“I have found that a successful legal career requires not only hard work, but also a supportive environment within a firm, flexibility and keeping your sense of humor,” Chicago attorney Debbie Schavey Ruff tells Di Mari Ricker in Student Lawyer (April). Ruff certainly needed her sense of humor in her first job out of law school, at what Ricker describes as “Chicago’s second-largest patent boutique firm. In its 93-year history, the firm had never had a woman partner; nor had a female associate ever stayed at the firm more than three years.” According to Ruff, “Women lawyers weren’t assigned to high-profile matters. One member of the firm’s management committee actually referred to women attorneys as ‘short-hitters.’”
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“Shoring up the state’s ethical and campaign finance infrastructure is as important as mending its bridges and roadways,” insists the Illinois Campaign Reform Coalition in a recent press release urging Governor Ryan to help enact contribution limits in state election campaigns, along with full financial disclosure, fair campaign practices, and a statewide voters’ guide. No word on whether the coalition will support him if he strengthens Illinois’ “ethical infrastructure” in the same way he strengthened its physical infrastructure–by giving enough legislators enough local pork projects to buy their votes.
“Since the reporters who write about schools rarely spend much time in schools, they are still repeating handouts from the people on top,” writes Dan Van Zile in Substance (June), “or being steered in the right directions by the people on top after being given handouts–like a bunch of kids with Word Find puzzles on substitute day–so they can keep busy. A quarter of a century ago, the handouts were even about how a Mayor Daley and his handpicked schools chief were doing great things. During the 1970s, that mayor was Richard J. Daley and that suave schools chief was Joseph Hannon. Today the Richard Daley has a different middle initial, and the schools chief is Paul Vallas.”
