From left, Justices Sallie Manzanet-Daniels; Doris Ling-Cohan and Ellen Gesmer (Photo of Doris Ling-Cohan by Shaoyi Zhang)

As was the custom, Justice Sallie Manzanet-Daniels wasn't wearing her robes because she didn't have a jury sitting that day. “How can I help you?” she asked.

“Really ma'am I don't want to be rude but I don't want to repeat myself when the judge comes down,” the lawyer replied.

She tried to make it clear to the lawyer that he was already dealing with the judge. “I would rather just wait for the judge,” he repeated.

“After the third time, I kind of tapped my hand on the bench and said 'I am the judge!' His mouth dropped open. His eyes popped wide open,” said Manzanet-Daniels who is now an appellate justice in Manhattan but was then a Civil Court judge.

“In the three decades that I have been in the business, I've seen great strides and great movement forward but it's still there and it needs to be called out every time it surfaces,” she said.

Even if it's subtle, she said it's important to expose stereotypes. Manzanet-Daniels, who is of  Puerto Rican descent, said it's hard sometimes to tell whether she's being treated a certain way because of her gender or ethnicity. When she was a criminal defense attorney, for instance, she would often be mistaken for the interpreter.

Other times, she wondered whether lawyers didn't take her seriously because of her gender or because of her youth.

“If I made a ruling, I would sometimes get from the older attorneys the 'When I was in law school' kind of speech. I don't think male lawyers got the same kind of pushback,” she said.

Judges all over the country are sharing such stories since Michigan attorney Marie Reimers tweeted out her frustration over being confused for a paralegal Wednesday.

Texas Supreme Court Justice Eva Guzman could relate.

“This evening I was once again told, 'You don't look like a judge,'” Guzman wrote, prompting Michigan Judge Qiana Lillard to share a similar anecdote.

 

Supreme Court Justice Doris Ling-Cohan, who serves on the Appellate Term, First Department in Manhattan and is of Asian descent, can relate.

“I remember as an attorney going into criminal court and I was the prosecutor and the judge asked me if I was an interpreter,” she said.

After Sept. 11 when she went through the downtown police blockade below Canal Street she had trouble getting through despite a police placard, a badge and her judge's ID.

“One day, my husband drives me to work, with me in the passenger seat, and the police not only do not bother asking him for ID but they run to lift the barricade for him,” she said.

Other times when representing clients, she was mistaken for the defendant. When she ran for election to the Supreme Court in 1995, she was frequently told she didn't look like a judge. “I have to fight through people's perceptions of what judges look like,” she said.

But some things have improved, she said. In the early 2000s when she was a Civil Court judge, she said, “I remember looking at this huge courtroom with hundreds of lawyers and there were no females. And that's changed.”

Certainly, that's true in the Appellate Division, First Department. Since Supreme Court Justice Ellen Gesmer was elevated to that court in 2016 along with two other colleagues, the First Department became more female than male.

“What I think happens that is more subtle is when I ask a question lawyers will adapt a condescending tone that I don't think they'd use with male colleagues,” she said. “My sense is there's a little more of that with women judges.”

When Gesmer was a young lawyer, she said the sexism was more overt. She would say something in a meeting and no one would respond. Yet. when a male lawyer would say the say thing later in the meeting, everyone would say what a good idea it was.

“I haven't had anything directly sexist in quite a while which I say with a caveat because some of it is stuff you get inured to,” she said.

She tells the story of letting her boss at legal services know that she was pregnant.

“He said, 'You're kidding.' I don't think it occurred to him that lawyers could get pregnant,” she said.

Retired Supreme Court Justice Emily Goodman told a humorous story in response to the recollections of the other judges.

“Over my three decades on the bench, I too, have been mistaken for everyone but the judge,” she said. “On the other hand, when my pre-K daughter came to court in the mid-eighties she told my male colleagues, 'I didn't know men could be judges.'”

Cori Rosen, an associate at Rosenberg & Estis who is on maternity leave with her second child, was returning to her Third Avenue office with her papers in a litigation bag. In the elevator, she encountered a lawyer who worked for another firm.

He asked her at which court transcription service did she work. When she said she wasn't a transcriber, he assumed that she was a legal secretary. She told him she was a litigator.

“There was no apology,” she said. “It was just awkward.”

 

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