Last week there was a really interesting article from American Lawyer about Hillary Clinton. The article discussed how her background as a corporate lawyer may have a lot to do with her affect and speaking style, both of which are regularly criticized by the media.
As we all know, the law changes you. And for women, many of the changes that you make so as to be taken seriously by your male peers and that allow you to be a better lawyer are contrary to the social expectations that our culture has for women.
It's quite the dilemma, ain't it?
From the article:
Stiff, bloodless, sexless, excessively concerned with the appearance of impropriety, lawyers are not much fun at parties. This is particularly true of corporate lawyers...
An inarguable fact -- and lawyers love inarguable facts! -- is that Hillary Clinton spent the longest stretch of her professional life working in a corporate law firm...(
F)or Clinton, the first woman ever to practice at Rose, the pressure and intensity of corporate existence had to have been of an entirely different order. She was, from the start, under constant scrutiny. Several of the firm's partners opposed the idea of hiring a woman lawyer in the first place and raised questions about possible conflicts. "How will we introduce her to clients?" an associate asked Webster Hubbell and Vince Foster Jr., the partners who had recruited Hillary and became close Clinton associates. And "What if she gets pregnant?...
I'm not sure when the Little Rock Courthouse was built or what its acoustics are like. But I know that courthouses often have high, sometimes vaulted ceilings, which create acoustical problems for women, whose voices tend not to project in the booming way that those of male lawyers can. To be heard, women lawyers have to raise their voices in ways that make them sound strident and shrill, an accusation that is frequently leveled at powerful women in careers in the law and beyond it. In any case, despite a successful track record with juries, Hillary Clinton stayed out of the courtroom, and even today seems deliberately to keep her voice low and well-modulated...
Neither Hillary Clinton nor the average corporate law partner is likely to make anyone's blood jump or heart sing. When you are in trouble, however -- real trouble -- it may be that the person you want to see isn't the guy who wows you with his wit and charisma, but someone who has really done her homework, pored over all the boring details, and then gone back over them again, just for fun. It's pretty clear that the country is in real trouble. Bridges are falling down; the stock market is all over the place; and let's not even bring up Iraq or Sudan. This might or might not be the right time to look past Hillary Clinton's cool, corporate, bill-by-the-hour sensibility, her lawyerly inclination to avoid risk and run everything past the pollsters, to smile and keep a stiff upper lip because appearance and propriety matter more than most things -- and certainly more than impropriety."
