Tell It Like It Is or Tell It Like It Should Be?

Professor Emily Bazelon tells it like it is to her female students interested in courtroom practice. 

I wonder about how much we doom ourselves to repeat old practices and follow old ways by keeping deeply sexist courtroom practices alive in the re-telling in litigation training or whether the real path of doom is in sending young attorneys into practice without any insight into what may be awaiting them.

And it is not just in litigation land where this plays out, you know.  I recently watched one of the vignettes from the film Certain Women and alternately laughed, groaned, and winced to see Laura Dern play an attorney whose client simply won't believe her best legal opinion on a matter until it is verified by a visit to an older white male colleague, who simply reiterates Laura Dern's position. I love the moment where she watches her client assimilate and accept the bad advice from her colleague's mouth. "That's it?" she says.

"That's it" indeed.