need child care, and in Los Angeles, it’s only about 15 for every 100,” Kamenir-Reznik said.

“As lawyers, we have the skills to improve society. It would be sad if our only agenda was to better the position of women lawyers,” she said. “And child care is right up there on the global priority list. It is the No. 1 issue for women.”

Despite women’s gains in the legal profession, the leaders still believe that women’s climb toward the highest-paying partner positions may be harder than men’s in some law offices, and that women who take time off to have babies or care for children get derailed onto a lower-paying “mommy track.” But they concede that they have no facts or details to substantiate their suspicion.

To determine what problems may still exist, Kamenir-Reznik has set a third top priority: funding a survey of all women lawyers in the state.

Developed by the State Bar’s Committee on the Status of Women in Law, with the help of the California Women Lawyers, the survey will seek information about women lawyers and their employers.