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the country...that was the big- gest case I ever handled.”
Betsy McGeever had a similar experience. “I graduated from law school and was admitted to the Delaware bar in 1981. There were 71 attorneys admitted in 1981, 16 of whom were women.” McGeever started her career in the corporate litigation depart- ment at Prickett Jones. “There were very, very few women prac- ticing corporate litigation at that time. In my firm, there were none,” she said.
With very few women part-
ners working at law firms, es-
pecially in corporate litigation, McGeever took steps to “fit in.”
She credits growing up with two
older brothers for easing her transition, but also relied upon
women in the Bar Association
and Women and the Law to dis-
cuss issues she and others were uncomfortable raising within
their law firms. Eventually, Mc-
Geever left Wilmington in the late 1980s to work for the Securities and Exchange Commission. “The government has al- ways been much more progressive and aggressive when hiring and recruiting women,” she said.
Doneene Keemer Damon also started her legal career in a firm. “I came to the firm in the early ‘90s. At that point, we had two women partners in the firm, Ann Foster and Cindy Kaiser... The other 29 partners were male.” Damon started in an all-male practice group. “My first mentor was an older male partner in the firm. I didn’t have a female role model to gauge myself against in my practice group.” Damon views this as a positive experi- ence, “because I had senior male partners in the firm who were training and men- toring me, and female versus male was not even a thought in their mind. I didn’t feel like I was treated differently or that I wasn’t getting opportunities.”
On Overcoming Obstacles
Although Damon valued her early experiences, it did not come without hurdles. Damon’s son was born during
she was happy to see a lot more women prosecutors in the office. But even with more strong wom- en in the office, “I would regu- larly see myself in a meeting with mostly men and you come up with an idea and everyone’s talk- ing over you. And the next thing you know, some man has an idea and he’s brilliant.” Jennings knows other women have shared this experience, and thinks it is important to acknowledge it hap- pens and make sure women are treated equally, which she says does not happen enough. Part of that, she says, comes from being “strong enough to stand up for ourselves, when it does happen.”
McGeever recalled a deposi- tion she took in Houston that presented a huge obstacle for her professionally. “I was taking a deposition and the attorney on the other side was a very unpleas- ant person, who hated the client I was representing.” Among the
many unpleasant comments the attorney made off the record, McGeever also re- calls him asking her which hotel she was staying at in Houston. “I got back to the hotel and locked myself in the room. I felt personally threatened. If I had been a man, he would not have done that.” Mc- Geever feels experiences like the one in Houston and navigating the legal profes- sion as a woman early on made her and others work harder to prove herself.
Damon recounted the biggest obstacle she faced in her career, which occurred in a New York conference room. “I was in New York for a closing. I was in a suit and a coat, and had my overnight and litiga- tion bags. When I walked into the room, an older gentleman said to me ‘you can drop those here.’ I said, ‘I’m here for the closing’ and he said, ‘you can drop those [papers] here.’ At that point I re- alized he thought I was the messenger.” When Damon realized the mistake, she introduced herself and said she was from Richards. He responded by telling her she could have a seat away from the table un- til the lawyers arrived. Not one to back
Kathy Jennings
her third year in the firm. She thought to herself, “what have I done to my career?” When Damon approached a male partner to say, “I’m expecting,” his response was “expecting what?” Without a female role model in her practice group to approach for advice, Damon realized this conversa- tion would be difficult. “But I also re- alized at that moment, that we’re going to work through this process and learn together.”
Not everyone was as progressive. Judge Del Pesco referenced an Ameri- can Bar Association rule passed in 2017 that discussed calling women “hun” and “sweetheart” in the context of litigation. “The American Bar Association felt com- pelled to pass a rule designed to curtail the use of such demeaning terms,” she noted. Although Judge Del Pesco never experienced this type of behavior in a courtroom, she asked Jennings, McGeev- er and Damon about this topic and other obstacles women used to face, or still face, in the practice of law.
When Jennings returned to the Attor- ney General’s Office after a 16-year hiatus,
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