I finally got the chance to watch some of the videos that were uploaded here. This one is the video that is directly before her "Breaking the Glass Ceiling" talk. (What glass ceiling is
Elle breaking?! lol)
She talks about the controversy that erupts on her channel due to her saying she is in house counsel. And I quote with my responses:
"So, I got sent an aricle today by a girlfriend and I had a slightly emotional discussion with her about some comments hat were left on my channel, and they were on my last vlog and they honestly made me hesitate as to whether I wanted to do these girlboss vlogs anymore because I guess they tend to be controversial. Maybe this one will be controversial too if you guys are gonna like freak out over something i said, I don't know, but I think the point of them has to be really real about what my life is like. So one of the things that really upset people was that I state fairly regularly in my videos that I'm a lawyer."
People aren't upset that Elle called herself a lawyer. People were upset because it's the optics. If you call yourself a medical doctor that usually means you are actually practicing medicine in some sort of way. To be
shocked that people take it that way would be disingenuous because we all know that in common parlance, doctor = someone who practices medicine. In the same vein, if you call yourself a lawyer most people will believe that you are practicing law in some capacity. It doesn't have to mean you are in private practice; you could be working for the government, for a company (aka in house counsel), or otherwise, but it does mean that you use your law degree in some capacity. Sure, if you have a law degree you are
technically a lawyer, but a law degree doesn't automatically mean you are
working as a lawyer. Just like a medical degree and license means you are technically a doctor, but unless you practice you are not working as a doctor. Elle knows this.
I think I must have mentioned either in that video or somewhere that I am in house counsel and people were just freaking out in the comments. Some people were saying that I was basically like someone at Starbucks who says they are a doctor because they have a medical degree or something like that. And it just really blew my mind that there was still so much ignorance out there about practice and about women working.
This has nothing to do with women working. Elle is spinning her little wheels here to make it about anything but her dishonesty.
And I'm not making it about women just to be sanctimonious.
Yes she is, lol.
I actually wasn't gonna talk about this at all until I saw this article today and it really sort of clarified my feelings on the subject. So in a nutshell like I said I am in house counsel so I was in private practice while I was doing my training and then like many other women—and this article sort of reminded me of that—I left private practice to be in house counsel and it was the right decision for me. I am part of a very large statistic because when you graduate from law school over the last 15 years or so its always been the case that women make up over 50% of graduating law students. And most of them are admitted to the bar one way or another although some do go and do something else right away, but most of the training opportunities are in private practice.
Statistic or not, she is not in house counsel. Facts are facts. Chambers describes in house counsel as follows, "In house counsel are hired by a
corporation's law department to handle a range of legal issues affecting
the company, among them employment, policy, tax and regulatory matters. More prevalently, they play a
managerial role, overseeing work that's been outsourced to attorneys at independent firms."
Elle has never, nor does she, work for a corporation's law department. I know what in house counsel does and so does pretty much anyone who knows anything about law practice. Elle worked for the Mutual Fund Dealer's Association of Canada in an investigatory capacity. Apples and oranges. This person holds the same position Elle formerly did:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/sheila-daneshvaziri-298699b/?originalSubdomain=ca. She has no qualifying law degree.
However, five years in for various reasons--life work balance being the main one--about only 66% are left in practice at all. So I'm still practicing, I'm still registered with the law society, I still pay those fees, my work actually pays those fees for me which is lovely. And yeah, so only like about 2/3rd of women remain in practice at all 5 years in, so that's how high the attrition is and how its difficult to be a woman in law, and its part of, I'd say, it's one of the reasons why it's important to me to make these vlogs.
Irrelevant, really. Elle thinks that we think that all law = private practice. That's the complete wrong assumption. We know that not all lawyers work in private practice; it's not the crux of our argument. Our argument is that she is not working as a lawyer as she claims, much less as in house counsel which is a completely different position. Note that there
are counsel positions at the MFDA but they are not in house counsel (there is a slight distinction--in house counsel strictly means working for a private corporation in their legal department). The counsel positions at MFDA mean they are in the legal department, as the MFDA has investigatory/legal/enforcement departments, etc. The fact that Elle doesn't even
work in the legal branch speaks for itself. She was an investigator, not even counsel.
So, to recap:
In house counsel = working as a practicing attorney for a company (like Nike, Lululemon, or Shell)
Counsel at MFDA = the lawyers who practice law and work for the Mutual Fund Dealers' Association in the legal department, counseling the other departments (enforcement, investigations, etc.)
Investigator at MFDA = not in house counsel
Her job description is JD-optional which means even a non-attorney can do it. The fact that she has a qualifying law degree does not mean that every position she touches is "in house counsel" or "attorney." If Elle worked retail, would she say she is in house counsel for Kohl's?
I feel like they’re meant to be lighthearted but also a bit meaningful.
Because Elle is the posterchild for breaking the glass ceiling and professional advancement, lol.
So yeah, that’s the statistic for 5 years in but then after that I think is the most kind of shocking statistic because around 10 years after that, only about 8% of those women will be made partners. So that means that really when you're looking at private practice and you're considering that as the only way of being a lawyer which is what people were suggesting in the comments and that in some ways if you're not in private practice with clients you are in some way not a legitimate lawyer or you're lying about being in practice which is what was sort of leveled at me, you're basically excluding 92% of women.
Extremely faulty logic for a lawyer. 8% of women being made partners =! the percentage of women who are left in law that are not partners that we do
still consider to be working in law. Elle thinks that
we think that if a woman is not made partner, she is somehow not working in law? That's irrational. You do not need to be made partner to practice law--why would anyone think that? Also, we know that there are all types of attorneys both in private practice and doing PI work, working for the government, etc. We only object to Elle saying she is in house counsel when she is not and her saying she is a practicing lawyer when she is not.
So, it's just insane to me that that's something that is so widely believed and I feel like TV shows are partly responsible because they only tend to portray private practice as the only real option to practice law. But it's absolutely not the case. In fact, as I've just stated, most women who remain in practice are not in private practice with clients. So yeah I think it's really interesting that's a perspective that still dominates even though it's so inaccurate.
Again conflating the issues. Nobody cares that Elle works for the Mutual Fund Dealers Association. People care that she overinflates her position, lies about it, and vlogs like she is some paragon of women's empowerment.
