Hull McGuire PC

"Don't count your chickens before they're hatched," my Ozarks Dad and Grandpop would say, whenever after a win or two I waxed overly-exuberant with mindless gloating and glee. In POTUS elections, anything could happen, and it's not over until it's over. Not the time for hubris or exaggerated self-confidence. Don't jinx this, y'all.

One way Twitter/X really backfired on the Left was the steady development of an increasingly smarter, engaged, bolder moderate/right-leaning online citizenry. Five years ago, this was unheard of. Now there are fewer rightward wimps (i.e., big mouths, no names) and more leaders standing up to be counted. Nice to see.

When I want to read a good book, I write one.

~ Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881)

Redux: "It's nice to be Dr. Ruth..."

Karola Ruth Siegel (1928-2024) was a major piece of work.

Long story, but yesterday morning I had breakfast here in New York with Ruth Westheimer (Dr. Ruth) who at 86 is just one month older than my own Mom and just as sharp and vibrant. I met her about 10 years ago and see her every 2 years or so--but I never really talked her longer than a couple of minutes before yesterday.

She is funny and classy and b***y all at once.

And, as I told her in the middle of breakfast, she's got big ones.

Google Dr. Ruth some time.

She was born in Bavaria, June 4, 1928. Just a few months older than Anne Frank, she lost both parents in the Holocaust after they were taken from her in 1941, but did not really learn of their deaths until 1945. She escaped the N***s and spent her early teen years in a Swiss orphanage. She was trained and served as a scout and sniper in the late 1940s after moving to Palestine. That career was cut short when she was seriously injured by a shell in the 1948 Israeli War of Independence. She spent months in the hospital. She speaks four languages (including Hebrew) but spoke no English when she arrived in NYC in the mid-1950s. She has lived in the same Washington Heights apartment for 50 years. She has been married 2 times and has been widowed since 1997. She has kids and grandkids. She is a single mother, survivor, winner, dreamer and doer. A problem solver.

And a joy to be around. I gather that she is totally incapable of feeling sorry for herself, even for a minute.

She is 4' 7" in height. That's right. 4 feet 7 inches.

An off-Broadway play about her is still running.

And she is precocious and funny. Yesterday a waiter recognized her and eagerly offered to go to the buffet for her almost as soon as we entered the dining room and before we even sat down. She quickly but graciously allowed him to do so--and then gave the star-struck waiter and fan her food preferences. Off to the buffet he went. She smiled mischievously and said: "It's nice to be Dr. Ruth."

October 21, 2014

https://www.whataboutclients.com/archives/004808.html

https://www.whataboutclients.com/archives/004808.html

"Washington lawyer Dan Hull has seen it all and done it all, mostly as a Democrat. January 6th changed everything."

ColemanNation Podcast - Episode 128: Dan Hull | The Journey of John Daniel Hull Washington lawyer Dan Hull has seen it all and done it all, mostly as a Democrat. January 6th changed everything.Visit the ColemanNation website and subscrib...

Happy 460th birthday to William Shakespeare. He changed the English language, writing, humor, free expression--and human consciousness itself. Say thank you.

“I am a big fan of Dan Hull‘s writing at his popular What About Paris/What About Clients blog. He has intellect, wit and a literary bent.”

Are Dan Hull’s Rules of Client Service Really So Infuriating? I am a big fan of Dan Hull’s writing at his popular What About Paris/What About Clients blog. He has intellect, wit and a literary bent. One post which often seems to show up again and again …

“Unusual for an American. Internationalist in approach. Well-travelled. Inspirational. “

humanlaw.typepad.com/humanlaw/2007/…

humanlaw.typepad.com

Anti-trans bus to stop in D.C. next week

Bigotry Bus? Or Free Speech Bus?

Hate Speech? Or Free Expression?

www.washingtonblade.com A bus that is part of an anti-transgender campaign is scheduled to stop in D.C. on April 3. It was vandalized in New York last week.

What About Paris? : Lawyering Done Right: A Back-Stage Pass to the World.

whataboutclients.com The Strip, Sunset Boulevard, West Hollywood. As the fictional movie character John Milton said, law done right is a "backstage pass to the world." We've a client doing good things in Africa with an office here. How many lawyers have...

