News & Event Archives

The conference keynote speaker is Justice Joan Dempsey Klein, Presiding Justice of the California Court of Appeal, Second Appellate District, Division Three.

Justice Klein was a co-founder and first president of CWL and a co-founder and first president of the National Association of Women Judges. She is a champion of women's rights and a pioneer in the strug­gle to achieve equal opportunity for women in the law. She has spent considerable time giving support and positive reinforcement to women in the legal profession. Justice Klein achieved her many accomplishments while raising five children.

The CWL Annual Conference is titled “Building a Fulfilling Career: Lessons for Success” and is taking place on April 29, 2011 at the Kyoto Grand Hotel, 120 S. Los Angeles Street, Los Angeles, 90012.
Learn more about the conference or Become a sponsor.
Click here to register now.
Download a sign up form.

Don't miss out on the incredible opportunity to learn from these amazing women!

To raise awareness of the continuing wage disparity, on Equal Pay Day, Tuesday, April 12, 2011, CWL encourages your CWL affiliate or other women’s group, organization, or club to host an Unhappy Hour to emphasize your dissatisfaction with the continuing wage disparity between men and women.

Equal Pay Day, April 12th  is the date to which women have to work in 2011 until they earn the same salaries as men did in 2010. It’s been 46 years since the passage of the Equal Pay Act. Despite the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration Act signed into law by President Obama in 2009, women still are not receiving equal pay for equal work. Women earn on average only 77% of what men make, and women of color earn even less.

For the Unhappy Hour event:
• Pick a restaurant and time (e.g. 5:30-8:00)

• Ask women  to wear  red to symbolize that women’s wages are still “in the red” in comparison to male counterparts.

• For tickets, charge women 77% of what men are charged…for example… men pay $25.00 for a ticket and women pay $19.25.

• Invite local politicians,  and other advocates of women’s issues.

• Publicize your event, and the continuing pay inequity, in your local bar association newsletters and invite a reporter from your local newspaper.

• For other advocacy  ideas, get an  Equal Pay Day Kit at http://www.pay-equity.org/day-kit.html

• Please keep CWL informed of your plans, and let us help answer any question, by contacting Community Service Committee Chair Lynn Ryder at lryder@ryder-law.org or (805)644-4707.

President-Elect Patricia Sturdevant of Sacramento was sworn in as CWL President on January 29, 2011 at a meeting of the CWL Board of Governors in Orange County.  

Ms. Sturdevant has served as president of two CWL affiliates:  Women Lawyers of Sacramento and the San Francisco Women Lawyers Alliance. 

She joined the CWL Board in 2006 and served as Chair of the Judicial Committee and on a number of public service projects on issues affecting women and children in the community.  She was recently appointed by Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones as Deputy Commissioner for Policy and Planning in the California Department of Insurance. She has also achieved recognition as winner of the Ronald M. George Public Lawyer of the Year Award in 2009 and a California Lawyer Attorney of the Year (CLAY) Award for extraordinary achievement in health care in 2008.

CWL Supports Food From the Bar.  Food From the Bar is a community program established in San Francisco as the legal community’s response to child hunger. It’s a four-week (April 18-May 13, 2011) effort among law firms and legal offices to contribute money, donate food and/or volunteer.

Join the effort to expand Food From the Bar statewide.  To get your local bar involved, follow the template below.

