Women lawyers have to fight against many prejudices, such as the fact that they do not have a strong voice, that they are too sensitive. Lawyer in the prestigious Temime law firm, Julia Minkowski co-wrote the book with Lisa Vignoli The lawyer was a woman (JC Lattès, 192 pages, 18 €), in which she asked brilliant sisters to tell the story that most marked them in their lives. One way to showcase the talent of these penalists.
Are women conquering their place in the courtrooms?
Yes, but it is not easy. Modernity is struggling to enter it. There are a lot of traditions, we use old-fashioned expressions… At the Paris bar, 52% are women. There are many more at the entrance, but many leave after ten years. It is a precarious profession and for women, it is more difficult to achieve a certain level of remuneration, reputation, clientele.
Is that why you co-founded the Club des femmes penalistes?
We were fed up with hearing that a woman does not have the shoulders to be a penalist, the voice that carries, the necessary availability since she has to take care of her children. That she is too sensitive to deal with bloody matters, too cowardly to face certain clients …
What does the club do?
We get together, organize conferences like “The presumption of innocence put to the test by #MeToo”. At the beginning we were laughed at by the confreres, but it made them think.
What prompted you to write a book about these top lawyers at the bar?
When you ask people to quote lawyers, they always quote men. Apart Gisèle Halimi. But it is as if she had been given a place because she was dealing with women’s rights.
Even she, a colleague reproaches her for not having a sufficiently audible voice: “Gisèle was a good activist, but as a lawyer, it was zero! “
It corresponds to the collective unconscious. A criminal lawyer is a man with an imposing physique, with a big voice, who growls, is indignant. The day you face justice, it feels like you’re going to be swallowed raw by an ogre. To defend yourself, you want someone who imposes it.
One of the lawyers, Marie Dosé, explains it well.
She says : “I arrive with my meter 60 and my 45 kg, they do not take me. “ But once the chosen tenor is outraged, and has too much business to take good care of his client, a fellow inmate says to him: “Me, my lawyer comes to see me every week, we have worked well. “ And she recovers the files.
What is important is the form or the substance?
Both ! There are legal arguments, but also a certain violence to be faced. And women can do it.
In a courtroom, do we have to win?
Yes, but it does not go through the physical. It’s an attitude, you need authority to be heard in front of the judge, to know how to say stop, to enforce the rules.
Do you also have to impose yourself on the customer?
He is in a desperate situation. He wants the specialist, not the internal! However, he often has the impression that the lawyer is the intern …
Do lawyers believe that women are no match for certain clients?
Some of those who have a clientele of traffickers find that they are too impressive for them …
But isn’t a lawyer supposed to be afraid of his client?
It happens. Guy Georges’ lawyer, Frédérique Pons, says she was a little scared. But many men would have had the same feeling!
There is also a lot of tears in the book.
These dramatic cases arouse emotion. I often wanted to cry in court. Cécile de Oliveira, lawyer in Nantes, consulted a shrink to arrest. Frédérique Baulieu says “We cry alone, certainly not in the courtroom!” “ Céline Lasek, Bertrand Cantat’s lawyer, cried during a hearing. She felt a nudge from her boss, Olivier Metzner. He was asking her for a handkerchief!
All of these women have a mentor.
Yes, it is a profession in which traditions, practices and ethics are passed on… These duos are very rich. These mentors are like fathers, they were sometimes built against, but there was never a breakup. I hope there will be female mentors soon.
And yours ?
I was very lucky to meet Herve Temime, it is the least misogynist of all! He taught me to have immense self-confidence. He told me “Now that you have the dress, you are no less than the colleague against whom you are going to plead and who has twenty-five years in the bar”.
Some eclipse their mentor, like Frédérique Pons, Guy Georges’ lawyer!
Yes, it was about her ex-husband. At the end of the film about Guy Georges, where Nathalie Baye was playing his role, he didn’t speak to her for three years.
A woman defending a serial killer of women is unusual! And frowned upon …
People confuse the lawyer with his client. It is even less understandable that a woman assists someone who has attacked a woman. Frédérique Baulieu, lawyer for Dominique Strauss-Kahn, tells how people have turned their backs on her. But you are defending someone who is accused of rape, not rape.
Has this happened to you?
I defended a doctor accused of rape and sexual assault by eighteen women. For three weeks, I had eighteen pairs of eyes fixed on me with strong hostility.
Is there a lot of misogyny in the business, like this lawyer who calls a colleague a “curly casserole”?
Yes. There is also the slightly heavy flirtation, which I expect even less when I put on my dress. While one of my colleagues told me, at a renowned criminal lawyer, stories amounting to sexual harassment. But the new generation is much more radical than the old one, which forbade itself to complain.
Sometimes, too, women censor themselves, like Jacqueline Laffont, chosen by Charles Pasqua.
She would never have dared to offer herself. Him, we discover that he was a bit of a feminist before his time!
And you, the business of your life?
The Maurice Agnelet case, a legal epic, which I lived from 2007 to 2014. With the son who ends up declaring that his father had confessed to him having killed Agnès Leroux. We were accompanying the family of the victim, who had been searching for the truth for forty years. It’s one of the times when Hervé Temime cried… and not me!
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