Lisa A. Dunner was appointed in August by the ABA President to the Commission on Women in the Profession.  She is the first member of the ABA Section of Intellectual Property Law to be appointed to this prestigious group.

The Commission is comprised of twelve members and its mission is to secure the full and equal participation of women in the ABA, the legal profession, and the justice system.  The Commission was created in August 1987 to assess the status of women in the legal profession, identify barriers to advancement, and recommend to the ABA actions to address problems identified. Hillary Rodham Clinton, the first chair of the Commission, set the pace for the Commission to change the face of the legal profession by issuing a groundbreaking report in 1988 showing that women lawyers were not advancing at a satisfactory rate. From this report, the Commission found that a variety of discriminatory barriers remained a part of the professional culture, the significant increase in the number of women attorneys would not eliminate these barriers and a thorough reexamination of the attitudes and structures in the legal profession was needed.