Jean Lee, president and chief executive of the Minority Corporate Counsel Association, says she will never forget the time a veteran clerk in a New York state courtroom refused to believe that she was the lead counsel in a major matter before the court.
“I was one of only two female lawyers along with middle-aged white men, in a courtroom of maybe 50 lawyers, and she asked me three separate times who was the lawyer of record,” Lee, who is Korean-American, says. “She kept saying, ‘Honey, I really need the lawyer’s name. And no, I need the person who will argue the case,’ and I said, ‘That’s me.’” The incident occurred several years ago, says Lee, the former vice president and assistant general counsel at J.P. Morgan Chase and Co., though she says she hears similar anecdotes today from other women who are lawyers of color.
