Probably because I had a more extreme experience of being the only woman in a male-dominated law firm (and before that, to a lesser degree, a minority in law school), I do not consider being the youngest female in a group of women to put me in the minority. You have demonstrated, however, that everyone has a different definition of minority rooted in their personal experience. Which is why I think it’s difficult for someone who has never been a minority (ie, a white male) to understand how it feels.

I agree that the root of compassion is to bear witness to another’s suffering without turning away. It’s a difficult thing to learn, but wonderful once you achieve it to some small degree. I will bring a great deal of compassion (as well as heart) with me to my new law firm. In fact, I’m calling it “a law firm with heart.” This may not work for everyone, but I believe it will resonate with my ideal clients.

I think one of the biggest problems with the women’s movement in the beginning was that it thought getting into the boys club was the answer. I think we forgot that what we needed to do was challenge the boys club mentality.

I don’t think the problem at your law firm was that those “boys” couldn’t imagine your point of view, it’s that they chose not to—in all likelihood because it meant they had much to lose: the privileged position of being a white male (or male at any rate).

I don’t know why you thought that my comment about the “talk” black fathers have with their sons meant that they didn’t talk to their sons about sex and being responsible. I did not say that.

During the period you were in law school and joining a law firm, I was spending a great deal of time with older women who had challenged the status quo. Talk about being in the minority. I learned from them (and it was a slow learning curve for me) to take the risk of not following the rules, of making your own—or at least realizing when the “rules” offended my heart and soul and being willing to defy those rules.

As for getting the details wrong, I still think it’s all about being willing to hear, being willing to listen to what someone is saying, being willing to feel their suffering. The root of compassion means to bear suffering—to be willing to be a witness to what another is feeling—to not turn away.

I think what’s important as you step into law again is not even so much how you run your law firm, as how to bring your heart into it. Someone described the heart chakra as that place where the energies from the other chakras get translated into the experience of being human. Logic is not a contraindication to that, by the way.

I suspect that your experience with your law firm is not the only time you have been faced with rules that offended your soul and heart. I think our biggest challenge as women now is to challenge those rules, step out of institutions and systems that insist on the absoluteness of those rules, and be willing to create new institutions and systems.

The most difficult thing I think about being a pioneer, is deflecting the judgements that come our way because we challenge the rules.

As for my former law firm, the rules at the time were pretty clear: I had to play by the boy’s rules. Period. When you are in the minority, you don’t have the luxury of making your own rules. The legal secretaries in my former firm were, ironically, often treated far better than me. At least that’s what they told me. It’s never easy being the pioneer.

Now female attorneys are far more prevalent. I don’t know how it is in private practice, but I definitely plan to do things differently in my own law firm.

I hope black fathers still talk to their sons about sex, but you are right that they need to have an additional talk about how to stay alive. And as a parent I can imagine that fear all too clearly.

Thanks for the terrific comments!

Good post.

Here’s what I would offer: I think we have all have a basic humanity that allows us to put ourselves in another’s shoes. But we have to be willing to listen in order to do that. And, we have to be willing to speak up when we are not being heard.

I think the biggest challenge we as women have now is to bring our experience as women into the world. I suspect it was your youth that led you down the path of becoming one of the guys (learning sports statistics, etc.) in order to fit in. Who knows whether you could have changed their minds (I suspect not) had you brought your woman’s perspective into the firm. That seemed to me to be an era where women joined the ranks of what had been male territory, but thought they had to adopt the “male” way in order to be there. Can you imagine what it was like for those secretaries?

In 1991, I was the only woman in a company that had a management-level position. I was a writer for a technical firm, and got told that I was to continue doing what I was doing (writing well), but call it something else because my male colleagues were threatened by what I was producing. Mind you, I was the only writer. That boys’ club thing ran (hopefully past tense mostly) deep.

I think you have a great opportunity with your new law firm to bring your woman’s perspective into practicing law.

I think the best thing that has come out of the Trayvon Martin travesty is that we have learned that a black father’s “talk” with his son isn’t about sex, but about how to stay alive if he is stopped by law enforcement.

If we can’t imagine how that must feel as a parent, then we aren’t listening to our own hearts.