From Kathleen McDowell
(Template for Food from the Bar)

1.  Find your local food bank by entering your zip code on http://feedingamerica.org/.   The results will give you not only the identity of your regional food bank, but also the e-mail and telephone contact info of the executive director or marketing person.   The website also gives some data about "food insecurity" and poverty rates in your area that may be useful in pitching the program (e.g., food insecurity rate for children is 18.6%).  I also found a  short generic video:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLUlxuAcQBc
 
 
2.  Call up the food bank (contact person name and number is on website) and tell them that the local legal community would like to have a Food from the Bar campaign to run from April 18 to May 13, which will consist of three elements:  collection of food, monetary donations, and volunteer hours (or feel free to adapt elements to whatever best fits your community).  Gather up a couple of other attorney leaders in the community and set up a meeting with the foodbank people, or send the foodbank people the materials from SF or LA. Send out emails asking them to sign up their firms/offices.  (I have sample emails you can copy.)  The local food bank will provide the infrastructure (e.g., delivery of food collection bins, marketing materials, administrative support, communications during campaign).  (If the local food bank has any questions, etc., it can contact its counterparts in SF or LA for more details, e.g. Michael Flood or Marie Carpenter in LA, mflood@lafoodbank.org or mcarpenter@lafoodbank.org.)

3.  Publicize and get buy-in and support from your local legal community.  Get an attorney liaison and a staff liaison in each of the participating firms and other legal organizations (e.g., government offices, judges, prosecutors, legal departments of companies, other bar leaders) to sign up to lead the FFTB effort within his/her office.   Set goals, issue challenges, have a kick-off event, and/or give awards at the end of the campaign.  (The awards aspect is what really gets lawyers' competitive juices flowing.) 

Join CWL in recognizing Equal Pay Day.  This date symbolizes how far into 2011 women must work to earn what men earned in 2010.  The next Equal Pay Day is Tuesday, April 12, 2011.

Equal Pay Day was originated by the National Committee on Pay Equity (NCPE) in 1996 as a public awareness event to illustrate the gap between men's and women's wages.

Since Census statistics showing the latest wage figures will not be available until late August or September, NCPE leadership decided years ago to select a Tuesday in April as Equal Pay Day. (Tuesday was selected to represent how far into the work week women must work to earn what men earned the previous week.) 

Because women earn less, on average, than men, they must work longer for the same amount of pay. The wage gap is even greater for most women of color.  Click here to learn more about the National Commitee on Pay Equity.

CWL is a supporting organization of the California Women's State Appointment Project.  The mission of this nonpartisan project is to encourage and recruit women statewide to apply for an appointment on boards, commissions, or in agencies within the new gubernatorial administration that will be elected this November

The CWL Annual Dinner was a historic event! Chief Justice George and Justice Cantil Sakauye spent the evening with us.

In what has become tradition, Chief Justice Ronald George administered the Oath of Office to the incoming Board of Governors of CWL at our Annual Dinner.

For only the second time in California history, a woman jurist has been nominated for the position of Chief Justice of the California Supreme Court. Justice Tani Cantil Sakauye, Chief Justice Nominee, also attended our Annual Dinner.

We hope you were able to join us for our 36th dinner celebration, which was an enriching and inspiring evening.

On September 23, 2010 at CWL's 36th Annual Dinner, we honored Victoria Jacobs, Managing Director of the Sacramento Bar Association's Voluntary Legal Services Program, as the 2010 recipient of the Fay Stender Award.

On Sunday, August 8, 2010, CWL Life-Member Elizabeth Cabraser accepted the ABA's 's highest honor for a woman attorney-The Margaret Brent Award.  

Her speech (which can be viewed here) was gracious, insightful, penetrating, intelligent, spirited, motivational, balanced, thoughtful, analytical and powerful with all the appropriate well-timed punches.  CWL was grateful to have our organization acknowledged in her speech. 

Mireille Guiliano, former President & CEO of Clicquot Inc. and LVMH executive has been hailed as "a true marketing innovator" and "a barrier breaking pioneer."

In 1984, Guiliano was tapped to re-launch the 225-year-old flagship brand Veuve Clicquot in the U.S. In two decades under her leadership, it grew from less than one percent to about 25% of the U.S. champagne market.  Ms. Guiliano, through her lively stories drawn from her experience in the highest ranks of the business world, gave us practical advice on topics including: passions and talents, coping with stress and turning yourself into a winning brand.