On my recent ballot for Common Pleas Court judges in Pennsylvania, eight out of the fourteen candidates were women. If the trend in law education continues, women could be a majority of lawyers in the coming years. About 47 percent of law school students are currently female, but women have been gaining steadily in undergraduate enrollment and graduation over men.

Of course, overall women lawyers do not accrue the same power and success as men. That’s for a funny reason. They just happen to be women, not neutered automatons. They just happen to bear and raise children and to enjoy caring for their husbands.

Still, feminist legal organizations remain at a fever pitch about the under-achievement of women lawyers. At an “unprecedented and historic summit” earlier this month in Texas, 150 top women legal leaders adopted the “Austin Manifesto,” calling for the elimination of “the barriers that have thwarted the advancement of women in the legal profession for the past several decades.”
 
They are demanding that 30 percent of equity law partners, tenured law professors and general counsel be women by 2015 and 10 percent of equity partners be minority women by 2020. They also intend to strong-arm the profession to “restructure the compensations systems to reward the full range of contributions by attorneys.” That’s code for over-compensating those who work less.

With more women in top positions, we are sure to get more of the sort of legal crusading typified by Sonia Sotomayor. Women like to bring the crusading spirit to almost everything they do. It’s downright scary in a judge.

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