2023 Margaret Brent Award Honoree Video, Deborah Willig

DEBORAH R. WILLIG

MARGARET BRENT AWARD ACCEPTANCE SPEECH

Sorting through the photos and material that became that gracious video, I inevitably reflected on what and who brought me to this dais.

I grew up in a family where civil rights, women’s rights, and the power of labor unions were regular topics around our dinner table.

My dad, a delicatessen owner on a thriving street in North Philadelphia, raised more than a few eyebrows when he was the was the first on that business strip to hire Black employees. My grandfather, a union tailor, became his local union president. My mom belonged to AFSCME and my sister to the American Federation of Teachers.

My family taught me what mattered in life was to do the right thing. To fix a wrong, solve a problem, end an injustice.

I saw them live those values every day, which undoubtedly influenced my decision to pursue a career in the law. And given the benefits we enjoyed because of their union membership; it was no accident that I committed my professional life to representing working people.

Like them, I never set out to create a legacy…only to try to do the right thing. Doing the right thing in law school meant fighting for more women faculty, for a course on women in the law, and yes…even for a damn women’s room, which did not exist in the newly constructed Temple Law School building that opened in 1972.

It meant working to create the Committee to Elect Women Judges in 1983 and successfully doubling the number of women on Philadelphia’s trial court bench.

And it meant using my election as the first female Chancellor of the Philadelphia Bar Association in 1992 to advocate for significant changes to our profession.

At my installation, I said we were on the precipice of a revolution, and that revolutions are a concerted reaction to the unacceptable practices of an entrenched and intolerable status quo.

That revolution was fought all over this country — by many of the women in this room —and I believe that revolutions follow a consistent pattern.

Persist. Disrupt. Get it done.

It is a pattern repeated throughout our careers. It’s how we’ve changed the profession. Changed our firms. Changed lives.

It is somewhat surprising — and more than a little disappointing — that the pattern must continue. But we live in a time many of us thought we had left behind:

Today, it’s not whether the bathroom exists, but who has access to it.
Today, our right to vote is no longer sacrosanct. We must fight to ensure every American can cast a ballot that will count.

A year ago, we thought Roe v. Wade was the settled law of the land. Today we’re back to fighting over a woman’s right to make fundamental decisions about her own body.

And we continue to fight for a worker’s right to join a union.

In times like these, there is a pull to give in to darkness and fear. To throw up our hands and say it’s better to get out of the water than to let a riptide pull us out to sea.

But as Eleanor Roosevelt said, “it’s better to light a candle than to curse the darkness,” and what gives me hope is seeing so many people refusing to curse…or accept the darkness.

Our child Syd and their friends are lighting candles. They are leading a new activism that understands the intersectionality of civil rights, union rights, voting rights, abortion rights, LGBTQ+ rights and the Movement for Black Lives.

Their generation has reinvigorated the labor movement as their peers enter the workforce, see the need for significant change, and find power in collective action.

Think Amazon, Starbuck’s, women’s sports, cultural institutions Our firm recently has been involved in back-to back historic negotiations — very different on the surface, but remarkably similar at the core.

We negotiated the first-ever collective bargaining agreement for professional women soccer players — elite female athletes, far more successful than their male counterparts on the world stage. Immediately thereafter, we represented employees at the iconic Philadelphia Museum of Art, a mostly female bargaining unit earning far less than their peers at other U.S. Museums.

Professional athletes and cultural workers. Both subject to wage discrimination. Both saddled with unaffordable health care costs. Both regularly subjected to sexual harassment—and worse.

Both contracts addressed these issues and more, and I’m incredibly proud to have been part of these wins.

None of these achievements, however, would have been possible without the people who supported me throughout my career.

I have had many mentors along the way. Sadly, they are gone, but their influence continues.

Arline Jolles Lotman; Esther Polen; Judges Lisa Richette; Phyllis Beck, Dolores Korman Sloviter and Norma Shapiro. All firsts in their own right. I stand on their shoulders and hope I have — and will continue to — pay forward their guidance and support.

Our firm is one of the largest women-owned firms in the country. Together with founders Alaine Williams and Stuart Davidson — and partners Ralph Teti and Nancy McCauley —all of whom are here today —we built a firm that is inclusive, diverse, family- and part-time-friendly and frankly, a fun place to practice law. To persist, disrupt, and continue the revolution. Our younger colleagues and staff, including my right and left hands Jean and Betty Rogers are committed to our mission and bring new energy to the work.

For more than 43 years we have helped working people get justice and made sure they had representation equal to the powerful interests on the other side of the table. I am fortunate to be part of such a fabulous professional family.

My life partner, Katy, has taught me to see the world through less legal and more creative and cultured eyes, and our child, Syd has ushered me into the 21st century, teaching me the meaning of gender fluid and non-binary, and even that Jewish law has eight definitions of gender.

And last, but certainly not least, my friends, Bobbi Liebenberg, lawyer extraordinaire and a Brent Awardee herself, and Joann Epps, acting Temple University President, for their nomination… which was joined by so many other incredible people.

Heartfelt thanks to all. Without you, I would not be here.

I am truly thrilled and humbled to be part of the extraordinary Class of 2023 Margaret Brent Award winners and to be counted among the trailblazing women on the list of prior awardees.

I know it is our collective hope that those who follow in our footsteps will continue to strengthen the revolutionary pillars that have fueled my life’s work—to persist, to disrupt, to get it done.

Thank you.

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