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12 Solo [i] (2006)

handle is hein.journals/sololoi12 and id is 1 raw text is: -          .. 8 -  L  6  *   6  - ,8

Comfrt-a 'Bench'mark
for Court Attire?
By Judith Stainbrook

Just How Casual Can
You Go When Meeting
a Client?
Have Carry-on,
Will Travel
It's All in the Bag
Clad With Style

started practicing law
in the early 1970s in a
small legal services
program in upstate New
York. We were the
delayed wave of sixties
lawyers who had brought
the concept of law reform
to the forefront. My man-
aging attorney was trying
hard to bring some respect-
ability to our office by
overcoming the unwashed
radical image that had
somewhat tarnished the
office. Its founding fathers
had gone to court wearing
tee shirts that read F***
the Establishment.
As part of that clean-up
effort, the men kept sports
coats in their offices to wear
with their blue jeans if sud-
denly called to court, or
they sent me, the only
woman lawyer in the coun-
ty, because I always wore
a skirt and skirts were pre-

sumed to be safe, on women
anyway. Who knew?
In those days it didn't
occur to me to wear a suit
to court. Later, when more
women began to enter
fields that were tradition-
ally male, we heard about
power dressing. After
that I deliberately avoided
suits since it seemed to
me that dressing like a
man was not exactly the
way to achieve equality
with them, and that
women could feel they
had truly arrived when
men began clamoring to
wear skirts.
It was, therefore, with
shock that I read, and not
so long ago, women
lawyers were being chas-
tised by some judges, both
male and female, for wear-
ing pantsuits to court. How
(continued inside)

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