Mary-Olga Lovett has litigated innumerable corporate cases, successfully defending companies in patent infringement and fraudulent marketing cases in federal and state courts.
So Lovett, a senior vice president at international law firm Greenberg Traurig and co-shareholder in the company’s Texas division, was a natural choice when the general counsel at a tech startup was looking for representation in a contentious upcoming lawsuit. She pitched herself, her strategy and her long list of accomplishments to the board of directors, and both attorneys thought it was a slam dunk.
A day later, the general counsel called, subdued.
“‘The board felt safer with an older, more experienced man than they did with you,’” Lovett recalled of the phone call a year ago.
While the legal industry has made strides in hiring more women and striking gender parity at law schools, Lovett and other women said more must be done to overcome the industry’s retention problem and put more female lawyers into the hot seat.
“You want to be the quarterback,” Lovett said. “A player wants the ball. And I see so many talented young women and young lawyers who I still think in 2020 have reason to be concerned they may not see that opportunity as quickly as they should, if at all.”
A 2018 study from the American Bar Association found that two-thirds of attorneys in trial are men. The number of women appearing as lead counsel is even smaller — only 24 percent of lead counsel in civil cases were women.
Overall in the legal profession, 62 percent of attorneys identified as male and 38 percent as female, according to the ABA. That matches up roughly with the distribution Greenberg Traurig’s Houston office, where 66 percent of attorneys were male and 33 percent were female. Roughly 23 percent of partners at private firms are women.
“The legal system is the slowest changing system in this country, it’s very conservative,” said Joe Feagin, a professor of sociology at Texas A&M.
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