It’s a man’s world… unless it’s a woman’s world.

October 27, 2006 – 1:07 pm |

I remember my first deposition like it was yesterday. Commissioned by his insurance company, my law firm represented the defendant, a landlord, in a ‘slip and fall’ case. The Plaintiff, Mary, had fallen on the slippery, ice-covered front steps at her friend’s apartment building. She was suing my client because she had some ‘soft tissue’ injuries (translation – she had difficult-to-pinpoint back pain) and insisted that my client could have done a better job clearing the ice from the step.The deposition would be at Mary’s lawyer’s office: a small, tattered, yellow-brick building in the parking lot of one of the local supermarkets. I would ask Mary all kinds of questions about every time she’d ever fallen down. And I was positively giddy to inquire of Mary whether she knew that she lived in Minnesota – a place where from October to May it’s a safe bet that everywhere you walk is covered with a sheet of glare ice. I was ready. I had reviewed all the records, donned my most grown-up suit, and I couldn’t wait to take a stab at Mary.

I arrived at the “office in the parking lot” ready for blood. I checked in with the receptionist. She was a woman of about 40 with darkly died brown hair, bright red lipstick, matching fiery fingernails and a raspy voice indicating she might actually just be on break from her real job – chain smoking in the parking lot.

“Can I Help You,” Smoky barked with little interest. She’d fixed one eyeball on computer solitaire and glanced up at me with the other.
“I’m here for the Johnson deposition,” I proudly declared.
She looked up, grinned a yellow smile of fake pleasantry, picked up the phone, and punched in an extension.
“Hi Bob,” she announced. “Yeah, I just wanted to let you know the court reporter is here for the Johnson deposition – do you want me to send her in to the conference room to set up?”I wish I could report that more than seven years later, in a world where ½ of law students are women, the receptionists of the world started anticipating the possibility that a young woman might be a lawyer, but it hasn’t happened. My women lawyer friends and I have been known to gripe at great length, constantly analyzing the collective expectations founded on a basic assumption that our work is man’s work, and the work of the court reporter is a woman’s work.

It turns out that jumping tracks didn’t save me from this issue. I was reminded of those days and conversations when I dropped my son off at preschool this morning. I saw a sort of lost looking manI hadn’t seen before wandering the hall with a little girl from my son’s class.
“Is this the Pre-K room?” the young man inquired of the teacher.
“Yes, this is the pre-k room,” she replied, “ you must be Ellie’s dad - -“
“Actually, no” he interrupted, as we all started blankly at him. “I’m her new nanny.”