Partner Emeritus: On the State of the Legal Profession.

The Great Man speaks:

linkedin.com If you are a lawyer who loves what he or she does for great clients, you may have more worries these days about the future than what happens after Super Tuesday. See comments last week at David Lat's

www.thewrap.com

Donald Trump's Demonization by We**ie Media is a Ruse.

thewrap.com

On "Lawyer Professionalism", John Roberts, Say It Ain't So.

Like Bill Clinton, and although a bit younger and obviously a different breed of cat, SCOTUS Chief Justice John Roberts is "one of ours." He's a baby boomer--and other baby boomers are very proud of him. Me, too. He's my age, a fellow Midwestern corporate brat who attended law school in Boston with a number of people I knew growing up or have met along the way. We love to claim the guy.

He's a stud--and he certainly makes up for the rest of us boomers who will have on our gravestones this sign-off: "Brilliant, classically educated and still keeping my options open."

In his New Year's Eve state of the annual federal judiciary report, he made most of the right noises about the new and important if potentially troublesome "proportionality" amendments--troublesome, because I think the changes will be less intuitive and more difficult to apply for lawyers and judges than the Advisory Committee or your CLE instructors may have you thinking right now--to the discovery provisions of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. However, for reasons that aren't clear to me, this year Chief Justice Roberts also took up the "lawyer professionalism" cause, and it put the big hurt on my vision to have to read it:

"As for the lawyers, most will readily agree—in the abstract—that they have an obligation to their clients, and to the justice system, to avoid antagonistic tactics, wasteful procedural maneuvers, and teetering brinksmanship. I cannot believe that many members of the bar went to law school because of a burning desire to spend their professional life wearing down opponents with creatively burdensome discovery requests or evading legitimate requests through dilatory tactics. The test for plaintiffs’ and defendants’ counsel alike is whether they will affirmatively search out cooperative solutions, chart a cost-effective course of litigation, and assume shared responsibility with opposing counsel to achieve just results."

In large part, John Roberts is talking about lawyer civility. Hey, no one has ever said that amicable lawyering in litigation is a bad thing. Like Motherhood and Good Crops, what's not to like? However, as we've said at this blog for over ten years, see e.g., "Sensitive Litigation Moment No. 8: Is Lawyer Professionalism Just A Lawyer-Centric Ruse?, and as I've been saying and writing for nearly twenty, "lawyer professionalism" is one of the most abused "right-lawyering" culture concepts in the history of the profession. It is the oldest anti-client "it's all about the lawyers" ruse going. It puts clients last and protects shoddy and dilatory lawyering. I'm really surprised the Chief Justice Roberts would sign his name to this ongoing scam, especially at a time when lawyer mediocrity is increasingly accepted and even coddled.

"Lawyer professionalism is a morally pretentious, archaic, hypocritical and silly movement which [some bar communities] tend to invest in heavily to protect and coddle apathetic, mediocre and lazy lawyering. It keeps standards low, and the tone lawyer-centric. It is pro-lawyer, anti-client, prissy and routinely and dishonestly misused by incompetent and uncaring lawyers in defense of their delays and screw ups."

--What About Clients?, December 2006

Source of post: http://www.whataboutclients.com/archives/005146.html

i.huffpost.com

Grand Jury Targets Wife of Former : Investigation: Lee M. Anderson is named in court documents...

articles.latimes.com Lee M. Anderson, the wife of former San Pedro Rep. Glenn M. Anderson, is the target of a grand jury investigation into alleged misuse of public funds in the 1992 congressional campaign of her son,...

On Voting Day, One Lawyer Rocks the ‘Don’t Vote’

Click on this WSJ law piece quoting me from a humorous--yet serious--article I wrote on judicial elections several years ago as we were preparing to defend a Milan, Italy manufacturer in a federal jury trial in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, USA. Point: We should no longer support popular elections of state judges. Reason: Judicial elections are medieval. So get thee to your state legislators and make noises.

www.wsj.com In many states on Tuesday, judges are up for election or relection. And that brings us to a thoughtful essay penned by J. Daniel Hull, a partner at Hull McGuire in Pittsburgh, who argues in favor of boycotting judicial elections.

