Recap: In 2016, there was an attorney promotion opportunity. The purpose was to achieve parity in attorney salaries with the prosecutors. Staff attorneys from all divisions were invited to apply for newly created “senior attorney” positions. Sixty nine attorneys submitted applications.
The selection of seniors was supposed to be based on objective criteria. Applications were parsed by review teams. The review teams, at a minimum, carefully analyzed applications and writing samples, considered applicants’ personnel files, interviewed the applicants and their coworkers, and weighed the comments that all DPD employees had been invited to submit. To be as impartial as possible, each four person review team contained a TDAD supervisor, an ACA supervisor, a SCRAPD supervisor, and a NDAD supervisor. The idea was to recognize merit and avoid cronyism. Based on their careful review, the review teams awarded points to the applicants they reviewed and it was generally assumed applicants with the thirty-five highest scores would be selected for the thirty-five senior positions.
However, the scores awarded by the review teams could be changed by super majority vote of the full selection committee. Managing attorneys were allowed to request an adjustment, up or down, of an applicant’s score.
At TDAD, after the initial ranking of applicants, arguments were made by our managing attorney, Rick Lichtenstadter, to increase the scores of seven TDAD attorneys, six of them male, one female. For the lone female applicant, Lichtenstadter asked for her score to be increased by only one-half point. Since she was originally ranked number 50 by the full committee, one-half point left her far out of the top thirty-five promotion spots.
TDAD management moved to reduce scores of seven TDAD attorneys, six of them female, one male. The lone male applicant was not among the top 35 to begin with so the reduction in points could not change his outcome.
Lichtenstadter advocated that four male TDAD attorneys ranked beneath the promotion cut off be given enough additional points to be promoted. He was successful in moving one male attorney from seven slots below the cut off into the promoted group. He did not ask for any female TDAD attorneys to be elevated to the promoted group.
Three TDAD women who were originally ranked 24, 25, and 34, (within the promoted group) were downgraded in rank to 38, 39, and 48, (beneath promotion). To be clear, absent motions by TDAD leadership to reduce their scores, these three TDAD women, including me, were among the top 35 applicants who would have been promoted.
No male TDAD attorneys (or any other division’s male attorneys) were removed from the promoted group.
After all the adjustments, five male TDAD applicants and four female TDAD applicants were given senior attorney positions. (Prior to Lichtenstadter’s meddling, seven TDAD women and four TDAD men were among the top thirty-five scored applicants and should have been promoted). Once the scores were finally adjusted, managing attorneys assigned each newly designated senior attorney to one of four pay levels with level four being the highest paid. Although they all had greater scores than some of the promoted male attorneys, Lichtenstadter placed three of TDAD’s four female seniors at level one, the lowest salary. None of the five male seniors were placed at level one. One male senior was placed at level two, three male seniors were placed at level three along with one female senior, and a male senior was awarded the only level four at TDAD. To be clear, Lichtenstadter awarded five of the six highest pay slots to male seniors regardless of their scores or women’s higher scores.
The only female senior Lichtenstadter allowed above the bottom pay slot was placed at level three. Her score, even after Lichtenstadter’s adjustments, was higher than the male attorney to whom Lichtenstadter awarded the only senior level four position.
Next: Real money and how gender bias in TDAD’s senior selection will punish TDAD women for the rest of their lives.
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Observations 