FEATURE Women Rising in White-Collar Defense By Sarah Kellogg B 22 WASHINGTON LAWYER * MARCH/APRIL 2025 ack in 1999, during an American Bar Association conference on white-collar crime, Karen Popp of Sidley Austin LLP noticed very few women lawyers in attendance and hardly any on the panels. At the time, Popp had just left the government, where several strong, prominent women held positions of power, so it was surprising for her to find there weren't more women in the private sector. Susan Bozorgi experienced the same sense of isolation when she entered private practice in 2000. " I was one of the few women criminal defense lawyers in private practice, " says Bozorgi, partner at Bozorgi Law PLLC and founder of the Women Criminal Defense Attorneys blog. In 2015 Bozorgi wrote " Finally Statistics for Criminal Defense " after the ABA Commission on Women and the American Bar Foundation published the report First Chairs at Trial: More Women Need Seats at the Table. The " first of its kind " study found that of women appearing as lead coun