Legal News

For Women Litigators: A Courtroom Footwear Dilemma?

By Ashby Jones

Earlier this week, our own Jamie Heller contributed a piece to our sister blog, The Juggle, pegged to a recent WSJ profile of Lehman’s CFO Erin Callan, on the amount of mental energy she (and other women, it turns out) expend thinking about shoes. Specifically, the piece addresses the frequent choice professional women face between shoes that are primarily comfortable and those that are primarily stylish.

The reason we bring this up, LBers, is because of a provocative comment that followed the Juggle post. Wrote someone called “Boston Lawyer”:

Maybe I’m wrong about this, and I’d certainly prefer if I were, but women in certain professions in the public eye (appearing before judges and jurors, in my case), really have a legitimate reason to buy and wear uncomfortable heels (after a long jury trial once, I came home with double tendinitis in my feet from heels-wearing), skirt suits and stockings, makeup, jewelry, etc — all of the stuff that my male colleagues don’t have to spend time and money on. If I were to appear before an 80 year old male judge in something actually comfortable, the conventional wisdom is that I’d be doing my clients a disservice.

Another reader responded:

I was on jury duty recently, and I noticed that both female lawyers (one on each side of the case) wore pantsuits and low heels, pretty much ala Hillary. They looked well groomed, professional, and reasonably comfortable. This was a criminal trial at the Westchester County courthouse.

Fascinating. We’d love to hear from women lawyers, especially those who spend a decent amount of time in court. Were you to “appear before an 80 year old male judge in something actually comfortable,” not to mention a jury, would you be doing your clients a disservice? The floor is yours.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on May 22, 2008 (boomark / email).