Happy New Year to all the Women Lawyers in my life!
Although I appreciate all of the male lawyers and non-lawyers in my life as well, the women lawyers are my focus, as you know. However, that will change a bit this year as the Best Friends at the Bar project will broaden to include the young male lawyers and the personal and professional challenges that they share with the women. You may be familiar with my predisposition to have all of us—men and women alike— under the tent to address and solve the problems facing women in the legal profession today. As a result, I welcome men to the conversations of the future, just as I have included them in past discussions in my books and in my speaking and other writings.
This will be an important year for Best Friends at the Bar. It will be an inaugural year for Best Friends at the Bar at the Bar, a networking program that I will kick off in Washington, DC early this year. It also will be the year that I get involved with pre-law programs at colleges and universities. The messages of Best Friends at the Bar are very valuable for young women—and young men—who are considering careers in the law, and I am delighted that the undergraduate institutions are showing interest in my work. I will start the season with a presentation at Holy Cross College in February, and I also have undertaken a relationship with a leading pre-law program at a major university to bring pertinent and relevant information to the students there. More on that later. As always, stay tuned!
This is also the year that I will put words to paper for my third book, which will explore the challenges of a law career beyond considerations of gender. I am excited about this new book and the research that it will involve and the conversations it will spark. As I travel around the country speaking at law schools, I always am reminded by the young men in my audiences that they should not be forgotten in these conversations. I agree with them, and we will learn from them. Together we all will be stronger and make greater contributions to our profession.
Today I would also like to give a special shout out to one of my favorite women lawyers. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is still hospitalized with a serious cranial blood clot as I write, and she is in my thoughts and prayers. This is not so much because she is of a particular political party—-because I try not to get into that here—but because she is a gifted lawyer and has created such a positive image as a woman leader on the global stage. She has demonstrated to young women that a legal education can take you in many and interesting directions in your life, and she has commanded respect from leaders and populations throughout the world. I know that she has so much more to do to make our world a better place, and I wish her God’s speed.
Best wishes to all of you in this next year. 2013 is shaping up to be a watershed year for our country economically, socially, and in terms of international influence, and I hope that we will take complete advantage of all of the resources at our disposal to make it a landmark year as well.
Happy 2013!
