“If you don’t ask for a raise, and you don’t know where your money is going, you’re starting from behind and you may never catch up,” Mirman continued.

Mirman helped to create Mirman, Markovits & Landau, P.C. in 1991 and has been active within the Brooklyn Women’s Bar Association and the NYS Trial Lawyers Association in recent years. She has said that over the years she has often heard women attorneys complain about their salaries and their job opportunities for decades and decided that she would help change that as president of the association.

“All year long this is what I’ve done since the first CLE — how do you get more money? How do you ask for more money? How do we negotiate?” Mirman said. “Women must take responsibility for their own life and their own money. That’s what this comes down to.”

Part of what Mirman is trying to do is to use the momentum women have gained from the #MeToo movement to inspire women attorneys. It’s not always easy, but it’s something she’s passionate about.

“We don’t even invest our own money,” she said. “Sometimes we expect our fathers and husbands to do that, or our brothers, we need to take control of our lives and move forward so that we can make more money and not have to worry at the end of our lives about how we take care of ourselves. I think that every woman who I promote to make more money and to be better helps me too. It gives me more dignity.”

For Thursday’s lecture, Mirman invited attorney J. Richard Supple and chartered financial analyst Lauren Lambert to discuss finances, both personal and how to help clients. The lecture lasted about two hours, which Lambert admitted was not enough time for everything, but she hoped that at least some women left the meeting with a different mindset.

“In working with my clients, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard a woman say when I ask about their 401k, ‘Oh, I don’t know. I don’t pay attention to that, I’m not interested,’” Lambert said. “But of course they’re interested. It’s about their future and their money.”

Part of the problem, Lambert said, was that attitudes about money can be ingrained from generations. She said, for instance, that some people had to hide their jewelry when they immigrated to America which can lead to money trauma for their children decades later.

Mirman said that she hopes that the group continues to help women focus on aspects of their lives that, while not directly related to their careers, will help them decrease the wage gap between men and women in the legal community. She said she plans on continuing her efforts a year from now when she takes over as president of the NYS Trial Lawyers Academy.

“If you want to be a successful attorney, part of that is taking control of money,” Mirman said.

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