Lila G. Roomberg, groundbreaking Philadelphia lawyer, mentor, and women’s advocate, dies at 93

Lila G. Roomberg, 93, of Philadelphia, one of the city’s first female law firm partners, one of the first Jewish partners at a historically Christian firm, a mentor to many, and a fiery advocate for women’s rights, died Wednesday, March 17, of dementia at home.

Ms. Roomberg became the first female partner and first Jewish partner at Ballard, Spahr, Andrews & Ingersoll in 1971, and current Ballard Spahr chair Mark S. Stewart called her a “legend here” and a “remarkable leader and mentor.”

Over her 20-year career as a partner at the firm, Ms. Roomberg won the Philadelphia Bar Association’s 2000 Sandra Day O’Connor Award as the outstanding woman attorney in the Philadelphia area, the Pennsylvania Bar Association’s 2002 Anne X. Alpern Award for significant professional impact on women in the law, and, in 2010, the first-ever Lifetime Achievement Award from the Pennsylvania Bar Association Commission on Women in the Profession.

In 2017, Ballard Spahr named a conference room on the 48th floor of its Philadelphia office in her honor.

Ms. Roomberg was best known, however, as a “mother and mentor” to other women. She showed aspiring women lawyers how to dress, act, and react in the male-dominated workplace. She supported better child day-care centers, flextime, and job-sharing initiatives for all workers.

It was important, she told others, to laugh often and not take yourself too seriously. It was possible, she said, to be simultaneously feminine, tough, and successful. But never expect special treatment, Ms. Roomberg said.

She held networking lunches for women of many professions at her Center City home, and made her Sunday night Chinese dinners for all Ballard Spahr colleagues a must-attend event. Women said they sought to work at the firm because Ms. Roomberg was there.

“She always leaned down to help others,” Stewart said.

“She felt it was her duty, and also her joy, to assist other women,” her family wrote in a tribute.

Ms. Roomberg was born Oct. 21, 1927, in Brooklyn. She graduated from Erasmus Hall High School, New York University, and New York University Law School. It had been her goal to graduate from law school since she was 10, and she worked for a time as a payroll clerk in a necktie factory to make it happen.

She married Larry Simon in 1950, and they moved to Cherry Hill. She had trouble finding work in the male-dominated legal field. But Ballard, Spahr, Andrews & Ingersoll hired her in 1959 as a clerk and librarian. She then rose to become a contract lawyer, and then a partner in 1971.

Her specialty was public finance, and she was involved in financing more than 75 health-care facilities in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Florida.

“I didn’t face discrimination” at Ballard Spahr, she said in a 1990 article in The Inquirer. “It may have taken the partnership time to get used to me. Maybe it took me even longer to get used to them.”

She and Simon divorced in 1965. He died in 2001. She married Jerry Roomberg in 1982, and they lived in Philadelphia. He died in 1995.

Ms. Roomberg published Turning Adversaries Into Allies in the Workplace in 1999, and she loved to tell stories of her experiences, such as chasing down a mugger, and refusing to be cowed at male-only private lawyers’ clubs. Perhaps her favorite tale was the one about a doorman at the Union League of Philadelphia who tried to stop her from leaving an event through the front door.

“They tried to send me through the kitchen,” she said in the 1990 Inquirer article. ”Egged on by some of my partners, I told the doorman that if he didn’t let me out I’d strip off my clothes and go screaming into Broad Street.”

He let her out.

“She was a wonderful role model,” said her daughter, Virginia Simon. “Because of her, I never thought there was anything I couldn’t do.”

In addition to her daughter, Ms. Roomberg is survived by stepchildren Leon, Lisa, Rob, and Barry Roomberg; two grandchildren; 13 step-grandchildren; and other relatives.

A private service was held March 18.