Two in the Profession

The number of women lawyers is growing, but the newcomers still encounter obstacles and prejudices. To succeed, a woman needs a special measure of brains, energy and determination. Here are two examples:

"I Was Hooked"

A bus driver, visiting Washington to testify in a negligence case, gestured toward a plump, smiling woman in the conference room. "Isn't that Mrs. Murphy?" he asked warily. "She put me on the stand in Boston. She smiled sweetly at me and then . . . pow!"

The remark illustrates the style of Mrs. Betty Southard Murphy, 41, mother of two, candidate for general counsel of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and a first-rate labor lawyer. She is quiet in manner and conservative in appearance (little makeup or jewelry), but her energy and competence have brought her a nationwide reputation and a $40,000 income in a highly competitive field.

She remembers that her mother was determined to have her enter a profession. "Mother said, 'When you educate a man, you educate an individual. When you educate a woman, you educate a family.'" After graduating from Ohio State, she shipped off aboard a Norwegian freighter as a dishwasher, worked and studied in Paris, and finally financed her way home via Africa, the Middle East and Asia by writing 200 newspaper articles along the way. Back in the States, she tried to become a reporter but could find nothing better than taking telephone dictation for United Press International in Washington. She began attending American University Law School at night. "Right away, I was hooked on the law," she says. "I still am."

Hard Work. After 18 months in the enforcement division of the National Labor Relations Board, she went into private practice, began specializing in labor, equal employment, libel and immigration law, and eventually she joined the firm of Wilson, Woods & Villalon. She became a full partner in 1970, and now represents five international unions and more than a dozen corporations. Says a partner, Warren Woods: "Her success is due mainly to damned hard work."

In 1965, Betty Southard married Dr. Cornelius F. Murphy, a specialist in nuclear medicine and a professor of radiology at George Washington, but they remain independent spirits. At one point, Dr. Murphy asked her advice on a legal question, then rejected the advice she gave. "He's the only male client I've ever had trouble with," Mrs. Murphy remarks. They have a daughter, aged four, and a son, three, and their highly organized schedule permits little social life. They leave I heir home in Annandale, Va., before the children are awake, entrusting them to a live-in housekeeper until they return, again together, for supper.

Giving birth twice caused Mrs. Murphy to miss a total of only three working weeks. The chief attorney for

U.S. Senator Thomas Dodd complained in open court: "Your Honor, it is difficult at best to argue against a woman attorney. But to argue against a woman attorney who is going to have a baby in ten days is downright unfair." Mrs. Murphy was capable as well as pregnant, and Dodd subsequently lost his libel suit against Columnists Drew Pearson and Jack Anderson.

No woman has ever been general counsel of a federal agency, but the name of Mrs. Murphy, a Republican, was among the final six considered for the post of NLRB general counsel last spring. Her failure to get the position, she says, was her first real taste of discrimination. "A friend told me, 'You'd better get some help from the women's groups. Your opponents are using your sex against you,' " she recalls. Since then, Mrs. Murphy has joined a number of women's business and professional organizations. She has been trying for another general-counsel position, this time with the EEOC, but she has doubts about her prospects. "One top Government official told me he could visualize a woman on the Supreme Court, but he couldn't see a woman general counsel. That's regarded as the hot seat."

"Sure I Use My Sex"

When Paulette LeBost graduated from Wayne State Law School in 1967, she applied for a job with a small firm named Golden & Elconin. Richard Elconin, who interviewed her in the absence of his vacationing partner, told her that she would be hired at $75 per week for two years and $10,000 annually thereafter. Miss LeBost excitedly told her friends and family about the job. Then she received a letter from Elconin:

"Mr. Golden seems to have a strong belief that any woman would scare away new clients and cause existing clients to lose confidence . . . We have a reputation of 'fighting for our clients,' and women are not generally categorized as being pugilistically inclined."

Although she now admits that "that letter has left some deep scars," Miss LeBost never looked back. She joined the Wayne County Neighborhood Legal Services agency, and for four years specialized in suits against slum landlords. Then in January, she and two professional colleagues formed Detroit's first all-woman law firm. The venture is successful in all respects: a substantial number of clients, including four labor unions; an offer to teach a university course on women in law; numerous requests for speeches. Lawyer LeBost thinks she may make $15,000 this year, and that's only a start.

The attractive daughter of a Detroit real estate developer, Paulette LeBost entered law school (as one of 20 women in a class of 300) after only three years at Marygrove College and Wayne State. "It was such a horrible experience," she says. "The whole attitude was condescending. We needed to gather in the ladies' room to cheer each other up and escape from the 'What's a nice girl like you doing in law school?' At the time, if you brought up sex discrimination, people laughed. Now the women rip those notes to 'Gentlemen' right off the bulletin boards."

During her first days in court, a judge assumed she was a legal secretary; when she stepped up to the bench, he asked where her boss was. Another judge, accustomed to male attorneys, mistook her for a mental patient and started to have her committed before she identified herself. "At least that incident ended with both sides laughing," she says. "Most do not."

So Cute. Still another judge became angry when Miss LeBost took exception to his procedural rulings, and the two shouted at each other in court. "He tried to get me fired from Legal Services," she recalls. "Then later he told my boss that he didn't really have anything against me but would like to have lunch with me some time because I was so cute."

Mixing social and professional life is a problem for Paulette LeBost, a reddish-blonde who wears both hair and skirts short. "Damn right I hold other attorneys at arm's length," she says. "If I accepted every courtroom invitation to lunch, I'd be fat as a cow. And it's hard to hit that margin of professional friendliness without crossing over into sexual overtones."

On the other hand, she acknowledges that she is not above smiling prettily when she finds a long waiting line in the court clerk's office. "The clerk starts to flirt, and before you know it you're not last in line any more," she says. "Sure I use my sex. It's been a detriment so many times, I might as well use it when it's an advantage."

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