Women Criminal Defense Attorneys: What’s the Right Path to Equal Opportunity?
When the National Association of Women Lawyers issued their 2012 Report, the statistics were certainly sobering. In my last blog post I discussed it being a call to action for women lawyers to take action in order to change those statistics by mentoring young women, hiring other women, and supporting one another in business and law. You’ve probably heard the recent news that Greenberg Traurig, LLP is a defendant in a gender discrimination suit brought by Francine Griesing, a former partner of the Greenberg Philadelphia office; is this the better path to assure change?
She brought a class action in the Southern District of New York seeking $200 million in damages and to represent a class of current and former women partners of the firm. The action comes on the heels of a U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission finding that there is reasonable cause to believe that the firm violated federal law by underpaying women partners in the Philadelphia office and then retaliating against the plaintiff when she complained about it.
In the complaint the plaintiff claims that the “boys club” environment at the firm hogs work and origination credit, all of which ultimately affect salaries. The complaint provides a behind the scenes view into how women can be shut out from being able to position themselves from obtaining equal compensation. But is the best fix to this real life problem to declare war on our male comrades?
Regardless of the merits of the action, Griesing is certainly taking a bold step in complaining about what historically was a private and quiet struggle for many women in firms. Whether an action like this pushes us forward or pulls us back won’t be immediately obvious but only fully realized in time. However, Griesing has to be applauded for having the guts to insist on the conversation in a very public and possibly professionally detrimental way.
As lawyers, we certainly value a client’s ability to turn to the Courts to remedy injustices. So why doesn’t it make sense that women lawyers should seek justice the same way? The sobering statistics in the NAWL 2012 Report are nothing new. The same shocking statistics have been around for years. What is most disturbing is that in a time when more women lawyers are entering the workforce than ever before, the disparity between men and women is not changing in any significant way. Without a doubt there are women among us that have fought their way into that “boys club” and found real success. But honestly they are the exception to the rule more than a true representation of things changing.
The bottom line is that all women deserve to have equal opportunities for promotion and equal compensation. Today, when more women than men are graduating from law school, it is not an option to maintain the status quo. And if we all continue to accept the status quo, we have no one to blame but ourselves.