Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, October 14, 1994 TAG: 9410140080
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LYNDA GOROV BOSTON GLOBE LOS ANGELES NOTE: below
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
They understand. But their empathy is undercut by resentment that Marcia Clark had to cut her hair to make her case.
And that was just the start of a transformation that even female attorneys who work the other side of the courtroom say is as sexist as it is essential. It's a bind, and they know it well enough themselves to stop short of criticizing Clark, the prosecutor in the O.J. Simpson trial.
``I think the public is comfortable with women lawyers being tough, but not with them appearing tough,'' said Gloria Allred, a prominent Los Angeles attorney and president of the Women's Equal Rights Legal Defense and Education Fund. ``She's not going to a tea party, after all. She's going to a double-murder trial. But she also has to do what she thinks is best to win a conviction.''
As the grips who handle the lighting in Hollywood would say, Clark has been put into soft focus. Before, the only non-petite thing about the deputy district attorney was her legal mind. Now, they've remade her into the little lawyer who could send O.J. Simpson to prison.
On the advice of jury specialists, Clark packed away the power mini-suits. She nixed the harsh high heels. She lopped the ringlets and lost the Lycra. She also shelved her attitude, which tended toward aloof. Last week found her smiling, laughing even, right there in the courtroom.
That's when a group of women at a Los Angeles hair salon shouted ``Ugh! Disgusting!'' and demanded that the television be turned off, recalled Susan Estrich, a University of Southern California law professor.
``This woman is in the business of prosecuting murderers, and the notion that she has to do it wearing pink is a stunning indictment of how far we've come in terms of equal rights,'' she said. ``Maybe they're right and it's a wise strategy. I can even understand why she did it.
``But I also find it really offensive.''
Clark's makeover has been maddening for many professional women, who say it shows that the double standard still applies: A man is assertive, a woman aggressive. He gets credit, she gets criticized. Clark's nemesis on Simpson's defense team, Robert Shapiro, posed shirtless in People magazine, and no one in the legal community suggested it would hurt his case. Clark wore black to the office and got whiplash from the backlash.
It doesn't appear she'll make that mistake again.
The other day in court, Clark had on a creamy suit with delicate piping. Where the former dancer once favored figure-flattering clothes, she was now covered to the neck. The soft fabrics don't jibe with her hard lawyering at all. But both jury consultants who favor the change and female lawyers who wish it weren't necessary say that's the whole point.
Focus groups convened over the summer showed that the 12 jurors chosen from the 304 now in the running wouldn't much like the old Marcia Clark. She was too Joyce (``Hill Street Blues'') Davenport, not enough Ann (``L.A. Law'') Kelsey. She was smart and determined, and they said she came off as cold.
``The last thing Marcia Clark wants to do is blaze a trail at the people's expense,'' said Blair Bernholz, a West Los Angeles defense attorney. ``She needs to somehow connect with that jury, to make them identify with her and want her to win. ... Of course, the bigger message is that it's not acceptable to have a rigid, hard-charging, sometimes overly aggressive female prosecutor when it's perfectly acceptable in a man.''
Bernholz's description accurately sums up the pretrial Clark. Since then, as Estrich put it, the 41-year-old Clark has been ``motherized.'' After saying at the start that she wanted to keep her private life private, the mother of two recently held an impromptu news conference to talk about her young sons and how hard it is to go grocery shopping nowadays.
That led some other female lawyers to wonder whether reporters would take the personal tack with the defense lawyers - asking, say, who takes their children to the park.
``It's hard for me as a defense lawyer to be gracious about prosecutors, but the focus on her transformation has been, shall we say, a bit sexist,'' said Elisabeth Semel, a San Diego defense attorney and a former president of California Attorneys for Criminal Justice. ``But she's an easy target, because it wasn't at all subtle.''
But Robert Hirschhorn, a Texas-based jury consultant, insisted that it's simply good lawyering to meet the jury's expectations. There's no sexism involved. He said he often encourages male lawyers to ditch their slick suits for simpler garb and to win the jury's trust with warmth.
After all, the lawyers are selling themselves as well as their clients to jurors. And Clark is up against some likable lawyers in Shapiro, Gerald Uelmen and Johnnie L. Cochran Jr., among other members of the mostly male defense team.
``Gender doesn't matter; the Joe Friday approach doesn't matter,'' Hirschhorn said. ``If one side comes off as warm and folksy and the other side comes off as cold, the cold side is in trouble.
Still, no one is predicting that new clothes or lighter conversation alone will lead to a conviction. Some lawyers and jury consultants say it could even hurt Clark's case against Simpson, if the jury perceives her as phony.
In other words, female lawyers say, she could lose either way.
by CNB