39 More Things Long-Divorced American Lawyers Know.

linkedin.com 40. When in Rome, do as many Romans as you can. ~ Hugh Grant, Brit actor 41. Always attribute--especially when you think no one will notic

static.guim.co.uk

The Saving Grace of Fed. R.Civ. P. Rule 56(d)

linkedin.com The early-in-the-case Rule 56 motion. Rule 56 ..... (d) When Facts Are Unavailable to the Nonmovant. If a nonmovant shows by affidavit or declaratio

Hunter Thompson at Duke University, October 22, 1974.

linkedin.com Editor's Note: The following is a verbatim reproduction of an article appearing in The Chronicle, Duke University's student daily on October 23, 1974

CPR: Accelerated cross-border arbitration rules for business disputes.

linkedin.com My post here is short, simple and hopefully valuable: 1. Late last year, New York City-based CPR (International Institute for Conflict Prevention & R

Sensitive Litigation Moment: Partner Emeritus on Alienable Rights of Associate Lawyers.

linkedin.com If you work for a peer firm, you will encounter me or someone very much like me. I or some form of my embodiment will exist to make your existence as

Valorem's Patrick Lamb: The Ways Law Firms Put Themselves Before Clients.

No one cares more about clients than Chicago trial lawyer, fellow Irish-American storyteller, legal profession critic and Renaissance man Patrick Lamb.

Pat Lamb was--long before any other practitioner-blogger out there--fixed on clients as the North Star. Client service orientation is not a gimmick with him--or with any of his partners at Valorem.

I personally owe Pat. I and four others would not have started What About Clients? in August 2005 and write about lawyering daily were it not for Pat's example and advice beforehand and during. Pat and I are both products of the associate-partner big law firm training track. While we do not certainly see eye-to-eye on everything in law and life, we do have lots in common. We famously differ on billing--no need to get into that here--but over the years have been on the same page consistently on the client.
Ironically, establishing and insisting upon law firm cultures where clients are first--and from which all else must flow--is a natural professional and business instinct for Pat (and me).

But it is for almost no other lawyers or law firms I know. Other firms talk about it. Write about it. Proclaim it. But they don't do it--and in truth client service regimes are simple but they are much, much harder to establish and maintain than they look. Client-first cultures require discipline, work and enforcement.

My sense is that Pat and I would still love to try a case together. We both revel in the rules of evidence and the art of storytelling for business clients in American federal courts. We even like the discovery process, providing it's efficient. Generally, Pat may have a better business head, both as a managing law partner and a trial lawyer, than do I.

But as a trial lawyer, I'd wager that at least my closings are more logically compelling and emotionally gripping--an unusual combination--than any trial performance Pat has ever seen. Make no mistake. I am evilly persuasive with any woman juror who is, say, 85 or older. I'm also funnier, slightly better-looking and a much, much shallower human being than Pat. Some jurors do appreciate these qualities. I've worked hard for them all, Jack.

But I digress. Last week at his award-winning In Search of Perfect Client Service, Pat in "Valorem Law Group's Why" takes a thoughtful but also brave look at the demise and collapse of once well-respected Dewey LeBoeuf. Do read the whole piece; it's eloquent and at points quite moving. Here are some excerpts I especially liked:

One lesson learned from this state of affairs is that, lip service aside, client well-being is irrelevant in most law firms. Countless examples prove that firms placing their own interests above clients’ interests has become part of the firms’ DNA: they just can’t change it without killing themselves. In no particular order, here are just a few:

1. Hourly billing
2. Bonuses based on hours
3. Compensation guarantees.
4. Compensation based on revenue rather than profit.
5. Compensation that ignores client satisfaction.
6. Large partner offices and high downtown rents.
7. Expensive artwork.
8. Mergers. And then justifying them by saying it helps clients.
patrick_lamb 2 seated.jpg
Valorem's Patrick J. Lamb
9. Annual fee increases that have become self-righteous expectations.
10. High turnover of associates and income partners.
11. Putting all risk of failure on the client side.
12. A business model as unfriendly to clients as one can imagine.
13. Pressure to collect at year end for the firm’s benefit with no regard to how that practice helps or hurts the client.
14. Massive infrastructure and expansive numbers of offices that provide no value to most clients, but are paid for by all clients.

