Michael Ehrenstein interviews Marguerite Willis
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ReqKQ_jILVY
37mins
Michael Ehrenstein 00:00
My name is Michael Ehrenstein. I’m the president of the Litigation Council of America for 2022, and I am joined today by my good friend Marguerite Willis. Our topic today is diversity within the profession, and in particular with respect to gender diversity, and in particular with respect to the value proposition associated with gender diversity.
Michael Ehrenstein 00:25
And I guess by way of introduction, everybody who’s in the LCA already knows Marguerite.
Michael Ehrenstein 00:33
But for those who might not, let me tell you in 30 seconds why we should listen to the important things that Marguerite has to say on this important topic.
Michael Ehrenstein 00:46
Number one Marguerite is the real deal. Marguerite is one of those rare people who actually really did, in fact, break some glass ceilings. Marguerite was the first female hired by a Federal Circuit Court.
Michael Ehrenstein 01:05
Marguerite was the first female associate ever hired by a Charlotte law firm, and Marguerite was the first woman partner at a major antitrust firm. In addition to these firsts, Marguerite walks the walk when it comes to actually being able to help other women in the profession and out of the profession recognize their value.
Michael Ehrenstein 01:34
Marguerite is on the leadership council for the women’s rights, rights and empowerment network. She is the past president and board member of the South Carolina Women Lawyers Association, past president of the Women’s Bar Association of the District of Columbia, and is part of Nexon Pruitt Women’s Leadership Institute.
Michael Ehrenstein 02:00
With the goal of developing and mentoring the firm’s next generation of influential women. And just so you know, that is by no means an exhaustive list of all of her fabulous accomplishments, which are outshined only by her accomplishments as a real, real tough trial lawyer.
Michael Ehrenstein 02:20
So I’ve had the good fortune of getting to know Marguerite. I’ve had the good fortune of listening to her and learning from her. Marguerite has it’s not an understatement or an overstatement to say that Marguerite has actually changed the way that I practice law, for which I’m grateful.
Michael Ehrenstein 02:39
And she’s changed the way that I look at our profession, in particular with respect to gender diversity issues. So welcome, Marguerite.
Marguerite Willis 02:47
Thank you, Michael. It’s wonderful to be here with you and all of our friends and colleagues today, and I’m looking forward to our conversation.
Marguerite Willis 02:57
And thanks for that really lovely introduction. Of course, it’s all true, but thanks in any event for summarizing it.
Michael Ehrenstein 03:04
Truth makes it easy.
Marguerite Willis 03:05
Thank you.
Michael Ehrenstein 03:08
So let’s just start off by gently introducing a tough topic, which is what is the current status of gender diversity within our bar today?
Marguerite Willis 03:22
Well, I bring to this topic a career that spans about 40 years now. And I think we can fairly say that if you look back 40 years, we’ve come a long way. When I started practicing law back in the 7 days they were about 3% of women practicing law.
Marguerite Willis 03:41
And today we’re well over. We’re close to 40% in the practice. So that’s real progress. It feels like real progress to me, to be honest with you. I have more female colleagues today, obviously, than I did originally when I went to law school.
Marguerite Willis 03:58
There were literally three women in my law school class out of almost 300. So it was a very small group. I’m happy to have the company, so to speak, and happy to think that some of the things that I’ve done and my peers have done have helped open some doors along the way.
Marguerite Willis 04:18
But we have work to do, and we have a ways to go.
Michael Ehrenstein 04:23
Let’s talk about that a little bit. As a naive man, I feel like we’ve gotten to the point in our profession where nobody is overtly sexist. I don’t think there are very many people I know that I could ask and say, well, do you really think women are just inherently less capable than men as being lawyers?
Michael Ehrenstein 04:52
Do you think that overt sexism is still a real problem?
Marguerite Willis 04:57
Yes, I do. And I’ll tell you, as you know, and some folks who watch this will remember about seven years ago, I, along with three of our other fine LCA members, conducted a survey of all the women members of the LCA.
Marguerite Willis 05:18
It occurred to me one day that we had the best collection of experienced female litigators in America under one roof, so to speak. And the LCA, of course, has been committed from its beginning to diversity, including sexual diversity.
Marguerite Willis 05:34
And so I thought, let’s ask these card questions of folks who have been there for a while because our membership, not surprisingly, skews a little older because we are experienced litigators. And so this is seven years ago.
Marguerite Willis 05:49
And I went back and pulled our presentation out so I could tell you this. And we asked the question. Do you think sexism is a current problem for female litigators? And of the people who responded, 86% of them thought it was.
