Diversity: A future focus

By Susan E. Satkowski, shareholder, Lavin, O'Neil, Ricci, Cedrone & DiSipio

Each day, my inbox contains at least one or more invitations to join programmes that address gender diversity in the legal profession. Are these programmes still relevant, particularly in this presidential election year in which a woman almost won the Democratic Party nomination and a woman is the US Republican Party’s nominee for vice president? True, these are events in the political arena, but we cannot look at ourselves in the mirror as American women lawyers without recognising these historic achievements in our nation’s history. Yet, the dialogue on gender diversity in the American legal profession must continue.
Statistics support this view. In A Current Glance at Women in the Law 2006, the ABA’s Commission on Women in the Profession reported that women comprised 48.8 per cent of law students awarded a Juris Doctor degree, but comprised only 30.2 per cent of the profession, 17.3 per cent of partners in private practice and 16.6 per cent of Fortune 500 General Counsel. We must work to transform the numbers of women in law schools to the same or similar levels for women in leadership positions in the profession.
History also teaches us that discussion of gender diversity is still necessary. Women in this country have come to possess the right to own property, attend the same prestigious universities as our founding fathers, work outside the home, and vote. These ideas seem so basic to us that to not have these rights seems unthinkable. And yet, until it becomes commonplace to have women as leaders of law firms, the discussion of gender diversity in the legal profession must continue.
At one gender diversity event, someone in the audience had the courage to raise his hand to make the point that unless women focus on how they can bring business to the table, the discussion will not be fruitful. He is right, too. The gender discussion can have its accounts of ‘war stories’, but must also look forward to what we as women lawyers have to offer. This topic can consume many pages, but as an example: a lack of aggression in salesmanship — a characteristic of most women — turned around, is integrity in marketing true abilities. Rainmaking is founded on developing relationships and women excel at maintaining them. The ability to be a good listener, another attribute of rainmakers, has always been a skill set of female lawyers. Let us therefore continue the gender diversity discussion, but concentrate on the future and the ways to enable us to make a positive change.