It is impossible to escape the conclusion that those who run large law firms have become “the Man,” doing things for themselves and the other powerful elite in their firms.
In most firms, any semblance of equal treatment of partners has faded along with bygone eras. Even in the “good old days,” clients were merely a means to comfort and success.

My partners and I all practiced at firms run by one version or another of “the Man.” The challenge for each of us was what to do about it. Separately and without knowing it, we all had the same epiphany. We could not work for the Man any longer. Indeed, we had to challenge The Man and everything he stood for.

http://www.patrickjlamb.com/2015/08/28/valorem-law-groups-why/
http://www.whataboutclients.com/archives/005064.html

s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com

Alice Roosevelt Longworth (1884-1980)

"If you have nothing nice to say, come sit by me."

stuffo.hswstatic.com

What kind of human makes a great lawyer?

I don't mean a go-through-the-motions lawyer, a tell-you-what-the law-is lawyer (dipstick variety) or even a yeoman lawyer here. I mean a solid and effective advocate-adviser you can count on when money, reputation, freedom and sometimes life itself is at stake.

People who work every day for 40 years for each client as if it's their first day working on their first real client assignment. Sure, some of the details get to be tedious or old hat after a while--but those juices are always flowing. They are always tuned into their responsibilities to others. They take great pride in it. People, if you will, who were born to be lawyers.

"Nice, smart" kids, maybe?

No. In fact, "nice, smart" kids including scads of first-borns who were always great students, maybe elected Senior Class President in high school or on the debating team in college--they come in droves to the legal profession every year and have done that for generations--almost always make sh*tty lawyers.

"Smart" is a prerequisite. "Nice" is okay--"happy" is more important--but you meet few sane clients who insist on "nice".

To be an effective lawyer, you need a lot more going on, whether you are doing litigation, transactional work, regulatory matters and even legislative/lobbying kinds of projects. I'm not an expert on personality types. But in my view you probably ought to have all of the following: (1) more energy than most people have, (2) stamina (good physical health, perhaps better than average health), (3) persistence, (4) ambition, (5) resilience, (6) competitiveness and a (7) mean streak a mile wide you can turn off and on. And that's for starters. Here are two more: (8) a natural tendency to thrive on and even relish conflict (no, not "embrace", I said relish) and (9) a natural tendency to regard "stress as kind of fuel".

So with that in mind, we've renamed our blog, starting two days ago--until the day after Labor Day--What About Clients/Paris? will be known as "It's Not About the Lawyers, Teacups." As most of our seven or eight regular readers we've picked up since our launch 10 years ago already know, we think there is currently in the legal profession an alarmingly undue emphasis on concepts like:

(a) lawyer comfort and satisfaction generally,

(b) lawyer self-esteem,

(c) lawyer "resilience" (N.B. "lawyer resilience"; this is a subtopic if there ever was one that is certain to make a lot of sophisticated clients look suddenly like they've lost several pints of blood the first time they hear it),

(d) lawyer "mindfulness" and other pop-Zen faux-Eastern notions of well-being, calm, repose, serenity and right state of mind which are taught by people who have no idea what they're talking about to often youngish lawyers who don't know the difference and which would have Alan Watts, Eknath Easwaran or Gautama Himself rolling agonizingly in their graves;

(e) lawyer mental health, and

(f) the new "Lawyer Patienthood", especially underemployed or unemployed younger lawyers who are desperate to make the profession "fit them" even if in the best of economic times it would be painfully apparent to them and many others that they are wonderful, important and talented creatures who deserve to be happy but were simply not cut out to be lawyers in the first place. "Nice, smart kids" can certainly do many other things.