Marguerite Willis 06:06
Now, this is seven years ago. I suspect if we and we did research this group three years or so ago, and that sexism was still viewed as an over 70% problem by over 70% of the respondents. Meaning it depends on how you characterize it.
Marguerite Willis 06:25
The people come up to you and grab your tits? No, not anymore. Although those things happened in the past. Trust me when I say that. But the notion of sexism, I think, today is broader than it was earlier.
Marguerite Willis 06:40
It wasn’t just touching back in the day. It could be just touching something that are wildly inappropriate and if not criminal today. The notion of women being treated differently because of their sex, and that, I think, still remains today.
Marguerite Willis 06:58
You and I talked about this to prepare for this discussion. And one of the things I said is this we have to consider whether we’ve hit essentially a brick wall or a speed bump with regard to progress in our profession, because we have made, in the last in my career, real strides in getting women into the practice of law and having women be successful in the practice of law.
Marguerite Willis 07:28
But it’s been quite a cost for a lot of these women. They have chosen not to have families. They have chosen not to have as much time with their children. Perhaps they’ve chosen a hard path a lot of times to get to a place where they have been as successful as a man.
Marguerite Willis 07:50
And if you have to work that much harder. To achieve the same success. And you have to look back and say, what was it about the differential, which you can only really equate to sex, that impeded that progress?
Marguerite Willis 08:03
And I think that’s the conversation that we need to have today.
Michael Ehrenstein 08:06
So there’s there’s a few thoughts that percolated for me as I was listening to you, Marguerite and one of them had to do with as women in their careers move forward and in spite of these challenges, work harder to become as successful, the truth is, they haven’t become as successful.
Michael Ehrenstein 08:41
There’s still a pretty substantial pay gap in looking through some materials in order to be prepared, because I know preparation is important to you, that I learned that although 50% of the people entering law school are women, about 40% of the people practicing law are women.
Michael Ehrenstein 09:08
And a very small percentage of those women actually make it into the higher ranks of partnership. And even when they’re there, they aren’t paid the same way as men. And this isn’t me making up statistics.
Michael Ehrenstein 09:30
This is proven out by surveys not only taken within the LCA, but by the American Bar Association and others. So I guess the first question is, with respect to value attribution, how do we explain that and what can we do about it?
Marguerite Willis 09:53
Well, let me let me put some numbers on the table because I think it helps to have some numbers depending on what survey you look at. Let’s use a relatively recent one. Women across America make $0.85 for every dollar a man earns, and this is across every occupation, whether you’re a doctor, a brain surgeon, or a housekeeper at the Holiday Inn.
Marguerite Willis 10:19
It is endemic. If you come to my state, South Carolina, you’re even more disadvantaged because you make $0.77 for every dollar a man makes. I talk a lot about value, and I want to talk about that some more, but this devalues women right off the bat.
Marguerite Willis 10:39
You’re just not worth as much as a man at the same job. And if you make a million dollars a year as a man and a woman makes 85% of that, well, she makes $850,000. And most people are going to say, oh, yeah, that’s a great salary.
Marguerite Willis 10:56
Who cares? But if you ratchet it down to where a man is making $50,000, then you’re talking about a woman making in thirties, and that’s real difference, real money that can make a car payment or a house payment or buy some clothes for your school age children.
Marguerite Willis 11:14
It really matters. And so we can’t allow this pay disparity to continue at any level. Now, how do you deal with it? What do you do? I talk about value, and this is extremely important, and it’s something I’ve had to learn for myself, which is, if you don’t value yourself, no one else will do it.
Marguerite Willis 11:35
And so you have to be vigilant in ways that I never anticipated would be necessary as I was growing up. Because, you know, I grew up in the Deep South. Let’s just be honest. I’ve said before I didn’t intend to work outside the home.
Marguerite Willis 11:48
I had a bad first marriage at 19 and realized, oh, I’m going to have to take care of myself. So I went to law school and became a lawyer and just invented it as I went along. And it took me a while to come to understand that people were looking at me and making judgments about my value.
Marguerite Willis 12:08
What do I mean by that? Well, would I progress as an associate or become a partner? That’s a value judgment. But then they were putting me out to clients at a billing rate. And if I had the same experience as frequent, my billing rate might be 200 hours and Fred’s was 250.
Marguerite Willis 12:28
We’re the same person. Same yana, law school, same experience. Why was that? And that difference in value is one that we all have to think about who is valuing what you do. You have to be an advocate for your own value.
