Where are the women?

  • August 31, 2015

IP Day keynote: Judith Snider asks, “Where are the women?”

IP Day, the conference held by the CBA’s National Intellectual Property Section on May 28 in Ottawa, was bookended by an enthusiastic and informative town hall featuring a number of federal court judges and prothonotaries in the morning, and lively debates on points of intellectual property law in the afternoon.

In between those two sessions, which may have been something only an intellectual property lawyer could love, was the lunchtime keynote address by retired federal court justice Judith Snider.

“I can discuss the things I didn’t dare tell you when I was a judge,” said Snider, who now works in mediation and arbitration with JAMS in Toronto, in an address replete with baseball analogies. Her tips for litigators were funny yet pointed. Snider had warned that several lawyers in the audience who had appeared before her in the past would recognize themselves in her speech. Sure enough, a lawyer at one of the tables was overheard to say, somewhat chagrined, that he was one of the examples she’d used for things not to do, though he didn’t offer specifics.

Another arrow that may have hit home with the crowd was when Snider asked, “Where are the women?” Women are excelling in law school and being hired by law firms, but those numbers weren’t reflected in the percentage of female lawyers who appeared in her court. She called on older lawyers to do their bit by bringing women along – and not just bringing them along to court to do the grunt work, but letting them appear before judges, argue cases and gain precious experience.

She didn’t let women off the hook either – a fan of Sheryl Sandberg’s book Lean In, Snider says too many young women are either sitting back and waiting for success to come to them, or are giving up and leaving private practice. “Women need to shift their thinking from ‘I’m not ready to do that,’ to ‘I want to do that and I need to learn how’,” she said.

Here are Snider’s top 10 tips for litigators:

Judge’s top 10 tips for litigators

  1. Avoid last-minute motions – and especially motions to adjourn.
  2. Respect the role of experts – they’re there to educate the court, not to make your case.
  3. Keep your opening statement brief and to the point.
  4. Know the name of the judge before whom you’re appearing, and be able to pronounce it. Also make sure you properly pronounce the name of any judge you cite.
  5. Be on time. “Don’t waltz in at 9:40 and look like I should be grateful you made it at all.”
  6. Eliminate jack-in-the-box reactions – think before reflexively jumping up to object.
  7. Watch your body language – don’t make faces when opposing counsel or the judge says something you don’t like.
  8. Senior counsel should take care to mentor younger lawyers, bring them along early and often and not just as second chair.
  9. Younger counsel need to lean in – take advantage of opportunities, and create them where they don’t exist.
  10. Keep up with the count – sometimes you have to do the things she just said not to do; be prepared for it to happen.