As I was waiting for a motion hearing in Madison County the other day, I watched a young female lawyer argue on behalf of her client. The older I get, the more I walk down memory lane, so I took this opportunity to reflect on my early days in this jurisdiction:
My first appearance in the Edwardsville Courthouse (the County seat) was around, oh, 1986. As I entered the courthouse and looked around, I saw only men. White men. I found the courtroom in which my motion was scheduled, went in and sat down. There I spied another female lawyer-getting ready to argue a motion that she had brought ( she was getting ready to do a really good job, one could tell by the three legal pads filled with writing and the post-it notes protruding from every other page). Her opponents were several other attorneys fitting the aforementioned categories. Her motion was called by the judge. He addressed her by name (her father was a prominent defense attorney in town). He wished her a good morning. Then he said "why don't you go back to the office and send your daddy over here to argue this?".
Wanting to try cases and all, a few of us continued on, defending large companies in the courtroom, willing to trade insults for experience. There is no question that some of the most complex and significant litigation in the country has occurred in Madison County. Still does. That is why we did it, the thrill of the difficult case. In spite of the privilege of working on these cases, there were times when the gender issues were intolerable. These were the times when our clients were punished because of our gender. Or maybe it was the other way around. Depending on the judge to whom a case was assigned, it was part of every female attorney's analysis to consider whether she had an ethical duty to send a male attorney in her place.
Like, for instance, the time when the trial judge held a highly competent female partner from a large Chicago firm in CRIMINAL CONTEMPT for asking an expert witness physician about a radiograph. Yes, he did. He claimed she had violated a pre-trial Reynolds ruling. She hadn't-I read the transcripts. Fortunately he didn't lock her up pending the ruling by the Fifth District, which "reluctantly" overturned it. Think about it: she would have a had a criminal record. It would have ruined her career.
He's gone. So is the "reluctant" author of the appellate opinion, as is the judge in the first example. The judge who let plaintiff's counsel argue in closing that the defense attorney was sleeping with her expert medical witness is gone, too. The judge hearing my motion is a woman. The presiding judge is a woman. Both are well-respected. The male judges , some of whom I went to law school with, would be repelled by this behavior.
As I was leaving the courthouse, I visited with an old friend. She has been working in the courthouse for a long time . We laughed out loud as we recalled some of our trial stories-but one thing we both agreed on: things have changed.