Marilyn Moriarty Shares Her Experience as a Female Attorney In Interview With Super Lawyers Magazine

San Diego, Calif. (April 27, 2021) - San Diego Partner Marilyn “Mel” Moriarty recently participated in an interview with San Diego Super Lawyers Magazine (Super Lawyers) for an article titled “The Doors Were Opening.” The article features the stories of six San Diego attorneys who experienced, first-hand, the significant increase in women joining the legal profession in the United States during the 1970s.

Ms. Moriarty told Super Lawyers that when she graduated from UCLA School of Law in 1979, the job market “was not great for lawyers, but it was less so for women,” adding, “If you were in that very, very top 1%, you maybe had a better chance of getting a job, but the mid-level firms weren’t really hiring.” She described her experience prosecuting criminal cases alongside male attorneys in her first job out of law school at the city attorney’s office, recounting a particular instance that “infuriated” her because she felt undermined by the male chief of her division who, ironically, later became her husband.

Ms. Moriarty also discussed with Super Lawyers her “uncomfortable” experience as one of the only women handling medical malpractice defense work during a time when adjusters expected to “be wined and dined” and “alcohol was served at lunch.”

According to Ms. Moriarty, although much has changed for female attorneys, certain challenges remain, including establishing a work-life balance. She explained, “In my practice group at the firm, over the years, I’ve had six top female attorneys who were some of the best attorneys I ever worked with, who ended up, after they had children, going with an in-house firm or corporation. Because they couldn’t do it all. Nor did they necessarily want to do it all, in the sense of being actively in trial. That’s still really unfortunate.”

Ms. Moriarty is a member of Lewis Brisbois’ Medical Malpractice and Labor & Employment Practices. She has practiced as a trial lawyer for more than 35 years, has tried more than 75 jury trials, and is a member of the prestigious American Board of Trial Advocates (ABOTA). Though her track record includes representation of a variety of clients, her focus of late has been the defense of healthcare and public entity clients against claims of medical malpractice, discrimination, wrongful termination, and civil rights violations.

You may read the full Super Lawyers article here.