Philadelphia lawyer. This country wasn't even a republic when the term was coined. It comes from a libel trial that sent high-powered defense attorneys north to Manhattan, where their arguments and legal acumen overwhelmed the prosecution, awed the spectators in court, and, by the way, won the case.
Whatever the truth may be that is working itself out in the harassment lawsuit brought by Kathleen A. Frederick, formerly of Reed, Smith, Shaw & McClay's Philadelphia office, against Glanton, a partner in the firm, its unfolding has been compelling.
"It's impossible to know how many women in firms have had the problem with sexual harassment, because there has not been a reliable study performed of all the women in the city," said Libby Bennett, chairwoman of the Philadelphia Bar Association's committee on women in the legal profession. ''But certainly, if you practice and you're a woman, you hear about stories that women have had."
"Happening at all is happening too often," added Deborah Willig, former chancellor of the Philadelphia Bar and managing partner in the firm Willig Williams & Davidson.
"I guess the most apt comparison is that this case is to the legal profession what Anita Hill was to the confirmation process," Willig said. The televised spectacle of 1991 - which turned a hearing on Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas into a forum on the morals and veracity of Hill, his former employee - raised everyone's consciousness regarding sexual harassment.
Now the Frederick-Glanton case, Willig said, "has made it personal."
For her part, Bennett fears that a more important consideration is being lost amid the Guiding Light aspects of the Frederick-Glanton case.
