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The role that males play in assisting women lawyers is basically women need the male attorneys to deliver messages to different people because of many reasons, but most of the time it is simply because they are females. English says, “Women sometimes find that they need male colleagues to step in to grapple with unruly opposing counsel, or endorse their advice to clients to get them on board. A powerful female partner in Washington, D.C. reports: Sometimes clients don’t listen to anybody, or they won’t listen to me. Sometimes I’ll draft a guy to say the same thing I did. If it’s a $150 million case and I’m not sure this person’s listening, I’ll go get someone else, I’ll get some reinforcement. It could be gender, it could just be brain damage. It doesn’t always do the trick. It is better to have somebody male to reinforce it. And I do it, because I don’t want anyone to say the advice wasn’t taken because I didn’t do this. I do risk management. People are no gender neutral in society, and if you can get two people to say it, who cares? When we have to deliver a message, sometimes that’s based on gender.” (86)


Another reason women turn to men to assist them is for validation; a lot of time clients want a male to validate what the female just said to them. Women also turn to males to assist them when they are stuck in sticky situations with other male colleagues. This role of men being the ones that women turn to in order to deliver messages and talk to clients so they will listen and things like that points to the law as a gendered organization because, “This reveals the tension between a world that is not “gender neutral” and a workplace that aspires to be. Although these anecdotes make clear that sometimes skeptical clients or bullying opposing counsel require that women utilize male backing, and that women believe this is the right thing to do for the client or case, the pivotal question is whether this dynamic lowers a women’s status in the eyes of her colleagues, who may hesitate to refer cases to her, advance her to partner, or work with her on important matters.” (88)