Women Criminal Defense Attorneys: When Have You Been the Only Woman at the Defense Table?

I recently came across an NPR series called The Changing Lives of Women which addresses the gains that women have made in the workforce, and the challenges that remain, through stories and interviews from around the world.  One of the interviews was with longtime NPR legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg  who was asked “When have you been the only woman in the room?” Her answer was “are you kidding me? Like the first 20 years of my career.”  Totenberg covered the Supreme Court, the White House, and Congress, and says she was either the only woman or one of very few for much of her career. But she added that this isn’t the case anymore, and if you just look around, there are simply more of us.

Totenberg thinks the most important component to ensure change for women is to first increase our numbers.  She used Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg as an example, who became the only woman in the room after Justice Sandra Day O’Connor retired from the Supreme Court.  According to Totenberg, Justice Ginsburg kept saying “I'm the only woman here; I sometimes get treated in a way I haven't been treated in years; people go around the table and I have something to say, and nobody reacts, and then a half-hour later some man says the same thing and everybody says, 'Oh what a good idea.'” Obviously that has changed with three women now on the Supreme Court.

Totenberg gives advice that definitely applies to women criminal defense attorneys: “My first piece of advice is get another woman in the room. And my second is demand respect. You should get it. You don't have to be a man to get it. You don't have to be a flirt to get it. Just be yourself and if it's not working for some reason, just say so."

I think if we asked veteran women criminal defense attorneys these questions, their answers would be very much the same.  Today, we might ask, “When have you been the only woman at the defense table?” and I can tell you from personal experience that, even today, the answer is “many times.” I think as more women find themselves interested in criminal defense, that answer will change. But it is incumbent upon all of us still in the trenches to see that our numbers continue to increase.  How do we do that? By making sure that we continue our efforts to reach out, up, and back to women in the field.