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The competency gap that remains between men and women lawyers still exists to most people. Women believe that they have to work much harder than men to get their foot in the door and prove themselves. “An American Bar Association poll taken in 1983 revealed that 38% of women lawyers said they believed they had to work harder to prove themselves. By 2000, that figure had zoomed to 60%. A survey conducted in 2002 by the New York State Bar Association showed similar figures. Forty-four percent of the women overall agreed with the perception that “female layers have to work harder than male lawyers to get the same results.” For private firms and in-house women, the numbers were higher still: 50% and 57% respectively. Although the figures for public interest lawyers (34% of those females said they had to work harder) and for the judiciary (39% of the female judges concurred) were lower, they were still significant.” (77)


Consequences that women experience as a result of the legal profession remaining male dominant are you have a negativity about you for being a women, you are looked at as odd, they don’t face female opposing counsel, women are associated with unsuccessful performance, women are assumed to lack power and therefore are not taken seriously, and they get less respect and are seen as less threatening, and less important. One more thing is that women are more likely to get administrative or housekeeping tasks.

Strategies that male lawyers engage in an attempt to win a case against a woman lawyer are bullying and intimidation. “A male trial associate reports that, although he tests everyone in the litigation arena to try to unnerve them, he has a working assumption that women are easier to bully and that he can knock them off their stride more easily than a man. For instance, if he has information about a woman’s child care responsibilities, he will try to push depositions and their timing to the last minute, knowing that it creates a time crisis for women.” (84)