New York Attorney Dyan Gershman has been practicing law for 30 years. In addition to her various professional experiences including establishing her firm, Gershman Law, PLLC, Dyan Gershman is an active member of the New York State Bar Association (NYSBA).
The NYSBA works to shape the development of the law and educate and inform the public. It also provides New York attorneys with a wide array of valuable information and resources, including legal practice trends in the state. Recently, the organization published updated research relating to the role that women attorneys take in courtrooms throughout the state.
The study conducted recently was a follow up to the landmark NYSBA report issued three years ago. In 2017, a questionnaire-based study titled “If Not Now, When? Achieving Equality for Women Attorneys in the Courtroom and in ADR” found that only 24.7 percent of lead counsels in courtrooms throughout New York were female attorneys.
The small percentage of women who were in speaking roles happened at all levels of the New York state judicial system (i.e., upstate and downstate, criminal and civil, trial and appellate, and multi-party and ex parte matters). The findings were similar for instances when cases involved mediation, arbitration, and neutral conduct meetings.
The 2020 follow up study conducted through NYSBA titled “The Time Is Now: Achieving Equality for Women Attorneys in the Courtroom and in ADR,” found that the improvements were disappointingly small despite a roadmap of recommendations included in the 2017 report.
Women in lead counsel roles rose to 25.3 percent (from 24.7 percent in the 2017 study). The 2020 report makes a number of recommendations to improve gender equity across the legal profession, including ongoing efforts by the judiciary to encourage more women in leadership roles in the courtroom.
Dyan Gershman 
You must be logged in to post a comment.