© 2017 The Texas Lawbook.
By Mark Curriden
(Oct. 20) – The Dallas Bar Association’s board of directors voted unanimously Thursday to give a director’s position to the leader of the largest women’s lawyers organization in North Texas.
The DBA decision comes one year after the DBA board reluctantly gave the Dallas Women Lawyers Association a non-voting seat on its governing board – a decision that upset several leading women lawyers and judges in Dallas.
DWLA President Dena Stroh said she “could not be more thrilled.”
Stroh notes that the DWLA struggled in 1998 over whether the organization should be an independent group or a section of the Dallas Bar.
“The esteemed Louise B. Raggio (one of DWLA’s founders) argued for independence,” Stroh said. “Through the unanimous vote by the Dallas Bar board, both of these objectives have been achieved: continued independence and full recognition by the Dallas Bar board as the organization that represents women lawyers.”
DWLA Past President Angela Zambrano, who fought for years to get the DBA to award the director’s position to the group, said “having a voting seat matters.”
“It ensures that female lawyers’ voices are heard in the governance of our profession in Dallas,” said Zambrano, who is a partner at Sidley Austin in Dallas. “It recognizes that women lawyers are a minority in every courtroom and every boardroom where we appear.
“Although, thankfully, there have been women on the DBA Board for many years, these women were not charged with looking out for the rest of the women lawyers in Dallas,” she said. “Now we have someone to do that. The DWLA has a voice and a vote. After the hundreds of hours that I spent last year lobbying for and working on this effort, I could not be happier with this result – even if it was long overdue.”
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