Where Have All the Cowboys Gone?

I have been doing a lot of networking lately and gathering up CLE credits like candy. I have met some of the sweetest ladies and extremely professional women. I've spoken with everyone from the President of NALA to administrative professionals in the circuit clerk's office. I have learned that I have a hard time choosing between the organization in which most members are professional and career-concious and the organization in which most members are friendly and fun-loving. (As a result of this indecision, I'm choosing both.)

Through it all, though, one glaring reality has begun to emerge. The paralegal career field is missing a very large demographic - men. Where are all the men? Surely not every man who enjoys law decides he absolutely must be a lawyer... right? Or is it possible that the legal field is behind the medical field in yet another area - gender?

Even as society accepts and encourages women to attain higher education, get a law license, and practice in roles that were once traditionally held by only men, the same doesn't hold true for the positions widely held by females. This was once a problem with the nursing profession. As we all know, male nurses used to be a source of ridicule and fodder for unseemly jokes. Thank goodness the social tides have turned! As the nursing profession has shown just how important it is, as demand for nurses has grown on a national scale, as standards have continuously been raised, and as the nursing profession has offered increasing opportunities for career and educational growth, more and more men have flocked to the career.

Perhaps the legal field could take a cue from the world of medicine. Maybe it is time for legal professionals, licensed and not, to set higher standards for non-licensed legal professionals. Of course, it is all a matter of perspective on the whole. If paralegals raise the bar for our profession, we will implicitly invite into it individuals who are career-minded and looking for challenges. We will invite into it professionals who identify with their career and want to excel at something meaningful.

I think this is the key to recuiting more men into our profession. When we take ourselves seriously as a group, when we expect more from ourselves and co-workers, we will find others doing the same thing. Some of those individuals might even decide to join us. Some of them, let us hope, will be men.