Women of counsel.

MORE WOMEN ARE GRADUATING FROM LAW SCHOOLS THAN EVER BEFORE, THEIR RANKS ARE SWELLING AT LOCAL FIRMS AND ON THE BENCH - AND THEY ARE HANDLING SOME OF LA.'S HIGHEST-PROFILE CASES

L.A. women are making their mark on L.A. law.

There are the high-profile types like Gloria Allred, Marcia Clark and Leslie Abramson who long have been household names.

There also are upper-echelon players within the profession itself, such as Margaret Morrow, first woman president of the California Bar Association, who has been nominated to fill a vacancy on the federal District Court bench, and Patricia Glaser, a star corporate litigator who won a multimillion-dollar verdict against actress Kim Basinger for failing to carry out her contract to appear in "Boxing Helena."

But the importance of women within L.A.'s legal community goes beyond just a handful of prominent attorneys. Many have reached the higher echelons of entertainment, securities, labor and environmental law, crusaded for the poor, defended major corporations against lawsuits and taken them on.

They've sued the producers of "Melrose Place," and represented such corporate giants as Exxon Corp., Coca-Cola Co. and Twentieth Century Fox.

A woman attorney is president of the Police Commission; another was the first secretary of education. And later this year, a woman will be installed as head of the Los Angeles County Bar Association, for the fifth time since 1984.

"There are so many more women lawyers on all levels, on the bench, in corporations, as opponents, it feels like a different profession," said attorney Meryl Macklin, with Century City-based Tatro Coffino Macklin Bloomgarden. "Although, having said that, sometimes you go to court and there are no women and that's disheartening."

No one is sure exactly how many female attorneys there are in Los Angeles - such records are not kept - but clearly the numbers have grown in the past 20 years.

"The presence of women has made it more appealing to women," said Carol Chase, a professor at Pepperdine University School of Law.

One indicator is that the number of women in law schools and serving as Los Angeles prosecutors and public defenders is approaching the 50 percent mark. Women represent 45 percent of law school graduates, almost 44 percent of deputy public defenders in L.A. County and 41 percent of the deputy district attorneys.

While women have made inroads onto the bench, they still are far outnumbered by men: The 38 female judges and commissioners in county superior and district courts represent just 13 percent of the total.

Indeed, nagging problems remain. Women are slow to make partner, and often cannot advance in a big firm if they want a family. Out of L.A.'s 50 largest law firms, just six have female managing partners.

Experts disagree over why women have not taken more leadership rules.

William Warren, professor emeritus at UCLA and a former dean, says there simply has not been enough time.

"Women have been coming into law firms in large numbers only since the '80s," Warren said.

UCLA law school Dean Susan Westerberg Prager agrees, saying that because women are relatively new to the field, many do not yet have the level of experience to be named managing partner.

Allred, however, has a darker view - saying many male lawyers simply cannot accept women as their equals.

"Women have been in the profession for decades. There has already been enough tithe for change," she said.

Part of the reason that change has been slow is that men tend to identify more strongly with other men when looking at partner nominees, Allred said.

"It's one thing to have them as an employee, it's another to have them as a partner. Old boys tend to recommend and vote for old boys," Allred said.

In addition, women still take on the primary burden of raising children, making it difficult for them to balance their careers with family life.

"It always has been and will continue to be tougher for women because we're expected to live two lives," said Laurie Levenson, associate dean of Loyola Law School. "It's the super-woman syndrome and we have to be careful not to step on our capes. This is more so in law than in other fields, perhaps by the characteristics of lawyers themselves. They're driven to succeed for the client and themselves."

Latham & Watkins, a huge international firm downtown, has looked at the issue of why women are under-represented at the partner level, said Robert Long, the managing partner. Fourteen percent of the firm's 301 partners are women.

"The disparity issue defies solution, to some extent," Long said. "We do want to make an effort to get women back after they left for maternity reasons. We're trying to be creative in this regard. These women are an enormous resource, and we bring them in with the expectation that they will progress at the same rate as men."

But in a notoriously time-consuming profession, sometimes women have to make a choice,

Many have found jobs in the public sector, which can hold out the promise of more humane hours and no partner track.

Macklin said women get to a certain point at which they say," 'Why is this worth it to spend my entire life in the office? There's more to life than work.'"

Women have never had to accept the standard paradigm, said attorney Laura Christa. That is: law school, working one's way up in a firm, and becoming a pillar of the community.

"There's a question of how we tailor our careers and profession to work for (us). It adds flexibility in the way services are delivered. There's more experimentation," Christa said.

Attorney Mona D. Miller said she has been fortunate to find a flexible arrangement so she can spend time with her child and pursue her own writing.

"There are zillions of ad hoc arrangements out there," Miller said. "I suspect if I didn't have so many years of experience and knowledge base, I couldn't do this."

For a variety of reasons, many Los Angeles women have started at big law firms and then left to start a new firm by themselves or with others.

"Not many women find the (big firm) environment hospitable, even at the best of firms," said Macklin, who started a small firm with some male colleagues.