Marguerite Willis 12:44
And we can talk more about that, about how you are valued as a lawyer. But importantly, you have to be able to demonstrate and articulate your value to your clients and to your colleagues. And without that, they will devalue you.
Marguerite Willis 13:00
Because after all, in a sense, there’s only so much money, and you’re in competition for it, particularly in a law firm community. I think actually, let me just add this. I think looking back on my career, I’ve seen a lot of women who start out in law firms and exit early, not out of the practice of law, but they’ll go to a corporation as an in house lawyer, or they’ll go to the government.
Marguerite Willis 13:25
And I used to think they did it because they had work life issues, they had children they had to take care of. The hours weren’t as great. I now think that may be part of it, but I also think is the government tends to value people more equally as lawyers.
Marguerite Willis 13:42
And also corporate America does too, to be honest about it. So I think that the private practice here is one that needs to catch up and do better by women as far as value.
Michael Ehrenstein 13:54
So part of this solution lies ultimately on women’s shoulders being able to articulate and advocate for their own value.
Michael Ehrenstein 14:09
Part of it also rests on the shoulders of men. And at the risk of sounding completely mercenary and selfish, how stupid are we if I have you mentioned Fred Flintstone fabulous lawyer bills at $250 an hour and I have Marguerite Willis fabulous worth way more than $250 an hour.
Michael Ehrenstein 14:37
If I can get $250 for Fred Flintstone, I should at least be able to get $250 for Marguerite and clients will pay it. Exactly. I think that part of there’s this perception, perhaps, that seems to me wrong headed.
Michael Ehrenstein 14:57
That there’s not only so many dollars to go around within the law firm practice and maybe within the community of clients that you have. But if you’re providing excellent service, whether it’s a Marguerite or a Fred Flintstone, it’s definitely better to go with Marguerite.
Michael Ehrenstein 15:20
But the bottom line revenue I’m sorry, the top line revenue that’s going to be generated is going to be much higher if everybody recognizes and agrees with the woman who is advocating and articulating her own value. Yes. At least you would agree.
Marguerite Willis 15:40
Yeah. And I think that’s really the key. And I actually went in about three years ago, four years ago, when I saw a study on this, the disparity, particular disparity between female associates and male associates of the same year and experience.
Marguerite Willis 15:57
And I walked into the managing partner then of our firm here, and I said, Are you stupid? Look at it. Yeah, exactly. I said, look at this. You’re losing money on, I’m going to pick up a net rose. You are losing money because she’s equally a good lawyer, same experience, and you’re telling the client that Rose is not worth as much as Fred Winstone.
Marguerite Willis 16:19
First of all, that’s wrong. And secondly, you’re losing revenue because clients do, for better, for worse, judge people on their hourly rate. Why do they say, oh, my God, we’re going to go get the New York lawyer at $2,000 an hour, as opposed to me, the fabulous antitrust lawyer, sitting in Samsung at less than $1,000 an hour?
Marguerite Willis 16:41
Why do they do that? Because they assume that if you pay more for it, it’s better. I’m not going to use women’s handbags as an example, but it is sort of true. You get what you pay for at a great distance, but in general, it’s not really worth the upcharge.
Marguerite Willis 17:02
You’re buying the name of the firm in that sense, or the name of the brand in that sense. But the value is the important thing, because if a law firm or company puts their lawyers forth as the woman at a lower rate than a man, that’s what people’s assume.
Marguerite Willis 17:21
They aren’t as experienced, they aren’t as good, I don’t want them as much. They’re a bargain, all those things that are devaluing. So it’s important to keep your eye on that. And as a woman. You have to look at that.
Marguerite Willis 17:33
I mean recently, I just say last year my firm said, well, we’re going to raise you this much. And I said, well, why not this much? Because I am so underpriced now compared to my peers nationally. I think that people willingly pay that much.
Marguerite Willis 17:49
And they do. They don’t argue about it. They may not argue about how much time it took you, but not your rate, because that’s what they’re saying. This is my lawyer worth that much? So this is an important discussion and an important point for women to pay attention to.
Marguerite Willis 18:04
Now, of course, you got to get into the books and records. How do you do that? That’s hard. But I think it’s fair to ask management for that information to just so you know, at least for yourself. And then you make your pitch, and if you are successful in that pitch and you show how many hours you worked, what clients you’ve worked with, what they’ve said about you, all those things that you would do to advocate for your value, and then they ought to make an adjustment.
