CLE Diversity.

I just copied this off the Journal's November President's Page on florida bar. org: "Diversity: The Florida Bar's objective is to foster an inclusive environment in which lawyers, regardless of gender, race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, physical or mental disability are motivated to succeed professionally and contribute to the goals of their profession."

Evidently, the Criminal Law and Appellate Practice sections don't believe that this goal extends to women, judging from the speakers chosen to speak at their seminars. I have written to chairs of the Criminal Law Section and the Appellate Practice Section on several occasions; they uniformly fail to address the issue.

The latest response I received pointed out that there is one woman speaker this year, and there was one woman speaker in each of the last two years at the annual Criminal Law Section's Advanced Federal Practice Seminar. That is true; of course, it is a different woman every year, and there has been no increase in the numbers of woman presenters with the passage of the years. Whereas, not only do the men continue to dominate, 5-1 or 6-1, they are mostly the same men who are invited to speak year after year.

It's the same story with the Appellate Practice Section. Their January Appellate Certification Seminar has six men (all mostly the same men over the years), and only two women--and one of them is the program chair.

Given that women belong to both sections in large numbers--and we pay the same high dues for the privilege--there is no excuse for this systematic exclusion of women. In fact, if only women were presenters from now on, it would probably take decades for the past pattern of discrimination to be fairly redressed.

This might be funny, if it were not that the people doing the excluding are, to a man, self-proclaimed champions of liberty and defenders of due process. Despite all their public chest-pounding on behalf of their clients, they are evidently content to permit and participate in this exclusion of their professional colleagues from these high-profile seminars, which are heavily attended by influential practitioners, and thereafter widely circulated around the state.

Nancy C. Wear

Coral Gables

The Criminal Law Section Responds:

The Criminal Law Section is strongly committed to diversity and inclusion at all levels. Particularly as to women, in section leadership our immediate past-chair, chair-elect, secretary, and Board of Governors liaison are all...