Women as jury distraction?

Wow....two posts in one night. I'm really wordy today.

This post is about something we talked about a while back, how male attorneys sometimes use women attorneys to their advantage in divorce cases. Now I've heard about that, but I've never realized how prevalant it really is. After we discussed it in class, I just happened to be watching Boston Legal a couple of nights later, and there it was on tv! Alan & Denny were arguing about which woman to put in the hot seat on a case they were working on where the father was trying to get his son into bull fighting. The mother was vigorously fighting against it, obviously questioning the safety of the of the sport. Alan & Denny, being the wonderful attorneys they are, thought that if they had a woman on the side of the father, then the jury would think that if she thought it was ok to defend the father and the safety of the sport, then the sport must really be ok and safe. Are you kidding me???

I was also reading a book at this point about two attorneys who work for the same firm who end up falling in love. The usual woman meets tall, dark, and handsome attorney, but can't date him because he's sort of her boss. They fall in love and live happily ever after. In this book, the male attorney is about to take on the divorce of a major client. The client is the typical old, slimy adulterer who decides to diddle the help of his high-end beach resort. The male attorney decides to ask the female attorney to go along with him to the beach resort to interview the client and decide the course of the case. While there, she learns that the only reason they wanted her on the trial was so that the jury would see that she's defending the husband, so he really can't be an adulterer can he? I mean, as a woman, we all stick together right and if he's cheating on his wife, we certainly couldn't defend him. Right?

I really hope that this doesn't really happen that often. It makes me feel cheap and that the only reason I was put on the case is because I'm a woman, and the jury looks to women for answers to their problems. It's almost as if we're puppets or pawns doing as we're told to distract the jury from the real issues at hand. And what's sad is that in both of these instances, the woman sits second chair to the lead male attorney. Are we really still viewed as inferior to our male counterparts? I really hope not. I would like to think that in the legal profession we are viewed as equals. We're just as competent as our male colleagues. We're just as capable of winning a major case, right? I hope that's how they see us as females!