Marguerite Willis 18:31
If not, you ought to leave because you’re not valued there. And so as hard as that is, sometimes the door is an option.
Michael Ehrenstein 18:38
So, a burden on women to advocate and know how to advocate for themselves, a burden on men to be able to recognize the importance of doing that.
Michael Ehrenstein 18:56
Selfishly for the bottom line, but also for lawyers in general. I mean our profession is one that is on the vanguard of, or should be. I mean, you know, optimistically. We’re on the vanguard of freedom and liberty and equality.
Michael Ehrenstein 19:21
Those are it’s important. It is part of the DNA of what we do. So we need to be aware of the. Inequality that we’re perpetuating when we’re telling clients that a woman has a lower value because of a lower rate than a man at the same exact level.
Marguerite Willis 19:46
Yes. And that’s a hugely important point. If we aren’t leaders in this area, who will be? And so we need to lead here. And I think that appropriately, the LCA has done a good job. Here. We are, as I said earlier, a very diverse group, intentionally diverse.
Marguerite Willis 20:06
And that’s what made me want to be part of this group because people who wanted my company, so to speak, were people that I wanted to be with. And it has proven to be a wonderful group, I think, for all of us.
Marguerite Willis 20:19
I don’t know anyone who’s involved in the LCA who doesn’t feel that way. And so this is a good forum to discuss this and it also is a good platform for us to go out to. Our peers may not be LCA members, but our peers and say this is our job, this is our responsibility.
Marguerite Willis 20:37
We need to make this better for everyone and we need to make it better for the people who aren’t like us. So for men, not that I’m not like some men that grew up in South Carolina, but I’m different.
Marguerite Willis 20:52
And same thing for people of color and for every we could go through a list of folks who are other than me or other than you, but that’s our job and it ought to be not only our job, but our blessing for this profession.
Marguerite Willis 21:12
I believe this is a noble calling. I believe that there are moments when we all have the opportunity as a lawyer to do better than we have before and those are the moments that are important to all of us.
Marguerite Willis 21:27
And so I think this is one of them. And I think that women across America are right now ready to step up and are feeling it. The recent pandemic has had an interesting impact on the practice of law, I’m sure.
Marguerite Willis 21:42
I don’t know if you talked about that with your colleagues or not, but so many people have worked from home recently, and that levels the playing field a lot, particularly for young folks who have children.
Marguerite Willis 21:54
Now, hopefully, I know that you were single dad for a while, but for a long time, actually. But we tend to think of women as being historically, at least in the south, more the child care folks. And I know in my firm that has been the case.
Marguerite Willis 22:11
It’s changing, and I think that’s a good thing. But the pandemic has made that much more, shall we say, what’s the word I want? Not a parent. That’s probably a bad word since we’re talking about parents, but not obvious, I guess, would be the word I say, because if you’re on a conference call from your home, you don’t really know what else is going on.
Marguerite Willis 22:35
You’re there. I think that’s helpful in a way, in a strange way for women. I think that’s been a helpful thing as we come back to work, if we ever get back to work. COVID is raging again here again. So I think that this will have been a time when women were able to show to folks their value in a way that was not discounted by some other pools on their time.
Marguerite Willis 23:04
Because we all know that pools on your time, wherever they come from, are things that our colleagues tend to say, well, she’d be great at that, but no, her kid has a measles, or she’d be great at that, but her mom isn’t doing well.
Marguerite Willis 23:20
And so we get a lot of that, I know. And that’s not overt that’s much more implicit. But we get a lot of that. And I think that this has been, curiously, a good time for women.
Michael Ehrenstein 23:38
Looking forward. We’re going to look forward, and then we’re going to look backward.
Marguerite Willis 23:43
Okay, let’s do it.
Michael Ehrenstein 23:43
Looking forward, we started off with a little bit of pessimism, I think. Has the pendulum swung, and maybe have we run up against this speed bump in progress for gender diversity within our profession?
Michael Ehrenstein 24:04
Looking forward, what recommendations can you make or what do you think can be done moving forward in order to equalize diversity within our profession, and particularly with respect to value, what can we do?
Marguerite Willis 24:26
Well, obviously, I think we can equalize billing rates. That’s something we’ve been talking about, and that needs to be intentional. I mean, I don’t expect to be billed at a rate that’s higher than a man who has more experience or more clients or more whatever you’re measuring, but the same measuring stick for everyone, I think.
Marguerite Willis 24:45
I think also you can recognize folks contributions in an equal way. They aren’t always equal contributions, but they can be recognized equally. Meaning if I spend a great deal of time speaking publicly and developing business for the firm, even though it’s not directly to me, that’s a value.
