Blog #26

In Chapter four of English’s book, she discusses the roles males have in assisting female lawyers. Some women explain that they need a male voice to “seal a deal” with a client or to get some reinforcement. Some women believe that their clients do not listen to them as attentively as they would to a male attorney, and to ensure that the client hears their advice, they have a male relay the information to the client as well. Other female attorneys use their male coworkers to validate their advice and input to clients. Many clients do not seem to trust or respect the work done by female attorneys over male ones. In other instances, male attorneys also treat female attorneys with more aggression than they would another male attorney. If there is a message that needs to be given to a client or opposing party that is particularly a difficult one, a male is most often chosen to do it. When people act out these certain roles inside of the law firm, it reinforces the law firm as a gendered organization. When women attorneys take on separate responsibilities from men attorneys, it is creating stereotypes and boundaries between the sexes. It exposes the law firm as a place that is not gender neutral. When skeptical clients or aggressive opposing counsel require a man to back the woman, it leads the woman to believe that this is the proper way to respond. Personally, I think that women need to be able to assertively and professionally approach these opposing counsel and skeptical clients and call them out in a way that will not get anyone angry. If women just continue to assume the passive role then these gendered roles will always exist and more men than women will be seen as the people who actually get things done, even though the women are perfectly capable of handling the same situation themselves. Hopefully any client or attorney would realize how badly they had acted once they were reasonably called attention to their disrespect.