The ABA article

[Aly Luftig]

The ABA recently published an article that upset MANY people, as it seemed to travel back to a more archaic time where women were not respected in the workplace. For me it seemed to suggest that we are somehow still in that time of disrespect despite that it’s 2021 and women have been kicking butt professionally. I want to find out what you think we can do to fix the problems many have acknowledged in our profession. I posted this on LinkedIn and am putting it here too:

I haven’t seen many people saying the legal industry DOESN’T have a problem. There have been many responses to the recent ABA article about women in law. People have tried to establish what the actual root of the problem is, an article calling the profession the problem, as a follow up in the ABA…

But not really too many people denying that the legal industry DOES need change. The article has brought to light many issues in our field including old-fashioned ways of denying a more flexible approach to the workplace.

There has also been lots of talk on how the ABA can make this right.. how anyone can make the problems in the legal field right, so that the practice of law doesn’t lose great professionals due to things like discrimination and poor mental health.

So many questions… really we need answers. And we need the chance to be a part in creating those answers. So please, tell me what the ideal situation looks like to you. We need to hear from individuals. We need to know what everyone is thinking so we can work together.

Tell me in the replies, what’s your ideal solution? To tell the truth I don’t know mine yet but I am brainstorming and will be updating.

[jolene blackbourn]

To make this right for me, the ABA needs to:
1. Apologize, with specificity so we all understand that they know exactly what they did wrong.
2. Write a series of articles, from the perspective of bosses and mentees, talking about how awesome lawyer moms are.
3. Take diversity/elimination of bias classes.
4. Explain WTH happened! How in the world did that article get published if it supposedly goes against everything they stand for (their words).

[Aly Luftig]

I like these ideas Jolene! I especially agree with the point about telling us what happened, though I suspect they believe they’ve done that by explaining that they’ve simply published the view of one of their members. If that’s the case, that’s a bigger problem with their whole journal, because while I know people have the right to an opinion, this was not my understanding of the vetting process for this journal and therefore it’s contents as a whole.

I also like your idea for a series, though I hope they’d also be required to allow attorneys we may not usually hear from to participate in writing it!

[lullabies]

greek lullabies

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