Marguerite Willis 25:05
Judge that against another value and make sure that you’re looking at people who may have different skills sets but giving them equal credit for the same amount of work in the sense that they’re doing for the enterprise, I think, as well, you can give them give women.
Marguerite Willis 25:22
And everyone equal opportunities, equal opportunities to be trained. You know, we all come into this profession unless we have the good fortune of working for a judge or being a government attorney for a while, where we get some training.
Marguerite Willis 25:35
Most of us come into this profession untrained, and we need mentors, and we need people who train us. So be intentional about assigning the best and the brightest mentors to everyone. Don’t just pick a mentor that looks like the mentee.
Marguerite Willis 25:56
I had no female mentors. I am a living proof that a woman can be trained by a man. I am living proof that I don’t have to be overly male. I don’t think anybody would accuse me of that to be effective.
Marguerite Willis 26:15
I have learned from them, and I’ve been able to internalize what they taught me and sort of try it on like an outfit and say, okay, this fits, and I can use this. So be really be selective and be generous with your mentorships of women and give them the same opportunities to develop clients, because at the end of the day, value in a law firm is most often associated with how much work you have, how much billable work you bring into the firm.
Marguerite Willis 26:45
And for that, you must develop contacts with clients and you must attract business. And that’s sort of a narrow funnel at a lot of firms. They pick people to be the business developers who, again, sort of look like them, typically.
Marguerite Willis 27:04
And, and trust me when I say I’ve seen all sorts of people be good business developers who didn’t look like me. And you just have to give them a chance. You really don’t know. Now, anybody who knows me knows that my dad sold insurance, so I can talk to anybody.
Marguerite Willis 27:17
I’m pretty good at. At opening a door, but I may not be the best person to actually sign the deal. And so you have to be generous in that sense too. So when you get up in private practice, when you get up to the partner level, we’re going to see even more disparity between the numbers of men and women these days.
Marguerite Willis 27:39
And one of the things that’s said and said wrongly is that women aren’t good at developing business. Well, if you don’t have the opportunity to do it, you aren’t as good, but that’s not your fault. So equal opportunity and access to clients and chances to build business and to bring in business is really important here.
Marguerite Willis 27:58
I think it sort of comes down to Michael, just a fair chance. And that sometimes is hard for folks to say, okay, everyone’s going to have essentially the same opportunity. And I think it surprises people when you give everyone the same opportunity that some of the folks you may have judged initially as not as good as something end up being great because they wear well over time.
Marguerite Willis 28:26
Not everybody’s a flash in the pan. Some people are long ball players. And so you have to let everybody advance and have the opportunity to advance to what their basic skills are. I would also say with regards specifically to women, don’t make any assumptions about what a woman will or won’t do.
Marguerite Willis 28:49
Don’t assume that because they have young children or because they have a sick mom or because whatever that they don’t want the opportunity and they won’t go out of town and they won’t won’t do the work.
Marguerite Willis 28:59
Whatever you think is too hard for them, don’t make that assumption. Let them make that choice. They may choose not to, but give them the choice. And then be intentional about putting women leaders in your firm.
Marguerite Willis 29:12
And corporate America has done a better job of this than the private practice. So is the government. And I’ve said many times that I didn’t have any female role models. I just had to do the best I could.
Marguerite Willis 29:27
And nobody ever told me, for example, that I should wear this before. A little Brooks Brothers suit with a little tie. As a young lawyer. I don’t think they make them anymore. And I didn’t know any better.
Marguerite Willis 29:41
I just did my thing. And then I about three or four years ago, I got a note from someone from 30 years ago, literally someone I know 30 years ago said, I’ve been meaning to write you this letter for 30 years.
Marguerite Willis 29:54
Thank you for not wearing the little tie because it meant the rest of us didn’t have to. This was at the old Harry firm. And I never thought of myself as someone who was setting an example, but I was.
Marguerite Willis 30:09
And so in that way, we’re all setting an example every day for someone who is looking up to us or looking at us. We don’t know who those people are, but it’s up to us, and this is to your point as seasoned lawyers, as members of the LCA, as responsible members of our respective bar associations, that’s our job, to stand as an example of the way to do something, hopefully the right way to do something.
Marguerite Willis 30:35
I suppose it could be bad examples, but we’re still examples, and we have to remember that people are watching us. And the last thing I would say, I guess, to the women listening is this don’t be afraid if they’re younger women.
