Even when you’re just an intern, you end up hearing the good stories when you work for a judge—there’s one about Judge Holderman that involves the word “courvoisier” that I really like. But my favorite story is about him at an ISBA meeting.

The whole time he wore a name tag that read: “Paula Holderman’s Spouse.”

I couldn’t help but think of this story recently as I was reading about my future colleague in the Illinois bar, Kristin Pagano. (My best to Ms. Pagano and everyone else taking the February exam, by the way).

I was pleased by the Illinois Board of Admissions’ recent decision to accommodate Ms. Pagano, and, I hope, all breastfeeding mothers taking the bar exam going forward.

But it was also a noteworthy moment for Illinois lawyers, myself included—or at least it should have been. When originally denied her requested accommodation, the denial was basically premised on the fact that no one else had ever received extra time to breastfeed.

Which reminded me that, of course, I would never have needed to ask for extra time to breastfeed.

Sounds obvious, I’m sure. But that’s kind of the point.

When I was in law school, I attended a panel of four prominent, female judges. The topic of the panel was women in the law, so I think that there might have been five other men in the crowd besides me.

I remember being particularly struck by a story that Judge Virginia Kendall told: when she joined the US Attorney’s office in Chicago, she wanted to know what the office’s maternity leave policy was. It was easy to follow: they didn’t have one.

Because lawyers certainly think of themselves as more progressive than the general population, these sorts of stories are usually presented in past tense, but I know there’s more work to be done. I know because when Justice Ginsburg is asked how many women on the Supreme Court is enough, she replies “nine.”

And then the audience giggles instead of applauds.

“Diversity” too often becomes more buzzword than watchword in the legal profession and not enough attention is given to gender issues still at play.

By men, that is.

I’m no exception. I was flabbergasted when a friend of mine told me recently that when she interned in the counsel’s office of a federal agency in Chicago, she was only the second female attorney in the office.

I don’t mean at the same time, I mean ever.

I also went to a social event with some other lawyers recently. I went with my fiancée, who clerks for the honorable Rebecca Pallmeyer, is a graduate of Yale Law School, and in essentially every metric of the legal profession, is demonstrably more impressive than I. I’ll add that I came to the event from my casual-dress office in a t-shirt, jeans, and hoodie.

It knocked me over how many male lawyers met my fiancée and me that night and focused their attention entirely on me.

It bears continual remembrance that the Illinois bar felt so strongly that Myra Bradwell was not fit to practice law that they went all the way to the Supreme Court to stop her, or any other women, from being allowed to practice in this state. That Ms. Bradwell’s case was lost in 1873 should not be used as evidence that there isn’t a problem anymore. In fact, there are still lots of problems—and not every one of them is as headline-grabbing as Ms. Pagano’s recent request.

At one of the large firms in Chicago, there was a panel for how to get ahead within the firm, as a woman. The panel was composed entirely of men.

Kudos to them, by the way, for volunteering. But to whomever designed the panel, I ask what message does it send to your female associates that there aren’t female partners in that room? Notably, there is no panel for how to get ahead in the firm as man.

These more subtle moments add up—like the men at a networking event who pick conversation with me over conversation with a federal clerk and one of Yale’s top graduates.

When we were going home after this particular event, I was surprised and angered by the behavior of my male peers and what I perceived to be them slighting my fiancée in a professional setting. But what really got to me (and spurred me to even want to write about it) was that she wasn’t surprised at all. She had, after all, been asked while in the federal courthouse if she was a secretary, and we’re pretty sure that doesn’t happen to the male law clerks in that building.

It’s these moments for female attorneys that often go unnoticed by men (again, myself included) that add up to a serious and, to me, embarrassing gender gap in the law. In the Southern District of Illinois, there have only ever been two female federal judges confirmed by the Senate, and they were both confirmed in the last year. The number of female equity partners has gone up from 15.63% to 17% in the last 13 years.

Young lawyers especially need to be noticing the gender issues because paying attention to those disparities is necessary in order for the landscape to change. But our “enlightened” millennial generation is so supposedly tolerant that I worry that we’ll be the ones to ignore the issue and end up making no meaningful progress.

The reason I love the story about the nametag isn’t the handful of lawyers who had no idea that they were also talking to the chief judge of the local federal court (although that part’s kind of funny, too). I like the story because gender equality in the law isn’t just an issue for female attorneys. It’s something that every lawyer needs to be concerned with, and about half of us need to pick up a little more slack.

As a member of the Young Lawyer’s Division, when I think about what we should be doing as an organization, I measure every proposal against two simple benchmarks: Will it make it easier to be a young lawyer and will it make it more rewarding to practice law? A focus on gender equality in the legal profession can do both. ■

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This article was originally published in the February 2015 issue of the ISBA's Young Lawyer's Division newsletter.