The October 17 event in Brooke A. Goff Courtroom on the North Haven Campus educated and inspired legal professionals and law students as discussions considered past and present issues impacting Connecticut women practicing law.

Dean Brian Gallini recognized the work of the CBF staff and the symposium planning committee, chaired by the Hon. Susan Peck, together with the contributions of Professor of Law and former Quinnipiac Law School Dean Jennifer Gerarda Brown.

In his welcoming remarks, Gallini said the symposium was both a celebration and a challenge.

“We celebrate 25 years of the Connecticut Women in the Legal Profession Project, a vision that began in 1999 and now lives through 63 oral histories, two documentaries, and 125 portraits that grace our third-floor walls,” Gallini said.

The striking visual statement on the presence of women on the state and federal bench is on display at the law school’s Jennifer Gerarda Brown Student Lounge, where an afternoon reception was held to close the symposium.

Through its speakers and panelists, Gallini said the symposium asked hard questions about whether gender bias persists, why senior women leave the profession, where women have found success and where the gaps still remain, and, in a time of demographic and economic change, how to move forward with purpose.

“Let’s not leave these conversations today in this room. Let’s take what we learn today and turn them into commitments, whether that means mentoring, advocating for policy change, or challenging the structures that hold talented lawyers back,” Gallini said. “It seems to me that progress doesn’t happen by accident. It happens because people like all of you decide that it matters.”

Responses to CBF’s 1995 and 2024 surveys on women in law were interwoven with many topics at the symposium. Developed to assess the status of women in Connecticut's legal profession and inform future progress, the 1995 survey established a baseline regarding work-life balance, prevalence of sexual harassment, perceptions of advantage, part-time work and other obligations.

The 2024 survey incorporated updated questions accounting for significant impacts such as the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2008 recession.

Presentations by the Hon. Elizabeth Bozzuto, Chief Court Administrator for the State of Connecticut Judicial Branch; and the Hon. Janet Bond Arterton, Senior Judge (inactive), United States District Court, District of Connecticut; helped to open the symposium, providing an overview of the history of women in the legal profession in Connecticut.

Additional information was shared by Anne Hamilton, JD UConn Law ’73 and author of “A Century’s Journey: Women at the UConn School of Law;” while Shane Gleason, Trinity College associate professor of Public Policy & Law, shared data analysis from CBF’s 2024 survey responses.

Judge Peck also thanked symposium attendee Noreen Channels, associate professor of sociology (retired) at Trinity College, who compiled data from the 1995 survey results, creating an important benchmark for CBF to guide the progress of women in the profession.

Judge Peck encouraged attendees to visit CBF’s website to review Gleason’s article “The Steady March of Progress? The Status of Women in the Connecticut Legal Profession in 2025” as well as a new timeline developed for the symposium, highlighting some of the many notable Connecticut women lawyers from 1882 through August 2025.

“The intention of the timeline was to jump-start the process of creating a historical record of notable women in the law, with the goal in mind of becoming a living document that folks will add to in the coming years by contributing similar information,” said Judge Peck.

The afternoon opened with keynote speaker Stephanie Scharf, principal and co-founder of women-owned The Red Bee Group and a practicing lawyer of nearly 40 years. Scharf holds a Ph.D. in behavioral sciences from the University of Chicago, where she also earned her JD.

Scharf is well known for her work in the areas of organizational excellence, diversity, equality and inclusion, strategic growth, talent development, and enterprise management. Her consulting work is enhanced by decades of practice working with national and global corporations, as partner at Kirkland and Ellis, a partner at Jenner & Block, and most recently founder of Scharf Banks Marmor, LLC, a nationally prominent women-owned law firm.

Combining her skills in data analytics to design practical and measurable strategies for organizational change and achievable goals, Scharf has published innovative research that uses data to track the impact of policies and practices on business goals. She has designed and co-authored many studies about the factors that impact long-term professional careers and conducted a range of other applied research on the strategies, career trajectories, and interaction between organizations and their employees.

In her keynote address, Scharf spoke on “Then, Now, and Next: Women Lawyers and the Future of the Profession.” Within her talk, Scharf touched on founding the National Association of Women Lawyers (NAWL) Annual Survey of Women in Law Firms, which she established in 2006 and conducted through 2014.

