Dec 03 2008
Dress Code
When I was in law school, there was no dress code per se for students. We all dressed casually, just as we did in undergrad. That appears to have continued to the present time, based upon my personal observations during visits to Elon and other law schools. Generally, the only time a law student would be seen in business attire was during interview season.
Not so in law practice. When I began practicing in the 70’s in North Carolina, business attire (i.e., suit and tie for men, parallel attire for women) was the rule with few if any exceptions. Within the past several years, however, law practice attire in North Carolina appears to have morphed into something different. I am not sure exactly what — just that it is different.
Standards now vary from firm to firm. True, some law firms still require formal business dress. But, at other firms, one might find casual days, casual seasons, and even casual-all-the-time approaches, depending to a large measure on the image a particular firm wants to project (i.e formal, relaxed, sophisticated or whatever). Some firms simply let each attorney decide individually what he/she wants to wear, within an acceptable range of course, or let the attire de jure be determined by whether a client meeting or court appearance is scheduled for that particular day. This potpourri of standards does not seem to have any nexus to the size of the firm, the region (mountains, piedmont or coast), or whether the firm has multi-city presence or a singe-office location.
From what I have been able to determine, the change in law firm attire has occurred more as a recruiting tool than as an evolution in lawyers’ thinking about propriety of attire. That is to say that law firms think that more casual dress will appeal more to new prospective young lawyers than stogy business suits.
Ironically, I believe this trend started in Charlotte, which one might think would have been the last North Carolina city to favor increased informality. Counterintuitive or not, that is where I think it started, with a firm that will remain nameless, based on what a former managing partner of that firm told me.
One Response to “Dress Code”
But why are suits the uniform of lawyers – even out of the courtroom?
For most attorneys who litigate, appropriate “courtroom attire” is their most conservative, professional suit. Addressing a judge in court without a jacket on is a cardinal sin in the lawyering world. In such a formal setting, wearing a suit is both required and necessary.
But outside the courtroom, attorneys still choose to wear those conservative, professional suits on a daily basis. But if an attorney is just meeting with clients all day, why does he or she still choose to wear a suit? A suit is required in that setting, so wearing it has simply to do with what that suit means. Suits are associated with being professional, business-like, important, etc. What a suit is telling clients is that you have a skill which they do not – that you can do something important that they cannot. And clients have come to expect an attorney to be wearing a suit. It’s like a signal that the person is actually an attorney, without it they would just be like any other person.
What if attorneys stopped wearing suits when outside of the courtroom? Would society view the profession as any less professional? Would clients feel more relaxed or would they question an attorney’s competency? And how would it change the way an attorney thinks about his or her job? Maybe suits are just the way you dress for the part.