"If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation."
Abigail Adams, letter to husband John Adams, March 31, 1776
Diary of My Disastrous Law Career: From Harvard to Heaven Help Me
Chapter 6
I'm often asked why I left the law, after graduating from Harvard College and Harvard Law School and then practicing law at large firms in Germany and the US, and whether I would ever go back to being a lawyer. The short answers are: to save my life, and no! The longer answers are in this blog of memoirs, which, by the way, I hadn't intended to write. I sat down to write something else, which wouldn't come, and these memories from 20 years ago started flooding out instead. I guess it's time!
Sometimes I am also asked what it was like specifically to be a woman lawyer. This blog answers that question, too. This particular post also goes into details of what it was like to work with other women in those days. It's interesting to note that as a woman who quit the law, I am not a rarity; a recent Harvard study shows women leave law firms at a higher rate than men.
I've always felt a sisterhood with other women, such as when I realized that women were paid less, and harassed more. Yet, I didn't always perceive a belief in sisterhood from my sisters at law, so to speak, as divide-and-conquer is an ancient strategy that also worked in law firms in the late 1990s and early 2000s. For example, some women felt competitive with other women, or simply stressed, because the male-dominated law firms, and my law school, didn't have room for many women. A related issue was that most of the women at the law firm were secretaries (legal assistants or administrative assistants are more common terms today), so that the statistical model of a "woman in the law," you might say, was an administrative assistant; a woman lawyer was still anomalous. In addition, many male lawyers had wives at home, so the statistical model of a woman was an at-home wife or a secretary, someone to take care of you and do the behind-the-scenes work. Do such matters further divide women, such as if women lawyers strive for respect that our secretary sisters don't receive? And, why did male allies at the firm seem to be quite silent back then? Desire for power? Habit and inertia due to the social order?
I experienced some sisterhood at law school; we were a beleaguered band of women at Harvard Law during the "nasty '90s," and to me this was a severe contrast to the joyful and intellectually focused experiences I had at Harvard College. Today, 50% of Harvard Law students are women; back then it was around half that, with few women faculty, a Dean who didn't want to discuss diversity and was perceived by many of us as misogynistic, and we had shall we say energetic controversy around all areas of diversity and inclusion. We had some aggressive male antagonists who were supported by the Dean or at least not disciplined by him, and we also had some wonderful male allies at school. I've already written a little bit about law school earlier in this blog, and more is to come below and in future!
Was any of this gender bias helping me feel healthy and fulfilled, in jobs where I already disliked the work and the attitudes of many of my colleagues? No, of course not. Was this all ultimately somehow part of my personal, professional, and even spiritual growth? Well, let the disaster recollection continue!
Lawyer Job 3: Chicago (continued) and New York
Women junior partner episodes
When I interviewed for the job at one of Chicago's largest and most prestigious law firms that we've been discussing in the past two posts plus this post, one of the attorneys I interviewed with was a female junior partner. She seemed very nice, if ultra tense, and said that she hoped I'd join the firm and we'd have lunch and talk and keep in touch. Would she be my hoped-for mentor? No. I joined the firm, we never had lunch, we never had another talk, and we never kept in touch. Whenever I reached out to her, she was always too busy to talk or have lunch. And that was the end of that.
I started to get to know another female junior partner, who seemed nice if ultra focused. She called me at one point and said she had work for me; generally a good thing career-wise, and, I thought, a good way to bond with another woman at the firm. The problem: the project had to be done over the weekend, and I was exhausted and looking forward to sleeping 20 hours that weekend -- 20 hours each day if possible -- to make up for a maximum of 5 hours of sleep per day during the week. I was also supposed to see friends that Saturday for a sort of annual reunion. I told her I was at capacity, as I had sometimes told male attorneys too, and that frankly I was exhausted and needed to take the weekend off, while also seeing some friends who were planning a once-a-year event. She asked why I needed to take the whole weekend off. I reiterated that I was simply burnt out and had to find a way to replenish and would there be any way for me to start the project on Monday or perhaps supervise a paralegal in the meantime? She got angry and never gave me work again. There's our theme again of my perception that vulnerability or sharing of any personal details in the workplace was a negative or would be used against me, and our theme that my law firm wanted robots, not humans.