Scharf said many anecdotes shared with her by women lawyers met through her American Bar Association membership often centered on diminished opportunities they had experienced at law firms. Hearing these conversations triggered her interest, as a sociologist, in developing the survey.

“Leaders in firms don’t listen to the anecdotes. They will listen to data,” said Scharf. 
Studying private firms, the NAWL Annual Survey of Women in Law Firms was also the first survey in the nation which looked at the equity partner level, and not just the partner level, she noted.

“We found that among the largest 200 firms in the country, women were only 15% equity partners, and their income was substantially lower at the equity partner level than the men who were equity partner,” said Scharf.

Today, there’s a new generation of women lawyers and women lawyers of color, she said. Currently, 56% of all first-year law students are women, the highest number on record. Fifty percent of associates are women – a statistic that’s held true for 25 years -- while 30% of incoming associates are lawyers of color, and women of color comprise almost 18% of associates.

“Those numbers simply did not exist, even 20 years ago,” Scharf said. “What does this mean, going forward? It doesn’t quite mean as much as some of us hoped it would, because in spite of the large numbers of women graduating from law school for many years, only 28% of partners are women, and there’s an estimate of about 24% of equity partners who are women – still a quarter, rather than the 50% you would expect."

Additionally, even though women of color have been graduating from law school in meaningful numbers for many years now, they account for less than 5% of all partners. Black and Latina women account for roughly 1% of all partners.

Most firms continue to follow a traditional top-down approach to leadership, Scharf added.

“I’m not sure anymore that that type of leadership is going to be effective in having a large impact in bringing in people who are not traditionally in the leadership, and who traditionally have trouble getting to the very top ranks,” said Scharf.

As an alternative, Scharf discussed the idea that leadership can be developed through managing with impact. She encouraged women in law to be leaders at mid- and even junior levels.

“Whatever level you’re at, once you join a firm, a company or an agency, you can have an impact and be a leader,” Scharf said. “At the mid-level of an organization, you have a lot of experience, and you’re a leader even if you don’t have the title…your practice got you where you are and you’re impacting other people in the firm, and you’re showing that you have the qualities and the skills to be a leader.”

Junior lawyers can lead with impact by managing themselves and influencing how they work with others.

“You show leadership every time you say, ‘I can do that,’” Scharf said. “Being a leader as a junior person means you take ownership of a task, you meet a deadline, and you may ask a question that might be thoughtful about what it is you’re supposed to do.”

The influence of leadership at all levels can lead to greater opportunities and change in the leadership structure of firms and organizations, she said.

“I do think with a lot of commonalities and a lot of different shows of leadership at different levels that there’s a great opportunity to get the statistic about leaders in line with the statistics about who’s graduating from law school, when it comes to gender and also lawyers of color,” Scharf said.

Scharf said she was impressed with the mission and message of symposium and the spirit of conversation it engendered.

“It’s an honor to be here today, especially because of the fantastic programs…I’ve probably been to a million conferences about women in the law, and these panels and these discussions were fabulous,” Scharf said. “I see that there’s a wide range of people interested in coming to this conference, which bodes very well for the future of the profession.”

The symposium’s morning panel, moderated by Brown, discussed why senior women leave the profession and the best practices to retain them, and what changes and innovations are needed for women to work and thrive in the legal profession. Brown was joined by panelists Vanessa Roberts Avery, partner, McCarter & English LLP; Robert Elwood, partner and co-founder, Practus, LLP; Kirstin Etela, partner, Day Pitney LLP; and Martha Stone, founder and special counsel, Center for Children’s Advocacy.

The symposium closed with a forum of leaders in the law featuring women from diverse areas of practice. Moderated by Travelers Senior Vice President, Claim General Counsel Alexia Cruz, panelists were the Hon. Chase Rogers (Ret.) former Chief Justice, Connecticut Supreme Court (2007 – 2018); Livia Barndollar, member, Pullman & Comley LLC; Brooke Goff, founding attorney, Goff Law Group; and Moy Ogilvie, managing partner, McCarter & English, LLP. 

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