THE DOYENNE OF DORSEY
Dorsey & Whitney’s Marianne Short on what it’s like to manage
one of the state’s largest firms, her role as a leading female
pioneer, and lessons learned from a certain vice president
INTERVIEW CONDUCTED AND EDITED BY ADAM WAHLBERG
MARIANNE SHORT GIVES CAREER ADVICE
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Q: You just started your second stint as
managing partner.
A: Yes, I’m half into it.
Q: I imagine the hours you keep are
difficult. Do you still find the law as
enjoyable as ever?
A: Oh, I love the law. You have to have a
passion for it or you wouldn’t put up with
some of the other things that go along
with it. It’s just fascinating; it’s how we all
live together in a crowded world. You have
to love it, it has to energize, and then you
have to really respect it because it takes so
much time and energy.
Q: You come from a family of lawyers.
Was the law always something you were
drawn to?
A: Yes, there are seven kids in our family,
and five of us are lawyers. My father was
a lawyer, although he practiced for a
short time in Washington, D.C., in the
U.S. attorney’s office, and then here in
Minnesota; and then went into business.
Q: And you loved it from your law school
days?
A: You know, I loved it even in high school. I
worked over at Dayton’s in summers in high
school, and would go over at lunchtime
and watch at the courthouse lawyers do
arguments and cases. So I don’t know if it
was Nancy Drew books or Perry Mason TV
shows or what it was, but I just loved the
drama of the courtroom and the excitement
and intellectual challenge and surprise. I
think those aspects are still the ones that
keep me going even today.
Q: I want to talk about gender in the
Minnesota legal community. Is it a
surprise to you that it still seems pretty
rare for a woman to be a managing
partner at a firm?
A: No, I think, just because of the age gap
that we’re talking about. In my class in law
school, and I went to Boston College Law
School and graduated in ’ 76, and there
were about 20 women in my class of 200.
And if you go into a law school now and
take a look, there are almost all half and
half [men and women]. If you look [at] a law
firm, you will see not a whole lot of senior
women in law, either because there were
other opportunities, like they are off on the
bench or they’re the CEO of a company
somewhere or some other great job, or they
chose a different career path because of the
complication of children—when we were
coming up without technology to help us
be able to work from home and things like
that. So there isn’t the depth to draw from
necessarily in the group, and I think that’s
some of the reflection you see on boards
right now. But I think in a blink, in two years,
there will be a totally different perspective
looking at boards, with women in seats
of responsibility. I think you see it now in
partnership ranks. Here at Dorsey, there are
so many women in the fifth- to seventh-year
group. They’ve all matriculated up, and our
last four years, entry classes have been half
and half, women and men. So it’s a huge
boost compared to when I was coming [up]
in the mid-’80s. When I became a managing
partner here at Dorsey in the AMLAW 100,
I think there were three [women] at the
time—four years ago—and now I think there
are 10 at least [with] equivalence of titles like
managing partner. Still, I sometimes caution