Then there was the woman junior partner who did what all big firms had a legend of some woman doing: she worked straight through her pregnancy, left the office and had a baby one night, and was back at work in the office the next day. It's true; I was on a deal with her when it happened. She was a little bit later than usual the morning after giving birth, but she still came in. I couldn't manage to work the next day after having my wisdom teeth pulled or having a miscarriage (see two posts back, "Sweet Home Chicago: Was My Job Killing Me?"), and was amazed at this woman's physical fortitude and mental attitude. If that's what she wanted to do, fine. But how many people want to do that? Or are physically able to do that? And what kind of expectation does it set up for others who might have different priorities, child care situations, or health concerns? What kind of competition does it set up for women? It was as if the power of the feminine to give birth and be a portal for another soul were merely a nuisance to be ignored, as any sort of authentic feminine expression except for the smile of a pretty young secretary enjoyed by male lawyers seemed at this firm to be a nuisance to be ignored, and as if work were more important than anything else. Did I want to be a partner like her at a place like this?
The junior partner who gave birth one day and was back at her desk the next day was actually relatively decent to work with; that is, she was gruff, quick to judge, and sometimes unkind, yet no more so than the men. While she was exceedingly demanding of others, she apparently placed those same standards upon herself, and in that way I suppose could be regarded as fair.
There were a handful of other female junior partners I worked with at this firm of 375 lawyers (the firm is even larger today) who seemed stable and kind, yet most of them did always seem exhausted. I applauded personally when two of them later left separately to start their own firms. I even interviewed with one of them at one point, but realized that while I respected her values in terms of the types of clients she wanted to represent, not just large corporations who sometimes made vast amounts of money through the sale of harmful products, I didn't want the same painfully intense work pace, or extreme overwork, which it was clear her firm would replicate.
It seemed to me by the way that junior partner was almost the worst job at the firm. Junior partners were paid more than associates (with men still being paid more than women according to the spreadsheet a secretary accidentally left by a copy machine one day; full disaster in the previous post), yet it wasn't free money: junior partners often worked even more hours than associates. As a junior partner, you had the pressures of partnership without the rewards of ownership, as you were still an employee. And, you could be stuck in junior partner purgatory forever, or until you quit or were asked to leave, never moving up to full equity partner. Was the relatively new junior partner level another way for firms to prevent too many people from diluting the equity partner ranks and profits per partner? In a sense, it had to be, because the firm's hierarchical and financial model couldn't hold up otherwise. Numbers of attorneys grew until a recession, and then layoffs started happening or no new lawyers were hired. Firms were being run more and more like their big corporate clients, with labor -- human beings -- seen as an expense, not an investment. With all of that in mind, plus the fact that I didn't like the work I was doing or the environment in which I was doing it, did I even want to make partner, even if I had a chance, which it seemed I did not? And if I did not want to move up, what was I doing there; what was the goal?
Women senior partner episodes
There were 6 female equity partners at the firm at that time, out of a total of 100 equity partners. (This was not unlike the ratio of female to male Harvard Law professors at the time.) One was in a different department, which she chaired, but we were on the same floor. I made it a point to get to know her a bit, and found her always cheerful and kind even though she seemed exceedingly busy, always squeezing in one more email, one more phone call, before breezing off to one more meeting.
The other woman senior partner I got to know was a corporate partner -- corporate was my department -- and I sought her out too. She was incredibly smart and well-organized. She was not a screamer like some of the male senior partners, who screamed and shouted at associates, creating what to me was an aggressive and unpleasant environment. I did a lot of work for her, and learned a great deal from her, including some of what she sacrificed to reach her position, and what she sacrificed to keep it.
For example, the firm was founded in Chicago, and she was originally based in the firm's New York satellite office, but one of her partners there forced her out. How could one equity partner force another equity partner out of her own city? Well, it happened, and she took up residence at a hotel in walking distance to the Chicago office. I asked if I could help her find a house or apartment in Chicago, but she said no. She was very well-organized not only in work matters but in matters of hotel and airline points and reservations; this was a lesson that would serve me well in the law, and in my life and businesses after the law!
