New report documents gender disparity in courtrooms

Across New York state, women attorneys are underrepresented in courtrooms and in alternative dispute resolution (ADR) venues, according to a report issued by the Commercial & Federal Litigation Section of the New York State Bar Association.

The report entitled If Not Now, When? Achieving Equality for Women Attorneys in the Courtroom and in ADR, was compiled by the section’s Task Force on Women’s Initiatives.

According to the report, female attorneys comprise about 25 percent of attorneys in lead counsel roles in courtrooms statewide. Women attorneys in the public sector, however, fared far better than their counterparts in the private sector.

“In sum, the low percentage of women attorneys appearing in a speaking role in courts was found at every level and in every type of court: upstate and downstate, federal and state, trial and appellate, criminal and civil, ex parte applications and multi-party matters,” according to the report.

The report is based on the first-ever observational study of women attorneys in the courtroom. The first portion of the study tracked the participation of women as lead counsel and trial attorneys in civil and criminal litigation. Judges were asked to log the gender of all speaking counsel in their courtroom. The other portion of the study asked several ADR providers to provide data regarding the gender of neutral parties in mediations and arbitrations.

The study took place from Sept. 1, 2016 to Dec. 31, 2016. The New York Court of Appeals, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, two of the four federal district courts, all four appellate divisions as well as commercial divisions in supreme courts in counties from Suffolk to Onondaga and Erie participated. Approximately 2,800 questionnaires were completed and returned by judges in participating courts.

“The results reveal that women remain woefully underrepresented in the courtroom – particularly in the private sector,” retired U.S. District Court Judge Shira Scheindlin said in a news release.

“We hope the report is widely disseminated and studied by lawyers in the public and private sectors, in-house counsel, and members of the judiciary. As our title suggests, the time has come to turn things around. We look forward to seeing a real improvement when we repeat the study in two years,” she said in the release.

The report is available here.