I think that the wrong humans have been entering law school for some time now, from the oldest Baby Boomers to the youngest of Gen-Ys. Somehow we need to attract those who are born with the basic mental, emotional and physical makings of the kind of person clients and customers can rely on with confidence. There are lots of these folks--and we need to start attracting them to this profession. For the last three decades, at least, they have not appeared in great numbers. Let's develop more sophisticated ways of identifying them--and for the sake of clients everywhere somehow start getting them here.

http://www.whataboutclients.com/archives/005063.html

i.telegraph.co.uk

Law Firms’ Grueling Hours Are Turning Defectors into Competitors

Get the net. There is a Center for WorkLife Law now at Hastings Law School. Law is 1. high-pressure and 2. high-hours. Don't engage lawyers who haven't been steeped in both.

hbr.org Legal startups are disrupting the industry by offering work-life balance.

To Jurors, Does Your Firm's Staff Come Off Like We**ies, Insects and Creeps?

Excerpt: "In America, we are head-over-heels in love with the institution of the jury. In fact, we have so many different types of civil disputes in courts of record heard by juries that most Europeans--especially Germans, God love 'em--think we've gone a bit too far with the right to a jury trial, and due process generally, if not completely around the proverbial bend."

linkedin.com A generic dweeb or two running into the courtroom--at a critical moment during your cross examination of some as***le disgruntled ex-employee--with boxes of documents, a phone message from your wife about Nantucket next summer with the Rumsfelds, a good luck note from your mistress or your lucky bow…

What About Clients? Are Lawyers Delivering True Service?

Best of Partner Emeritus No. 2: Polo Injury to NYC Brahmin Thwarts Total and Decisive American Victory in Vietnam by January 1969.

Sometimes, a polo injury at Meadowbrook will change the course of world history--and not for the better. Pulitzer winner David Halberstam, my Nantucket neighbor for awhile, is of course still missed. But I am convinced that Halberstam's highly admired 1972 book "The Best and The Brightest" on the Vietnam War might well have had a couple of chapters on my friend Partner Emeritus, celebrated Dean of ATL's Commentariat. We'll let PE take over from here:

"I remember the Summer before the Tet Offensive so vividly. I recall entering the MEPS station at Fort Hamilton in Brooklyn where I took my physical examination, which was a requirement prior to being shipped out to OCS. I wanted to serve my country and kick g**k posterior so badly that I even let a proctologist stick his index finger in my re**um while I coughed.

Alas, a Polo accident caused me to incur a hairline fracture in my pelvis and I was disqualified from service just two weeks from my deployment date."

"I am confident that had I gone to 'Nam, I would have deployed a strategy that would have won that war. They don't teach this at the Army War College but my endgame to the Vietnam War would have been to round up all the hippie stoners and o***m addicts in the States and parachuted them into Vietcong territory. I would have used the MK Ultra Program to convince the paratroopers that the Vietcong had stolen their drugs and that the o***m fields would be their prize for killing every last member of Charlie."

"West Point would have been renamed after me but I accept that God had other plans for me (i.e., conquering the legal profession and establishing myself as a legal icon)."

--PE comment to 3 Things Law Students And Young Lawyers Can Learn From Podcaster-In-Chief Marc Maron, ATL June 26, 2015.

Even more than about Charlie, what Partner Emeritus worries about most is gene pool dilution and mediocrity in the legal profession. We will get to that soon enough. First, though, we'll do a few posts about PE's younger years, including a few sexual adventures during the 1960s-1980s. In the meantime, below is the famous negotiation between Yank actor Matthew Modine as "Joker" and British actress Papillon Soo Soo as "the Da Nang ho**er" in Stanley Kubrick's 1987 war satire Full Metal Jacket.

Source: http://www.whataboutclients.com/archives/004995.html

whataboutclients.com If you work for a peer firm, you will encounter me or someone very much like me. [Y]ou cannot avoid the essence of my character if you aspire to succeed... I or some form of my embodiment will exist...

UPDATED: When are we going to stop treating women lawyers like ne'er-do-wells and screw-ups who require special treatment to succeed?

Look, I would rather work with women lawyers than men lawyers because I think women lawyers, for whatever reason, are generally on balance better planners, thinkers and practitioners, and better with clients, than are men. But who gets to be lead counsel in litigation is ultimately determined by both merit and the client.

