Bettina “Betsy” Plevan prioritized work-life balance before it was trendy. As an associate at Proskauer Rose in the 1970s—one of only a few women lawyers at the firm and the only one in the litigation department—Plevan didn't hesitate to take time off or refuse late hours to look after her two young sons, one of whom had special needs.

“I just did it,” Plevan says. “I didn't see a reason not to.” Largely because of her, in the early 1980s the firm began a program that allowed lawyers to work part-time for family reasons and full-time attorneys to take time off for family obligations.

Throughout a nearly 50-year legal career that includes heading the New York City Bar Association and Proskauer's labor and employment practice, Plevan has sought to level the playing field for women lawyers. As the first chair of the New York bar's Committee on Women in the Profession, she shepherded a 1995 study, “Glass Ceilings and Open Doors,” that documented gender-based pay and work inequality at law firms. “She started off making the major statistical study of a lack of women in the profession and created reports and she didn't let go of this issue, to her great credit,” says Proskauer's Michael Cardozo, a mentor who first encouraged Plevan to get involved in bar activities. “She pushed that issue very, very well and got a lot of people at the city bar association [and] elsewhere involved.”