A Simple Way to Help Address Sexual Harassment in the Legal Profession: Take the Women Lawyers On Guard Survey and Pass It On.

The following is a guest post from Cory M. Amron, president of Women Lawyers On Guard Inc.

Women Lawyers On Guard Inc., (WLG) is a non-profit national network of women and men who advocate and work for equality and justice by matching its volunteers with the legal needs of other non-profits, signing onto amicus briefs, sending advocacy pieces to Congress, and other initiatives. It also is working to address sexual harassment in the legal profession. Progress has been made in the profession, but clearly more needs to be done.

WLG is conducting a national Survey on Sexual Misconduct in the Legal Profession to better understand the scope of this problem in the legal profession. WLG seeks to gather the experiences and perspectives of women and men throughout the legal profession (e.g., law firm, in-house, government, non-profit, law schools, associations, judiciary, etc.). Once we have analyzed the results, we hope to add valuable insights to employers and organizations as they continue to work diligently on eradicating sexual harassment.

The survey is hosted on a secure site to keep responses completely anonymous and confidential and does not ask for, nor capture, employer names, or other identifying specifics.

The Officers and Board members of WLG have had a great deal of experience in various leadership positions with bar associations including women’s bar associations, state and local bars, the ABA, and the ABA Commission on Women (which our President, Cory Amron, chaired in the 1990’s). Our consultant on this survey is Nextions, headed by Arin Reeves, who has done many gender, bias, and inclusion, research projects.

We have embarked on this survey project after speaking with 50+ experts and lawyers working in this field who believe that it is essential to have a rigorous analysis of sexual misconduct and harassment in the legal profession in order to convince some people who believe it isn’t happening, but just as important, to analyze the experiences of women and men who have been harassed to determine such things as: what are the behaviors that they are experiencing now (and has this changed over time); what are the consequences to their careers and lives; what are the consequences to the harassers; what are some effective strategies that employers use to address this problem, are there differences between employment settings, intersectionality issues, etc.

We are striving for a broad spectrum of respondents: by geography, practice settings and demographics.

Please TAKE THE SURVEY (www.womenlawyersonguard.org/survey/) and pass it on to your network. THANK YOU

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CORY M AMRON is President of Women Lawyers On Guard Inc.

Recently retired as an intellectual property partner from Vorys, Sater, Seymour and Pease LLP, Cory Amron was head of the IP practice group at Vorys, is a graduate of Harvard Law School and lives in Arlington, VA. She has actively worked on women’s and diversity issues as well as education of the public on the law and legal issues throughout her nearly 40 year legal career.

She was the second Chair of the ABA Commission on Women in the Profession, a member of the ABA Commission on Domestic Violence, the MacCrate Task Force on Law Schools and the Profession, ABA President’s Advisory Council on Diversity, the Standing Committee on Public Education and a recent Chair of the ABA Gavel Awards Committee. She is a Past Chair of the American Bar Foundation Fellows, D.C. Chapter and has held numerous positions in the Women’s Bar Association of the District of Columbia. She was named a Star of the Bar by the WBA in 2003 and received the WBA’s Women Lawyer of the Year Award in 2004.