When are we going to stop treating women lawyers and other female professionals like ne'er-do-wells and screw-ups who need special treatment to succeed? There's actually a discussion out there on why more women are not lead trial counsel. See this August 1 ABA piece entitled "Why aren't more women lead counsel?" The article grows out of a panel this summer at the ABA Annual Meeting, which in turn had grown out of an American Bar Foundation study. The ABF study among other things found that, unsurprisingly, men were disproportionately appearing as lead counsel in civil cases (based on 558 cases in the Illinois Northern federal district) by 76% to 24%. The study's conclusion is below. Brackets and italics are mine. The italics highlight phrases which I think would be insulting in the extreme to talented women in any profession; the implication in the itals is that women lawyers are ne'er-do-wells, screw-ups and/or congenitally handicapped:

Fostering the success of women litigators redounds to the benefit of clients, who obtain top-notch representation in their cases [Huh? Why does it help clients? More choice?]; to law firms, which have made a substantial investment in hiring and training their women litigators; and to women lawyers themselves, who are able to realize their full potential and advance in their careers. We believe it is imperative for all concerned that women are encouraged and supported in their pursuit of a career in the courtroom and the role of lead counsel at trial.

We hope that this study will heighten awareness about the existence of significant gender disparities in the ranks of lead trial lawyers. We want to spur a dialogue that will result in concrete and effective actions to increase the numbers of women lead trial counsel. These recommended best practices will help women litigators develop their skills and obtain the same opportunities for leadership roles and success in the courtroom as their male colleagues.

Hey, I got a "dialogue" for you right here, ABF study writers. And we really didn't need a study to fathom your finding of disparities. But seriously. Me personally? And professionally? Look, I would rather work with women lawyers generally than with male lawyers because I think women lawyers, for whatever reason, are generally on balance better planners, thinkers and practitioners, and better with clients, than are men. They tend to write better. Much better with deadlines, frankly. They're feisty. Many are as mean as snakes. But who gets to be lead counsel in litigation is ultimately determined by both merit and the client.

For trial work both women and men should be lead counsel (or first chair) if (a) they deserve it based on skills and (b) clients want it. Plenty of women certainly do deserve to be lead counsel based on merit. Lots. They are legion. Are there stats on this? Of course not. Qualitatively, can we say there is currently as much female as there is male first-chair talent? Actually some kind of parity in terms of skill? Are they roughly equal in numbers? It's a hard thing to measure but, no. Probably not.

Litigation is still way overpriced, insane, male-oriented, overly-testosterone-driven and inefficient; I've no numbers (if you do, show me) but my sense is that women over the past two or three decades in private practice, and certainly in larger firms, have had the good sense to chose transactional work and more efficient forms of litigation (e.g., administrative, regulatory, ADR) than state and federal trial court forums where machismo, sporadic irrationality and other forms of male insanity are well-tolerated whether these modalities are working or not. That may change. I see women choosing both conventional trial and appellate work more and more, and getting as good at it as male lawyers or even better. In the meantime, we can assume that no one will be insane enough to suggest that the imbalance between male and female lead counsel be rectified (read: contrived) by a quota system. Right?

More important is the problem of women who want and deserve on the basis of merit to be lead counsel--but really are thwarted or held back by gender-bias. What then? It's a tough question. Here's the tough answer. Right or wrong, clients--not notions of political correctness and private enterprise-side affirmative action--should drive who serves as lead counsel. Law firms are already under tremendous pressures to embrace mediocrity and settle for something less than clients want and deserve. Firms are under no obligation to force clients to "evolve" so that women in litigation are first chairs--even when they merit lead counsel spots on defense or plaintiff teams in the finest litigation shops. Nor should they be. Granted, it's not a fair answer. But it's a client's call.

The ABA article--which makes some good points about former women prosecutors going to law firms before silly notions of "parity" creep into it and the wheels fall off--is here:

If women want to be trial lawyers, the best place to have first-chair opportunities may be with federal prosecutors, according to a recent ABA study. But considering that many assistant U.S. attorneys eventually join big firms as partners, some wonder why there are few women at big law firms leading trials.