Marguerite Willis 30:48
Don’t be afraid to call the boss. Call the highest person on the food chain, you know, and ask them for something. If you want a job, call them. They’re actually easier to get to than middle management, almost always.
Marguerite Willis 31:02
And you’d be surprised how many times that call will make a difference. It made a difference in my career years ago, when I didn’t know any better. And I tell people, Just take that chance. They can only not answer the phone or tell you no.
Marguerite Willis 31:17
And sometimes you get through and it makes a big difference. So I believe to shoot high here.
Michael Ehrenstein 31:24
Inspirational. So now let’s look backwards for a second, all right? What advice would you impart to your younger self?
Michael Ehrenstein 31:35
I mean, all of these things that we just spoke about were things that you’ve kind of discovered along the way, looking backwards. Give us one or two pieces of advice that you would have from today’s perspective, told the Marguerite of yesteryear.
Marguerite Willis 31:54
Wow, that’s hard to say. This is actually a question we asked on our LCA questionnaire seven years ago. I pulled that. Let me read you a couple of those and then I’ll add mine. One person said, I wish I’d had more of a sense of humor then so it wouldn’t have enraged me so much.
Marguerite Willis 32:17
Somebody else said, Get a government job. Firm life may not be worth the paycheck in the end. Deal with it immediately. Don’t let it fester. If you’re being treated wrongly, deal with it. You have to deal with it appropriately.
Marguerite Willis 32:32
You can’t just smack somebody, but you need to not let it fester because it will get worse. Ignore it. I don’t like that advice. I think there’s certain things you need to ignore by not everything. Somebody said they go to medical school.
Marguerite Willis 32:46
I think that was me. And then I think this is a good piece of advice. Remember that it’s a reflection on the person doing in it and not on your capabilities. That sexism really tears you down. If you let it, it makes you feel stupid.
Marguerite Willis 33:03
And let little so remember it’s not you, it’s the other person. Now, that’s hard sometimes to hold that point, but I think that’s important. And for me. I think I would tell myself, value yourself more, understand your business a little better.
Marguerite Willis 33:20
Understand the way it works. Make yourself valuable and advocate for your value. Indeed, when I was at Harry, ultimately, I was on the policy committee there, which was like the governing committee, and we had a retreat.
Marguerite Willis 33:36
There were three women, and, you know, of 30 men, or whatever it was, and I thought about it for a minute. You know, we have a lot of female litigators, antitrust litigators, more than any other firm in the United States, like the LCA in.
Marguerite Willis 33:49
And I said we should advertise that, because Howie was a very early advertiser of in court every day. That was their slogan. They were pioneering. And so the management said, first of all, they made us do focus work because they weren’t sure that the Women In House Counsel would hire women.
Marguerite Willis 34:09
And it was very interesting. The Women In House Council said, oh, no, we would never prefer a woman over a man. Then when you push down, they said, yeah, we really would, but we’re going to have to demonstrate their value to our colleagues, so they need a good resume, etc.
Marguerite Willis 34:24
So ultimately, what how we agreed to do was an advertising campaign that says she’s in court every day with pictures of Lady Justice courthouse pictures of justice, which is in every courthouse in the world, right?
Marguerite Willis 34:38
At least in America. And, you know, the first event we had, we managed to pay for the entire campaign because Women In House Counsel loved it. We were showing that we were competent. We were showing that we were valued.
Marguerite Willis 34:53
We were showing that we had skills. And they said that’s what we needed. We needed to be able to prove your value to our superiors. So, again, it’s all about the value that you bring and that you’re able to convince others that you bring to their representation.
Marguerite Willis 35:09
That’s what I tell myself. I learned it ultimately, but I would have started earlier.
Michael Ehrenstein 35:14
Well, you’ve had a fantastic, fantastic, least successful career and learned so much along the way. And we are the beneficiaries of your wisdom.
Michael Ehrenstein 35:27
We really appreciate you spending the time with us today, and we’re grateful. Thank you.
Marguerite Willis 35:35
Well, it’s always my pleasure to be with you, and it’s always my pleasure to speak on behalf of the LCA or to the LCA membership.
Marguerite Willis 35:44
This is a wonderful organization. And for those of you, because of COVID who haven’t been as actively involved, it’s time we get the party started again. And I hope the next event we have everybody will turn out in great numbers because we miss you all.
Michael Ehrenstein 36:00
Agreed again, a million percent. Thank you so much for your time Marguerite.
Marguerite Willis 36:06
Thank you. Michael. It was a pleasure.