Because some of her deals were New York-based, I went with her to New York to observe and assist as she led one of these transactions, which was part of a series of around a dozen similar and similarly complicated transactions involving mountains of contracts and ancillary documents and tax opinions. (If anyone else remembers aircraft leveraged lease deals, hey!) After that, I was able to handle the closings myself in the rest of the series, which freed her up to develop other projects; we were a successful team in that way. So, just as she commuted to Chicago for her career, I spent a winter commuting to New York during the week and back home to Chicago on the weekends. Time for some New York stories and disasters:
As soon as I met or rather crossed paths with the managing partner of the New York office, I could see why the female senior partner he forced out of the office might actually be more content not to be around him: what a screamer. I never actually had a conversation with this man, just heard and saw him screaming and shouting at lawyers and staff, and not just inside his office as was the custom in Chicago -- a more genteel form of rudeness? -- but in the corridors and lobby. In my opinion, this was not only rude but tacky. I believed that screaming at your team is not the way I wanted to run a business if I ever had that opportunity, whether behind semi-closed doors or out in the open.
Speaking of screaming, an associate at the other side's law firm on these New York transactions tried screaming at me. This was not only unacceptable to me, as was having a partner scream at me, but thoroughly ridiculous. Backing up a bit: normally, our firm would have held closings and meetings at our offices, because we represented the party funding the deal, and the agreements were on our paper so to speak, meaning that we initiated the contracts and ancillary documents (which I got to help draft, and re-draft, and re-draft, and re-draft). But because our female senior partner had been forced out of the NYC office, she sometimes either couldn't use our conference rooms there, or chose not to, or maybe they were just often booked up as that office was smaller than the Chicago office, which had an entire floor of conference rooms plus conference rooms on every floor of offices. So, we went to the office of the lawyers representing the main party on the other side of the transaction, and held meetings and closings in one of their conference rooms. The female senior partner had delegated this particular closing to me so was not there herself. Her client was there, an executive at one of the largest corporations in America, seated at the conference room table and going over some of his own documents. Suddenly the other side's associate -- my counterpart -- came up to me and started shouting at me, in front of my firm's client, to do this and do that and how could I have done this and what was wrong with me for doing that. First of all, I had done nothing wrong and everything right. Secondly, he wouldn't really know that because as far as I could tell he wasn't doing much work at all on the deal, and while I was the same associate from our side on every deal in this series, their side sent a different associate each time, who didn't have a sense of the scope or details of the project. Thirdly, he was shouting at me in front of my client; this New York style of open bullying was as mentioned even more repugnant to me than private bullying though both are intolerable. Finally, did I mention I cannot tolerate bullying!
If he had been a screamer partner at my own firm, I would have done what I did in such instances: waited for the screamer to finish, then told him that I couldn't work as effectively toward the client's goals in this kind of environment, and asked him if we could find a more positive method of communication. Sometimes this worked, and sometimes it didn't! In this case however, I confess I didn't take quite such a high ground, perhaps because I really had nothing to lose, and also because this associate seemed to me to be an immature kid (actually some of the partners seemed like that too) who couldn't even back up his words with any substance whatsoever. He was all hot air, as we said, and not even convincing. I told this obnoxious associate that he was to stop bullying and shouting and ordering around and carrying on immediately, that if he ever spoke with me in such a tone again I would file a complaint with the attorney registration and disciplinary committee which even if it were ultimately dismissed because no one around here seemed to have manners better than you'd find at a street fight I would press forward to the very end so that he would have to face consequences with his firm and on his record, that he was never to disrespect me especially in front of my firm's client who was essentially lending his firm's client hundreds of millions of dollars in a deal much too complex for this associate to begin to comprehend, and that my firm's client could certainly find someplace else to invest their hundreds of millions of excess dollars and how would he like to be the associate who lost the deal for his shabby firm that was lucky to have stumbled into this largesse!
Maybe that wasn't so charitable of me. I believe in non-violence, including in speech. What was in my mind: I was trying to show the client that our firm wouldn't be bullied in any fashion, while also putting an end to this associate's disrespectful behavior toward me. Just as many of the bullies in Germany backed off when stood up to or bullied back (first post), that associate backed off immediately, and took me to lunch the next day. My firm's client never looked up from his paperwork.