“Most male litigators who serve as federal prosecutors, they get their tickets punched. There’s no absence of female lead prosecutors, and they also get gobbled up by big firms. But what happens to them, and why aren’t they serving as lead counsel?” asked Ruben Castillo, chief judge of the Northern District of Illinois U.S. district court.

Castillo spoke on a Saturday panel at the ABA Annual Meeting—“Women as Lead Counsel at Trial: What You Can Do to Take the Lead,” sponsored by the ABA’s Commission on Women in the Profession—that discussed the lack of women serving as lead counsel. He noted that the event had very few men in the audience.

“I’ve been on the bench 21 years, and I would say I’ve had about 14 or 15 cases where the women before me were lead counsel,” Castillo said, adding that he plans to have some sort of conference on the issue in the future.

The panelists focused on a recent study by the American Bar Foundation and the Commission on Women in the Profession titled First Chairs at Trial: More Women Need Seats at the Table (PDF). The study reviewed 600 Northern District of Illinois cases filed in 2013. Out of the 558 civil cases, 76 percent of the lead counsel were men. For the 50 criminal cases, 67 percent of the lead counsel were men. Out of the 50 criminal cases that went to trial, 79 percent of the lawyers serving as lead counsel were men.

Another panelist, Sandra Phillips, noted that she recently hired two women of color to lead two significant class action cases against her employer, Toyota Motors North America.

Phillips, the holding company’s general counsel and chief legal officer, says that she actively seeks female outside counsel, and occasionally gets pushback from law firms. Often, she added, the firms respond that older white males have the most experience and knowledge about her employer, and it would be unfair to assign the work to someone else. “If we’re going to move the needle on this, we need to dispense with this notion of fairness. It’s not fair that 79 percent of the people who are taking the lead in the courtroom are men,” said Phillips, who is based in Torrance, California.

“Who really wins cases?” Phillips added. “Lawyers who have been around for 40 years and know the company well, or lawyers who can tell a good story in the courtroom, who are collaborative, competitive and solution-oriented?”

Paula Hinton, a Winston & Strawn litigation partner based in Houston, says that she does sometimes encounter implicit bias, usually from clients.

“They tend to go with what they think is the safe choice of a white male for their lead lawyer who has an established reputation,” she said. “But at trial time, if the case is in a ditch, I get parachuted in. What happens is it’s not going well with what they thought was a safe choice.”

A potential solution mentioned to improve first-chair gender numbers was letting lawyers who write briefs argue them, recognizing that the writing is often done by female associates or junior partners.

“Sometimes when a male senior partner is in front of me arguing, I can see the female associate next to them flinching, as the beautifully written brief they wrote is ruined,” said Sophia Hall, a Cook County, Illinois, circuit court judge.

When judges notice that a first-chair lawyer seems to be having problems making his or her argument, they can ask the lawyer seated next to him or her for further explanation, panelists said. If the associate can do a good job answering the court’s questions, it’s often a sign that he or she will be a good trial lawyer.

“In larger cases where there’s a courtroom full of suited lawyers, I’m looking for someone who is going to help me understand,” added Hall, mentioning one complex case where a “woman piped up, ‘I have a chart.’ “

Hall said: “That got my attention. You can call attention to yourself by having not only a sense of the law but also the context, and present it in a way that’s understandable.

“The other important thing is that a lawyer leading the case can work with personalities. With male lawyers, sometimes you go through testosterone pyrotechnics, and females can sit back and cut to the chase. As judges, we’re looking for a voice of reason that’s calm and intelligent. If you can do that, it will allow you to look really good.”

The issue of calling attention to yourself was also addressed.

“You need to have a reputation that precedes you. You don’t get the reputation by just sitting in your office,” said Stephanie A. Scharf. A litigation partner with Chicago’s Scharf Banks Marmor who co-authored First Chairs at Trial with Roberta D. Liebenberg, a senior litigation partner with Philadelphia’s Fine, Kaplan and Black.

“Nothing is better than trying a case,” said Liebenberg when asked why she never abandoned litigation as a career. “There’s nothing more exhausting, but there’s nothing better.”

economictimes.indiatimes.com