How ex-GG got leg up in legal world

Lucy Bennett

One of New Zealand’s highest-profile jurists says she got her first law clerk’s job because she had the best legs.

Former Governor-General Dame Silvia Cartwright, first woman appointed to the full High Court bench, chairs the New Zealand Law Society’s regulatory working group looking at the processes for reporting and taking action on harassment and inappropriate behaviour in legal workplaces.

Cartwright, alongside Chief Justice Sian Elias, former attorney-general and parliamentary Speaker Margaret Wilson and Solicitor-General Una Jagose, attended the launch yesterday of the society’s gender equality charter.

The legal profession is in the spotlight after a raft of accusations of sexual harassment and bullying and allegations and incidents involving prominent law firms.

Cartwright, who graduated with a law degree in 1967, said all women would have experienced oppression or discrimination: “Although, when I was a younger lawyer the discrimination was not sexually overt to the same extent that it seems to be today.”

Asked to recall specific incidents, she said there were many.

“Getting my first, very underpaid, job as a law clerk because I had the best legs but that was just silly. They thought it was funny. I actually thought it was quite funny too because if that’s what it took to get a job I was all for it.”

The society is surveying more than 13,250 lawyers to gain information on work environments in the profession.