DO SOMETHING

THE TIME FOR “LEARNING” IS OVER

I come from a small, insulated profession that has been steeped in both explicit and implicit racism, sexism, homophobia and xenophobia since the day I began work as a typist in a Manhattan law firm in 1975.

I am sorry to report that our clubby, self-referring and self-congratulating world has changed only in the level of hypocrisy concerning the implementation of diversity “programs” that work.

I give you just a few highlights of a career-spanning set of experiences of sexism and reports of bigotry and racism from the field. I can only imagine what level of insults and discrimination has been faced by women of color throughout this period and to the present day. I will be bringing those voices to you on a recurring basis.

As Tina Fey has said, “only in comedy could a compliant girl from Toledo be considered diverse.” To that I add, “only in the law.”

The Happy Graduate

1980, King Hall School of Law, University of California at Davis

1982: New clients from a successful farming family hire the firm. I’m the associate at the first client meeting. Afterwards, my partner tells me “they don’t want a woman on the team.” So I’m off? “No, he says, “I told them they don’t want this firm if they don’t want you want you because you’re the best associate I have.”

I am forever grateful to this man.

1981-1984: A very brief and incomplete sampling of comments from both associate attorneys and partners at my law firm.

“I told the Judge we just made a ‘muff’ a partner.” (“muff” is a term chronically used to refer to women by most of the men in the firm)
“Women can’t be trial lawyers because they don’t have ‘the taste for blood.’”
On why the liberal firm leader belongs to a club that excludes his women partners and associates: “Because we don’t want our wives there.”
From senior firm women: “you can’t get pregnant before you make partner.”
From a Judge when I say “Ms.” in response to “is it Miss or Mrs.?” “What are you, some kind of LIBBER?”

1987: Under political pressure, the Los Angeles Jonathan Club where deals are brokered and clients signed, admits women to membership for the first time. To make its commitment to its men crystal clear, the Club announces that it will still be setting aside “a few rooms in the club . . . for males only.”

A month after the the Los Angeles City Council votes 12-0 to ban discriminatory practices at institutions like the Jonathan Club, the California Club also votes to admit women. The L.A. Times reports that it has no Black members.

The Late ‘80s and ‘90s:

a federal judge refers to litigants appearing before him as “sand n-words.”
my law firm announces that it will exclude its women lawyers from an “all lawyer” business meeting at the firm retreat to teach us how to negotiate like men. We object. They relent.

1994: The men in the firm have a real or imaginary “impunity” list with the names of all the firm women they believe will have sex with them.

2000’s: I shift my practice from commercial litigation and trial to mediation and arbitration.

The L.A. manager of the American Arbitration Association tells me that the individual responsible for appointing arbitrators in the AAA’s construction arbitration panel “stopped putting Blacks on the panel because no one hires them.”
My white husband, with no arbitration experience, is invited to join the AAA arbitration panel. With arbitration experience and a masters degree in dispute resolution, I am placed on a “second tier” one-day arbitration panel. When I complain, I’m told the story of the Black men who were excluded from the construction panels because they “couldn’t generate enough business.” And business generation is key. I have an active practice. My husband has none.
As a mediator, I am repeatedly told sexist jokes (wink wink, “you don’t mind.”)
As a mediator, old colleagues (white men) tell me they don’t hire women because they don’t know any women mediators who have commercial litigation experience. They say this to me. A woman mediator with commercial litigation experience.
A local malpractice defense lawyer says she doesn’t hire women mediators because they “wear gypsy skirts and cry about dead babies.”
at the beginning of every CPR Diversity Committee meeting, one or more members ask whether there’s actually a diversity problem
more than one member of a national inter-firm diversity council suggests they disband because they’ve been meeting for 20 years and it hasn’t “worked.”
one member of the CPR committee says, “we’re diverse; we have bald guys and guys with beards, red heads and brunettes.”

I’m sure this man’s heart is in the right place

But he sits on an ADR panel that is less then three percent Black with precious few women and POC.

2020:

In July, in the aftermath of the George Floyd murder and International protests supporting Black Lives Matter, CPR finally adopts a Diversity Program with teeth.
Meanwhile, JAMS announces that Mr. Huebner has won CPR’s Diversity Award. A quick review of the JAMS list of neutrals reveals that less than three percent are Black in a county where 11.0% of the population is Black.

I have nothing against white people contributing to the implementation of diversity and anti-racism goals. I do object to giving ourselves diversity awards under these circumstances.

the hypocrisy of the law’s Diversity "Efforts"

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