iami solo practitioner Cynthia Everett was one of three women among the eight voting members who represented Miami-Dade County on The Florida Bar’s board of governors in the 1990s. Now the count is down to one woman.
Minorities, including Everett who is black, hold seven voting seats on the 52-member state board. Three of those are from Miami-Dade. Women have nine voting seats statewide.
Among women, “you could say I haven’t seen that much progress, but I haven’t seen that much interest,” Everett said. “When I was on the board, we had our highest number of three women at one time. That number went to two. Now we’re down to one on the 11th Circuit. I don’t see women stepping forward in the numbers I would expect.”
Women make up a third of all lawyers in Florida, according to Bar figures. They make up 35 percent in Miami-Dade, 35 percent in Broward and 33 percent in Palm Beach counties. Nine percent of Florida attorneys are Hispanic, and 3 percent are black.
For years, Bar leaders have emphasized the importance of making the Bar’s governing board more closely represent its membership in terms of diversity. But the elective system is no guarantee of improvement in a profession with a reputation as a good ol’ boy network.
Solo practitioner Lisa Lehner, a former board member of the Miami-Dade chapter of the Florida Association for Women Lawyers, said she decided to get involved with the group again after a 10-year hiatus because of the lack of progress for women.
Women “always had the problem of the unbroken glass ceiling,” she said. “Forget the 18 million cracks,” referring to Hillary Clinton’s line about votes she collected in her presidential primary contests. The role of women in American society has been grabbing headlines since Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin joined the Republican ticket.
On a much smaller scale, contests for two Miami-Dade seats that opened on the Bar board of governors this year garnered three minority candidates but no women, despite efforts to increase diversity on the board, judicial nominating commissions and court benches. A third seat also is in play.
The first seat opened when Miami litigator Ben Kuehne stepped down after his federal indictment on money laundering charges. Jack Hickey, past president of the Dade County Bar Association, won in a runoff, defeating Cuban-American attorney Jorge Mestre. Both Kuehne and Hickey are white men. No women ran for Kuehne’s former seat.
Another seat opened this summer after Jennifer Coberly left the board when her former employer, litigation boutique Zuckerman Spaeder, closed its Miami office and she became in-house counsel at longtime client Point Blank Solutions in Pompano Beach. A runoff is set to replace her between Antonio Castro, a former president of the Cuban American Bar Association, and Aventura litigator Michael Higer. Again, no women sought the seat.
A third seat opened after the death of Akerman Senterfitt partner Steven Chaykin in July. One woman is running for that seat, so far, with the filing period ending Sept. 30.
Candidate and family law practitioner Dori Foster-Morales is the wife of former Miami-Dade County Commissioner Jimmy Morales. She is active in the Bar as chairwoman of its 2009 annual convention and has been a member of the executive council of the Bar’s family law section since 2002.
Foster-Morales said the fact that no women stepped up to replace Coberly caught her attention and highlighted for her the need to run.
“This is a mandatory Bar association. It’s important to have it look the way the Bar looks,” she said. In the race to succeed Coberly, Foster-Morales said, “No women running in that race caught people off guard, and it brought it to the forefront. One of the reasons I’m encouraged to do it is because we need more women, and I think I’m just as qualified as anyone else out there.”
The absence of significant numbers of women in Bar leadership roles highlights for some women lawyers how far women still need to go to make sure they are represented in Florida’s legal community. The lack of women nominees for two Florida Supreme Court vacancies and a lack of representation on judicial nominating commissions also highlights the problem, they say.
Although the number of women on the board hasn’t grown much since former Bar president and Carlton Fields partner Edith Osman in Miami became a voting member in the early ’90s, she said the attitude toward women and minorities has improved. She said diversity has become much more a subject of interest, and lawyers have become more understanding.
“The board has come a long way,” she said. “All of these issues of diversity that are acceptable now were barely buzzwords then. There were just a few of us that were pushing for women and minorities. It was definitely more of a boys’ club in every level. They’re a little more enlightened now.”
But pressure for diversity is not always rewarded.
Second District Court of Appeal Judge Charles Canady, a former congressman, was chosen by Gov. Charlie Crist to replace former Florida Supreme Court Justice Raoul G. Cantero III this month. Canady, a white male, was one of the five men recommended by the nominating commission to replace Florida’s first Hispanic justice. Two nominees are Hispanic. Three white men have been recommended to replace departing Justice Kenneth B. Bell.
