Legora Inclusion & Diversity

Her Counsel held its first U.S. event: a gathering of women shaping the future of law, brought together not for panels or presentations, but for conversation. The room included women at every stage of their careers across private practice, in-house teams, and legal innovation.

At the center of the evening was Venus Williams — seven-time Grand Slam champion, entrepreneur, investor, and decades-long advocate for equal pay and opportunity. Venus knows what it means to fight for equal value in a system that wasn't built to measure it. And she knows that it takes to play the long game — the resilience, the reinvention, the choice to keep going when many would have stopped. For a room of women navigating exactly those experiences in law, hers was a voice that spoke directly to them. 

Women now represent over 40% of all attorneys in the United States. More than half of all associates are women. By the numbers, the pipeline looks healthier than it ever has. And yet the higher you go, the harder the data is to read with optimism. Women hold just over a quarter of equity partnerships. Less than a third of all partners are women. Just over 5% are women of color. Progress at entry is not the same as progress at the top, and that gap is precisely the space Her Counsel exists to fill.

The fight for what's right

Whether Venus was talking about inequality, Wimbledon, or her health, one principle threaded through everything: a refusal to let anyone else dictate the terms she lives by. “No matter what the situation, I just believe in living life on my own terms,” she said. “And even if the terms don't happen today, even if the loss is today, I just feel like my terms have to happen. I'm going to keep going until I can live on my terms.”

That quality has a name, at least among her sisters. They call it ‘what would Venus do?’ — a phrase that captures something specific: a quiet, immovable firmness that doesn't raise its voice but doesn't budge either. Her sister Isha, in the audience, explained it simply: “Venus is quiet, but extremely firm. She doesn’t let anything slide.” 

It's the same quality Venus brought to Wimbledon in 2006, when she made the case that the tournament's prize money should be equal. But her deeper reflection was on what it takes to shift culture, not just policy. When Zeynep pressed on the gap between winning the argument and winning the culture, Venus was clear: “Culture is a thing that either you agree to be a part of, or you don't.”

“There were a lot of men who didn't agree that we should have equal prize money. They self-selected out. But that didn't mean we couldn't achieve what we wanted to achieve, and we did. Those same men have mothers, sisters, daughters. They had no idea what they were saying, no idea of the ramifications on the people they love. They were condemning them to inequity.”