Lawyers Share Strategies for Advancing Women in the Legal Profession

Around the world, women lawyers face unique challenges to successfully pursuing legal careers—from confronting overt gender discrimination in the workplace to balancing the demands of work and family. In April, Vance Center executive director Joan Vermeulen and volunteer consultant Carrie Cohen traveled to Argentina to meet with women professionals working to address these issues and in turn advance the status of women in the legal profession in Latin America. Ms. Cohen is an in-coming Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York and chair of the City Bar's Committee on Women in the Profession.

While in Buenos Aires, Ms. Cohen participated in the International Conference on Women in the Legal Profession, where she presented the Best Practices for the Hiring, Training, Retention and Advancement of Women Attorneys, a manual compiled by the Committee on Women in the Profession that outlines strategies for advancing women lawyers at all stages of their careers. The conference was organized by the University of Buenos Aires Law School and gender-rights organizations Equipo Latinoamericano de Justicia y Género and Articulación Regional de Justicia y Género. More than 100 lawyers and legal scholars from Latin America, Europe and North America attended.

"It was encouraging to learn about strategies women lawyers in New York have used to overcome obstacles related to their gender," said Beatriz Kohen, one of the organizers of the conference. "It showed that others have found solutions to these problems and that we can do so in Latin America as well."

In addition to the conference, Ms. Cohen and Ms. Vermeulen met with women associates and partners to exchange strategies for addressing common challenges women face in their firms and corporate law departments—from finding mentors in large law firms to re-entering the workforce after childbirth. These meetings included a roundtable with approximately 50 in-house counsel and private practice lawyers hosted at Marval, O'Farrell & Mairal and a meeting with junior attorneys at the Universidad de San Andres Law School.

The meetings were particularly important because women lawyers in Argentina generally have few opportunities to gather and discuss these sorts of issues, said Paola Bergallo, a law professor in Buenos Aires who worked with the Vance Center to organize the meeting at the Universidad de San Andres.

"Issues facing women in the profession are not usually talked about in legal education or once women enter the work force," Ms. Bergallo said. "These meetings helped to put gender issues on the agenda for women in the leading law firms. The women who came to the seminars were also excited to receive a resource [the Best Practices manual] that will help them move forward on this issue."

"The Vance Center's goal is to provide practical solutions to the issue of gender discrimination in the legal profession in the countries in which it works," Ms. Cohen said.  "We hope that the Best Practices manual will be a useful tool for women working on this issue in Latin America."

For more information on the Vance Center's work on women in the legal profession contact Carrie Cohen at ccohen@nycbar.org. For more information on the Vance Center's work in Latin America contact Elise Colomer Grimaldi at ecolomer@nycbar.org.

Read the Best Practices manual in English or in Spanish. An abbreviated version is also available in Spanish.

Read related articles:

"Women lawyers join forces in Argentina" Latin Lawyer. August 23, 2007.

"Lawyers share strategies for advancing women in the legal profession" Forty-Fourth Street Notes, New York City Bar. September, 2007.