Sterling Ivey, a spokesman for Crist, acknowledged the governor expressed concern about the lack of diversity in the court nominees, but he said Crist decided not to request a new pool of candidates after he began considering the candidates.
“The comment he made about diversity was made the day he received the eight applications from the judicial nominating commission,” Sterling said. “He hadn’t looked at all of the individual candidates at the time.”
Ivey noted Crist and the JNC have two more opportunities to add diversity to the Florida Supreme Court with two more seats opening early next year.
“We’ll work with our partners at The Florida Bar and some of the minority groups to encourage applicants,” Ivey said. “It’s a tough position to fill because the pay for a Supreme Court justice is not comparable to what an individual could make in the private sector.”
Everett said it’s incumbent upon qualified women to become active in the community, increase their profiles and seek positions of influence in the legal community, but she said most lawyers in positions of power in Florida are men who often turn to other men when it comes to filling vacancies.
“The people in power are not most likely to be women. They tend to reach out to people who are not most likely to be women,” Everett said. “People tend to vote for the people they know or they think they know, and often that’s people you work with or look like you.”
She said factors working against women and minorities getting into board races include work at smaller firms or government agencies that can’t afford to give attorneys time off to attend bar meetings and events. As more leaders in the legal community state a commitment to diversity, she said they also should show it by making it possible for minority and women attorneys to take on the time commitments of bar leadership.
“They’re saying the door is open, but how open is it? Can I take the time to be away from my practice?” she asked.
There have been unsuccessful efforts to guarantee voting seats for women and minorities by seating leaders of the Florida Association of Women Lawyers, CABA and the Virgil Hawkins Florida Chapter of the National Bar Association, but they remain nonvoting board members.
Osman said the politics behind bar elections can work in favor of women and minorities as much as it can work against them.
“You get on the board by having a good reputation and having done a lot of things and by putting yourself in a position where other people might think they can’t defeat you,” Osman said.
A source speaking on condition of anonymity said Coral Gables attorney Hector Lombana, a Cuban-American attorney, decided not to run to succeed Chaykin after Foster-Morales decided to run.
Juliet Roulhac, a senior attorney with Florida Power & Light, is the lone remaining woman from Miami-Dade with a vote on the state Bar board. She said she ran twice before winning a seat and ran unopposed for re-election.
Everett agrees it may take running again and again to succeed.
Roulhac said a barrier to attracting more women is a perception that women aren’t welcome.
“I’ve unfortunately heard the comment that it’s a boys’ club, and they’d rather not deal with that,” she said. “Having been on the board, I don’t believe that to be true.”
She said it’s up to women and minorities to work behind the scenes within the Bar’s power structure to make it work for them.
“Women and minorities have to also take the responsibility of getting out there and networking and building their professional name and prominence,” Roulhac said. “It’s something we need to take ownership of and do for ourselves.”
A major goal of Jay White’s tenure as Bar president is to improve diversity in part by encouraging minorities and women to run for board seats.
“I think you let people know the openings are there and, when they’re there, encourage people to do it,” said White, a partner in the West Palm Beach office of Richman Greer. “Let them know we encourage diversity, and we want it, and it’s important.”
CABA president Marlene Quintana, a partner at GrayRobinson’s Miami office, said diversity is important, but it’s also important to ensure the right candidates are chosen. She had advance word of Crist’s choice of Canady and praised the selection.
“There’s been an historic underrepresentation of minorities in positions of leadership in the legal field over time,” she said. “The gap has narrowed. It doesn’t mean we’re there yet. But every single pick doesn’t necessarily mean it has to be a diverse pick. I think blindly supporting minorities simply because they’re the minority defeats the purpose.”
Alana Roberts can be reached at (305) 347-6648.
Dori Foster-Morales photo by A.M. Holt
Correction
The story incorrectly stated Miami solo practitioner Cynthia Everett is a voting member of The Florida Bar’s board of governors. She is a former member of the board.
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Reader's comments
Not stepping up? said:I applied. I "stepped up." Perhaps we are just not "being selected." Sept. 19 at 7:39 a.m. | |
