Write like a Lady!: The Role of Gender Norms in Attorney Brief Success

• In Event: Lawyers and External Actors in the Judicial Process

Abstract

Female attorneys are less successful than their male counterparts at the Supreme Court under certain circumstances tied to compliance with gender norms. Gender norms, subtle and implicit expectations about how men and women should act in a host of contexts, pose few problems for male attorneys as the norms of a good man and a good attorney are coextensive. But, they are problematic for female attorneys as gender and professional norms are often at odds. This forces female attorneys into a careful balancing act which raises normative concerns about how effectively women can participate in shaping Supreme Court case law.

This manuscript, part of a larger book project, examines how written brief compliance with gender norms shapes success. While most studies of attorney success focus on oral arguments, we opt to focus on briefs as the Court often draws verbatim on briefs for opinion content. Thus, not only is this a direct measure of success in the case at hand, but it is also a form of long term success which allows attorneys to shape case law for potentially decades to come. We examine briefs via both the counsel of record and the overall legal team to gain the most complete account of how attorney gender shapes success. Using quantitative textual analysis, we analyze all party briefs filed between the 1993 and 2018 terms. The two and a half decade span of our data allows us to examine how context, both in terms of the Bar and the Bench, shapes justices’ reliance on gender norms. We expect to find attorneys are more successful when their arguments comply with gender norms.

Authors

• Shane A. Gleason, Texas A&M University- Corpus Christi

• John J. Szmer, University of North Carolina, Charlotte