More Woman Litigators, Please

Yesterday, retired lawyer Francis Menton (via Maggie's Farm) addressed the question of why there are so few women litigators. Since the feministically correct view has it that the firms themselves are preventing women from becoming great litigators, Menton emphasizes the obvious point: litigators are chosen by clients, not by law firms. Only the most deranged client would bypass a superior woman litigator in favor of an inferior male litigator.

As for the deeper meaning of it all, it happens, as you know, that it's all because of motherhood. Or better, women’s exercise of their freedom to choose.

Menton recounts his own experience trying to persuade female associates with children to return to litigation:

For myself, I don't claim to have perfect knowledge of all the causes of "gender disparity" in the legal profession.  However, as a long time law firm partner, I did have the experience of working with many dozens of female associates (as well as an equivalent number of male associates) over the course of three decades.  It would have been hard not to notice the higher attrition rate among women over the years from the higher-pressure and longer-hour areas of the practice, of which litigation is one.  More than anything else, this attrition for women was associated with having children.  I have spent many, many fruitless hours in my life trying hopelessly to convince highly talented female associates that they really wanted to come back from maternity leave to the 12 hour days and over-the-weekend injunction motions and four weeks on trial in Kansas and leave their little kids at home with a babysitter.  It never worked once.  The number of women with children who stick with the high-end litigation business for a long term career is very few.  What I don't understand is why anybody feels guilty about that or thinks that it is important to change.    

If women’s free choices explain the disparity, this suggests that those who believe that we must erase the disparity at any cost want to force women to do something that they do not want to do. The implications of that predicate are obvious and obviously appalling.