I returned a few hours ago from the Legally Female Conference, which is described on the official conference website as “a collaboration between Yale Law Women and the national blog, Ms. JD, that explores the status of women in the legal profession.”

I had been particularly looking forward to an afternoon panel entitled “Technology as a Tool: Changing What it Means to be a Woman in the Law.” I had hoped the speakers would address some ways in which technology has helped expand women’s choices within the legal profession.

Unfortunately, two of the three speakers didn’t really provide any information that was useful (or even of interest to me) about this topic. The first speaker was a very angry feminist who showed a number of powerpoint slides of web images she considers to be offensive, and slipped in a comment at the end of her 10 minutes about how you can use the internet to voice your opinions. The third speaker was less angry, but very theory-heavy.

The remaining speaker was Cathy Kirkman, a partner at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati in Palo Alto, California who writes the Silicon Valley Media Law Blog. She explained how she has used technology over the past 12 years or so to establish herself as an expert in her field.

One observation that struck home with me was her comment that, in the mid-1990s, it was hard for her, as a mother of a one-year old, to get away for a day and network on the golf course. She could, however, find time to publish a newsletter in her area of expertise, and worked on it while her son napped. She laid out the progression of her platform from faxed newsletter to listserv, to articles in the traditional media, to her own blog and a writing gig at LawCrossing.com.

The most valuable part of Kirkman’s presentation was her assertion that technology enables you to move your own intellectual capital from place to place and also empowers women to be businesswomen. I have certainly found that to be the case in my own practice.

One of the most important ways technology has benefitted my practice is that it has allowed me to develop relationships with both male and female colleagues around the country, who I never would have met but for the internet. The conference provided me with the opportunity to see three amazing colleagues who I first met online: Carolyn Elefant of MyShingle and Law.com’s Legal Blog Watch and Susan Cartier Liebel of Build a Solo Practice, LLC (both of whom I’ve gotten together with before), as well as Brandy Karl of bk!.

Kathy Brandt, a trial lawyer and fellow mycophile, was also the conference, and told me that she just made partner at her firm. Way to go Kathy!