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Public: Recent News

The Committee on Women in the Profession is making final preparations for Thursday, March 18, and its “Celebration Honoring the First One Hundred Women Attorneys in North Carolina.”

Featured speaker for the event will be Marian Wright Edelman, founder and president of the Children’s Defense Fund and a lifelong advocate for disadvantaged Americans. The program will take place at the Embassy Suites Hotel, located 1.5 miles from the N.C. Bar Center on Harrison Oaks Boulevard near the Harrison Avenue/I-40 exit.

The Committee on Women in the Profession will also unveil its new history book, “The Changing Face of Justice: A Look at the First 100 Women Attorneys in North Carolina,” during the evening event.

The committee has scheduled a full day of activities beginning with a CLE symposium titled “Women Lawyers in the 21st Century: Challenges and Opportunities.”

The history book has been in the works for more than six years with research supported by grants in the amount of $12,000 from the NCBA Foundation Endowment. Raleigh attorney Rose Kenyon, chairs the Committee on Women in the Profession.

Subcommittee chairs and co-chairs directing various components of the March 18 events are Gail Agrawal and Mary Nash Rusher (symposium), Catharine Arrowood and Melinda Burrows (dinner), John Sarratt (fund raising) and Christine Walczyk who chaired the Women’s History Subcommittee.

For nearly four decades, Marian Wright Edelman has devoted her legal career to the cause of civil rights, especially the rights of poor people and children. A graduate of Spelman College and Yale Law School, Edelman was the first African American woman admitted to the bar in Mississippi.

She later directed the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund office in Jackson, Miss., before moving to Washington, D.C., in 1968 to serve as counsel for the Poor People’s Campaign and to establish the Washington Research Project of the Southern Center for Public Policy.

Edelman left the public interest law firm in 1971 to direct Harvard University’s Center for Law and Education. She returned to Washington in 1973 and, under the auspices of the Washington Research Project, established the Children’s Defense Fund.

The symposium will begin with jury consultant Charlotte “Charli” Morris who will examine the differences in the ways that men and women communicate - and how they are perceived by others. The presentation is titled “Setting the Stage: The Effects of Gender on Communication.”

“Law Practice in the 21st Century: Challenges, Risks and Opportunities” will follow, featuring Dr. Ellen Ostrow of LawyersLife Coach, LLC and Metropolitan Behavior Health Care in Washington, D.C.

Following lunch, the afternoon program begins with “The Changing Face of Leadership in the Legal Profession.” Panelists for this program are Judge Allyson K. Duncan of the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, president of the NCBA; Mary Musacchia, a member of the NCBA Board of Governors who directs the Global Governmental Affairs Division of SAS and serves as counsel to the president/CEO; and Ann Reed, senior deputy N.C. attorney general who was the first woman to serve as president of the State Bar.

The concluding program, “Recruiting and Retaining Women - It’s Good For You and the Profession,” features Beth Rader of Cincinnati (principal, Deloitte & Touche), Mary Nash Rusher of Raleigh (partner, Hunton & Williams) and William P. Farthing Jr. of Charlotte (partner, Parker, Poe, Adams & Bernstein).