WOMEN AND LAW

“Sometimes it’s a question of the atmosphere within a firm. A lot of remarks made about “lady lawyers” or “lady judges” or “we had a cute little lady in for a client” tend to make women think they are disvalued. (Sometimes) it’s perceived the client would not “do well” with a woman or it’s perceived the subject matter of the particular case is “more up a man’s alley” . . . or someone determines a woman is simply “not aggressive” enough to handle a matter.”

--MARGARET MORROW Senior partner, Quinn, Kully and Morrow; 1988 president, Los Angeles County Bar Assn. “If you’re going to start paying a first-year associate $70,000, that associate is going to have to work 1,900 hours in order to be economic . . . then add onto that administrative kinds of things, Bar Assn. kinds of things, you don’t have a life other than your career. The law firm routine is a total commitment . . . to balance both career and personal life is an impossible situation unless you are a super woman.”

--AUDRE ENGLEMAN Partner, Rogers and Wells Chair; Status of Women Lawyers Committee, Women Lawyers’ Assn. of Los Angeles. “I think men have a very hard time understanding what women perceive to be sexual harassment. Men tend to have a more narrow definition, which is incorrect. They need to be better educated.”

--ELAINE WEISS Lawyer staff director, American Bar Assn. Commission on Women in the Profession “We were, quite frankly, stunned by the high incidence of sexual harassment (and) by how few women actually reported these incidents. We were also surprised at the extent of the unhappiness that women felt on the job, that they had to make incredible personal or professional choices . . . Two-thirds of them have no children in their household.”

--DOREEN WEISENHAUS Lawyer, editor-in-chief, The National Law Journal