Breaking
Law360, a subscription-based on-line
legal news service, begins its annual
Glass Ceiling Report for 2017 soberly.
“U.S. law firms have long been
overwhelmingly dominated by men,
particularly at the partnership level, and
Law360’s latest Glass Ceiling Report
shows that recent progress has been –
at best – only incremental.”
the Glass
“I think if you’re a woman in our world, you just have to do
it better, smarter, and faster,” Patricia Shlonsky, partner-incharge
at Ulmer & Berne’s Cleveland office, told Shaker Life.
If Law360 is to be taken seriously, Shlonsky’s
observation has the ring of truth. But for the five Shaker
Heights women profiled here, including Shlonsky, the
glass ceiling has yielded to their talents as attorneys and
administrators. The exception, immigration lawyer Margaret
Wong, who got her law degree in the mid-1970s when the
profession was still strictly a Y chromosome, simply started
her own firm rather than shrink away after routinely being
turned down at the club door.
Ceiling
Shaker Life writer Sharon Holbrook – herself a nonpracticing
lawyer – points out in her profile of Thompson
Hine’s Michele Connell, “Law may have a reputation as a
stodgy, clubby occupation, but that’s changing. Women
are advancing more than ever – 10 of the 12 partners just
announced by Thompson Hine are women, and the firm is
also focused on advancing diversity more generally.”
In other words, despite Law360’s gloomy outlook, the
glass ceiling just might be a pile of shards for the next
generation of women lawyers, at least in Cleveland. In the
meantime, meet some of those who broke through.
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