Janet Yellen, the first female chair of the Federal Reserve, said, “Making fuller use of the talents and efforts of women in the workplace has made us more productive and prosperous.”

Early in my career, my mentor told me, “Let people underestimate you, then use it to your advantage. When someone underestimates your abilities, they often underprepare and that is your opportunity.” He taught me a lot in the years that I worked for him but this is something that has always stayed with me. I consider myself lucky because I cannot easily identify a particular situation when I was underestimated due to being a woman in the legal profession. However, I am sure at some point, to some degree, it did happen. There is no denying that female attorneys have come a long way in recent years. According to Census data, in 1970, women accounted for only 4.9 percent of lawyers. Since that time, countless initiatives have been implemented to increase the number of women within the profession and it has worked. Women now comprise approximately 50 percent of law school graduates and approximately 36 percent of attorneys, which is vastly improved since 1970. However, when you look at the percentage of women who are equity partners, the number dips to approximately 16.8 percent, when looking at Am Law 200 firms, and only 21 percent of general counsel in Fortune 500 companies are women. Women in the judiciary fall into a similar percentage. According to the National Association of Women Judges, in 2014, only 26 percent of judges in Pennsylvania were female.

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