Law Schools' New Female Face
An influx of women as students has changed courses and attitudes
Not so long ago, America's law schools were mostly male preserves. As recently as 1970, more than 90 percent of students were men, and some professors made a point of calling on the few women in their classrooms only on periodic "Ladies' Days." Former Attorney General Janet Reno, a 1963 Harvard law graduate, recalls then Dean Erwin Griswold asking incoming women at an annual tea to justify holding a place that could have gone to a man. Hannah Arterian, now a dean at Arizona State University, says that whenever female law students at the University of Iowa in the early 1970s spoke up in class, they were made to feel that they were "representing [their] sex--it was awful."
It took three decades, but women have achieved parity, at least by one measure. For the first time last fall, more women than men applied to the nation's 183 accredited law schools. And according to figures recently compiled by the American Bar Association, female enrollment in the class of 2004 tops 49 percent.
Walk into just about any law school, and the change is readily apparent. At American University law school in Washington, D.C., 16 of 19 students in a recent session of Prof. Susan Carle's employment law class were women. Across the country that same week at Boalt Hall, the law school at the University of California-Berkeley, 36 women and eight men heard Linda Hamilton Krieger lecture on job discrimination. Students cheered an announcement that the faculty had endorsed Krieger for a tenured position. Moreover, as the rosters of female students have expanded, more women have risen to leadership positions on law reviews and in student government.
New standards. As women infiltrated law schools, they found that the content of some courses underplayed issues of special concern to them, and they have pushed successfully for changes. Twenty years ago, criminal law classes, for example, rarely mentioned rape and other forms of violence against women. Sexual harassment in the workplace was not a topic for textbooks and lectures on employment law. These issues are standard fare now. Required courses in the law of personal injuries, for example, are likely to include discussions of how female injury victims should be compensated for reproductive medical problems and for the value of lost work in the home as well as on the job.
Professors say that these changes reflect not simply the shifting interests of law school students but the evolution of many areas of law, thanks in large part to the work of the increasing number of female professors. Recent scholarship by women "has persuaded lawyers to make new claims [on behalf of women] and encouraged judges to find in their favor," says Leslie Bender, a professor at the Syracuse University law school.
In the wake of the influx of women, law schools now put more emphasis on "clinics," where students learn by representing real clients. According to faculty members, female students are more inclined than men are to take part in programs that involve hands-on instruction in aiding people in need.
But although life in law school has improved dramatically for women, many still complain of second-class treatment. An American Bar Association committee that monitors discrimination against women at law schools says that female students "are more likely than men to experience an unfair grading system, silencing in the classroom, a significant dip in self-confidence, sexual harassment, and disrespect shown to them by other students and faculty." The ABA urged each law school to appoint a committee to monitor such issues, but only 10 had done so as of last summer.
Varied voices. This mixed picture means that applicants interested in how women fare at prospective schools should look beyond the enrollment numbers, concludes Linda Hirshman, a philosophy professor at Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass., who wrote A Woman's Guide to Law School (Penguin Books, 1999, $14.95). Perhaps the best indicator that a school values female voices, she says, is a strong contingent of women among the faculty and deans. Today, only about 20 schools have female deans, and just one fifth of full professors are women.
Applicants should find out whether female professors are teaching the heavyweight classes. Critics like law Prof. Marina Angel of Temple University in Philadelphia contend that many schools hire women "for the least prestigious, most insecure, nontenure track" positions like legal writing and research. Those subjects are important, she says, but not so crucial as the courses like contracts and constitutional law that all first-year students must take. How students fare in these classes often sets the tone for their three years in school.
Applicants also should check on the number of female students who do well enough to win coveted spots on law reviews and in academic honors programs. "Grades are the coin of the realm for later success," says Prof. Ann Bartow of the University of South Carolina-Columbia.
Hirshman and other advocates for women suggest that in addition to choosing a female-friendly school, students who want to succeed should take an active role in the back-and-forth that is a big part of virtually every class. Even if class discussion does not play a big role in grades, women who are silent won't be noticed by professors, who are key to placing students in top internships and jobs during school and after graduation.
The next challenge for prospective female lawyers is to find ways of coping with high-pressure legal jobs, which can take a big toll on families. A new study by the consulting firm Catalyst, based in New York City, reports that female law graduates anticipate staying at their jobs three fewer years than do men because they believe the heavy workloads are incompatible with raising children, among other reasons. Judge Mary Schroeder, who persevered as one of six female law students at the University of Chicago in the 1960s to come to head the powerful U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco, calls for "new career patterns that will enable both women and men to take more time off for their families."
The profession will likely better accommodate lawyers with families when more women attain top jobs at the nation's law firms. In a first step toward this goal, some schools are helping students network with successful female lawyers. Last year, through a female student group, Tanya Miller, a third-year student at Arizona State University in Tempe, met several female law partners. "They went out of their way to be there for me [when] I needed advice," she says. She's starting work at a Phoenix law firm after she graduates this spring.
This story appears in the April 9, 2001 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.