Lawyer From L.A. Is State Bar’s First Woman President

Los Angeles lawyer Margaret Morrow was elected president of the State Bar of California on Friday, becoming the first woman to lead the state association’s 137,000 attorneys.

Morrow, 42, called her election by the Bar’s board an important symbol that shows that women attorneys “are beginning to gain access to power in this profession.” About 26% of the state’s lawyers are women.

“The playing field has shifted somewhat,” said Morrow, who lives in Pasadena. “It used to be (a problem of) entry-level access. Now it is getting the profession to recognize us as complete and true equals and . . . to adjust some of the ways it does business so women and men can have a balanced kind of life.”

As president of the state Bar, Morrow will become the chief spokeswoman for California attorneys and influence policy and ethics in the law profession.

The Bar is responsible for licensing and disciplining attorneys, advising the governor on judicial appointments and establishing rules that govern lawyers’ conduct.

She attributed her election in part to the fact that eight of the Bar board’s 23 members are women and to a momentum created by women who have run for the prestigious post in the past.

A partner in the Los Angeles firm of Quinn, Kully & Morrow, Morrow practices appellate law. Her clients have included victims of child abuse, a plaintiff in a libel case against a newspaper and individuals battling insurance companies. She also represents insurance companies, a major utility company and law firms in employment discrimination and malpractice cases.

Colleagues describe Morrow as an intelligent, hard-working and non-confrontational consensus-builder. She has served on various court committees and headed the Los Angeles County Bar Assn. from 1988 to 1989.

In her new one-year post, she said, she wants to examine whether changes in the legal profession can be made to reduce a generally negative public attitude toward lawyers.

But she opposes a proposal by current Bar President Harvey Saferstein, whom she will replace in October, to consider whether legislation is needed to beef up penalties for crimes against lawyers.

Rather than calling for an end to lawyer jokes, she said, she would prefer to “address the causes of some of this dissatisfaction.” For example, she said, lawyers may need to be more aggressive in helping clients settle disputes out of court.

Morrow is a graduate of Bryn Mawr College and Harvard Law School. She is married to Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Paul Boland.

She said one of the biggest challenges facing lawyers, particularly women, is finding a way to balance family and job responsibilities. “There is no such thing as doing it all,” said Morrow, the mother of a 6-year-old son. “You cut corners, you make compromises.”

Women lawyers still encounter subtle discrimination in assignment of cases and access to clients, she said. Law firms reward attorneys who bring in clients, but because men hold the top positions in many fields, clients often gravitate to male lawyers rather than to women, she said.

“Men tend on the average to go to men,” she said. “Women are moving into these positions (of authority) and are beginning to go to women, and men are beginning to go to women, but it is a process that will take a number of years.”