Blog #25: Law As a Gendered Organization

I am interpreting using sexualized behavior as "a weapon in the arsenal" in the law field as different ways to interpret every kind of situation that you are presented with. Having both men and women lawyers can truly help out when having a wide variety of cases because men and women think very differently about certain things. Being able to use these differences to help solve the case can be extremely useful when other firms do not have the ability to explore these different viewpoints. Although, that is not the case currently because most law firms employ both men and women. For example, if there was a female rape case on the table and you had the choice of putting a male on the case or a female on the case, it would be in the firms best interest to put a female on the case to look as if she could better relate with the victim. Her views would be very similar to that of the woman victim, thus becoming a weapon that the firm could pull out of a tough situation. Same would apply to a man defending a man in a specific case, the defendant could possibly feel more comfortable with a man that uses similar behaviors instead of a woman who wouldn't "understand". On the opposite side of the spectrum, I think that this can be a bad thing, because an attorney should be trained to deal with situations regardless of what gender they are. They are supposed to base their case on strictly fact, and it really shouldn't matter whether you are a woman representing a woman or a man representing a woman. The media portraying this could actually have a negative impact by taking these behaviors and linking them with a certain gender, making them incapable of doing any other sort of work or behaving in any other way.