Client outcomes suffer when both law firms and their clients fail to push for gender diversity, former U.S. District Judge Shira Scheindlin and her Pennsylvania colleague, U.S. District Judge Cynthia Rufe, told an audience in Philadelphia on Tuesday.

Scheindlin, continuing a flurry of public appearances in the wake of a New York State Bar Association report last summer on the paucity of women in court speaking roles, joined Rufe, known for her work overseeing a slew of multidistrict litigations in Pennsylvania’s Eastern District, at an event on women in the courtroom at the offices of Reed Smith.