Macklin said women tend to be seen as good deputies because they are team players, but that many men in management positions have trouble seeing them as leaders.

"I think there's a need to control your own destiny. By having your own firm, you can do that," said bankruptcy attorney Robbin Itkin, who is with Century City-based Wynne Spiegel Itkin. "You can really have the type of firm with the members, workplace and clientele you'd like to have."

The trend to branch off has spawned at least two groups of women professionals. In the 1980s, attorney Patricia Phillips started Downtown Women Partners, which meets to discuss workplace issues, women candidates and other matters of interest to women attorneys.

And Itkin started Founding Women Shareholders and Partners of Law Firms two years ago, shortly after she started her own finn with two male partners. She said she got to thinking it would be nice to meet women partners from areas outside her specialty - "from a networking standpoint and making new friends," she said.

Itkin also belongs to a group of women bankruptcy professionals that includes lawyers, judges and accountants. A recent dinner meeting attracted 92 women. Every couple of years, the group holds an all-day educational program.

"Women need to support each other and shouldn't be competing with each other," Itkin said.

"I think women's nature is to get involved in every aspect of a profession," said Clara L. Slifkin, a deputy attorney general. "A lot of women are not only mothers and attorneys, but give their time to the profession. A lot more women are teaching courses."

Formal and informal networking, mentoring and socialization have become increasingly important as making partner has come to carry the expectation of being a rainmaker. In Levenson's words: "Until women get the clients, we won't get the respect."

"Most women lawyers I know have at least one friend out there who's a woman lawyer," said Miller, who does business litigation and is with Hancock Park-based Berman Blanchard Mausner & Resser.

When Miller first started practicing, "there were very few women, and men did not talk about children a great deal in the office.

"Over all, the climate has gotten better for things like that and people can talk about their children more freely. You don't have to segregate your life when you come to the office," said Miller.

Still, the profession needs to come up with new structures for providing legal services that don't crash the lawyer, Miller said.

"It's never going to be totally a 9 to 5 job. It is possible to have a balance, but institutions have to be more creative and proactive in making that happen and be careful about making hours the measure deemed to calibrate one's commitment," she said.

Women have clearly proved they are both committed and can hold their own in the courtroom.

"Total acceptance" is how long-time attorney Sheldon Sloan describes it. "I think women sit just as easily at the table in negotiations I'm in as men," said Sloan, immediate past president of the county Bar Association.

And indeed the 50 women on the Business Journal's Who's Who in Law are evidence that women can attain the highest levels of the profession. "Maybe women are finally to the point where we're no longer looking at things in terms of, 'can we make it?'" said attorney Christa. "It's accepted we can."

RELATED ARTICLE: Women Branching Into Male-Dominated Legal Specialties

When Clara L. Slifkin graduated from law school in 1975, she got a job with the Los Angeles City Council as a legislative aide. Other public-sector jobs followed - first with the Public Defender's Office, and later with the state Attorney General's Office.

"It's a comfortable place," said Slifkin, who is now a deputy attorney general in Los Angeles. "It's not that the work isn't challenging. But you're not vying for partner, and people work together as a team,"

Government practice has been a traditional career path for women lawyers - in part because many of them could not get hired in the private sector in years past.

But many women lawyers say they prefer government work. The Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office and state Attorney General's Office, for example, both say that about 40 percent of their lawyers are women.

"You can have a life in government practice," Slifkin said, "more easily than in private practice."

Family law is another specialty in which the numbers of women practicing have been higher than in other areas, said Linda Brackins-Willett, a professor at Southwestern University School of Law in Los Angeles and former president of the Women Lawyers Association of Los Angeles.

In part, that's because women were steered to that field after law school, she said. Although they are less likely to be pushed in that direction today, it remains a stronghold for women lawyers.

"Women still seem to have an interest in issues relating to women, marriage and family," Brackins-Willett said.

Increasingly, however, women are making inroads into specialties long dominated by men, such as entertainment and bankruptcy law.

Twenty years ago, Shelly Rothschild had very few female colleagues when she started practicing bankruptcy law as an associate in a white-shoe New York law firm.

Now a partner in the Los Angeles office of Whitman Breed Abbott & Morgan, Rothschild said bankruptcy law is largely open to women. She points out that there is not only an association for women in bankruptcy, but women are also behind the bankruptcy court bench: Four of the 20 judges on the Central District Bankruptcy Court are women.

"There are more women in positions to decide who gets hired, and choose who will represent them," Rothschild said. And as those women develop networks among themselves, bringing in more clients and revenue for their law firms, they are likely to start breaking through the glass ceiling.

That there are more women lawyers coming out of law schools and entering private practice is also a factor. Among 1996 law school graduates at UCLA, for example, a higher percentage of women went into private practice than men, 69 percent vs. 66 percent.

"Women have definitely become more represented in law firms in the last six or seven years," says UCLA's assistant dean for career services, Amy Berenson Mallow.

Brackins-Willett said it is clear women have more opportunities today than ever before, including opening their own private practices and pursuing a broader array of specialties.

"Women are more confident in doing what they want to do," she said.