Later, I told the female senior partner about what had happened -- I wasn't sure if the client would mention it and I wanted to do so first, and in any case I wanted to ask her why she thought this junior associate verbally attacked me. She took it all completely calmly, and said: Valerie, that firm uses these deals as practice to teach their associates to be mean. I asked myself: what was I doing in this profession, where people were taught to be mean? This just did not suit me; encouraging empathy and kindness suits me. Where was my ikigai, my positive purpose combined with positive career, where every interaction could be an opportunity to uplift, instead of to degrade? Note to self, I told myself: one day, if I have a business, I won't teach my team how to be mean but how to be amazingly positive, helpful, compassionate, and effective!
Side notes about these New York deals:
My fabulous sister lived in New York at the time, and I was excited to spend time with her! We have always been very close; as kids for example, we would each start drawing a picture, and then hand it to the other to finish. But because I was so busy, working the same hours in New York as in Chicago, I hardly ever had time to leave the conference room. So, I would invite my sister to join me in the conference room. Sometimes I'd send out for lunch, and we'd munch and catch up a bit between the documents. This was not ideal, and was really quite absurd, but at least I got to see my sister.
Still, I made a point to try to escape the conference room at least once a day if I could, or once a week! I was always in the habit of seeking out the best chocolate shops in town, no matter what town I was in, as chocolate has been a life long love, source of inspiration, field of study, and general passion. One day I got a tip to visit Teuscher Chocolates of Switzerland, which had a store at Rockefeller Plaza, and another one on the Upper East Side. The other side's firm was downtown near Wall Street, far from either chocolate shop location. My firm's New York office was in midtown, not far from Rockefeller Plaza. I've always loved walking, and wanted to visit the Upper East Side location. So, one day, I made a break for it, and through a combination of taxis and walking managed to get to the Upper East Side location and back downtown without anyone noticing how long I was gone. Or at least no one said anything. Trick: leave a hot cup of tea at your seat and a scarf on the back of your chair, so other attorneys passing by will think you just stepped out to the ladies room or for a quick breath of fresh air. In any case, Teuscher is known for their Champagne truffles, which I tasted for the first time in New York. I mentioned to the store worker that I was visiting on business from Chicago, and she asked if I had visited their Chicago store. I had not! Later, I got to know the Chicago store very well, as they played a starring role when I opened my first business, Chicago Chocolate Tours! I'm getting way ahead of myself, but isn't it something when you can look back on events that at the time may have seemed random or unimportant, or painful and terrible, but that in hindsight were absolutely clearly crucial. It's all connected!
One more New York note for now: the week between Christmas and New Year's was always one of the busiest for the corporate department, because clients wanted to close deals and get them on their financial books before the end of the year. So while other people might spend this precious week with family or on vacation, we corporate associates and some of the partners worked even longer hours than usual. My own sister, brother, and mother always hated that I had to do this, and so did I. That winter of traveling to New York was no different, and there I was the day after Christmas, away from my family, who always gathered in Chicago. A saving grace: New York, exciting city that I've always loved yet also the filthiest and most energetically stressful city in America in my opinion, can be wondrously calm and pristine at Christmastime, or at least it could be back then, as tourists went home and locals went to their families. Instead of staying at the big brand hotel where the female senior partner's staff always booked me, near the New York office, I took it upon myself to stay at the Waldorf, which I pointed out was less expensive that particular week due I suppose to the holiday. The client paid for our flights and hotel, and I was saving the client a bit of money. It felt like a special vacation to stay at that historic hotel, which now is part of a big brand too but at the time felt like a trip back in time and which gave me a bit of rest and an environment of some serenity and elegance, which I had sorely missed during the harshness of working in New York and working at my firm anywhere and working as a lawyer in general.
And, one more note about the female senior partner for now, whom I truly respected: she is the same one who explained to me (in the previous post) how the partners kept women associates from rising toward partner by putting a mention in our reviews every year that we were either too aggressive (for the women who tried to be one of the boys), or not confident enough (for the women like me who didn't try to be one of the boys). Men were not told anything similar. Divide and conquer. This type of gender stereotype was apparently common in the law; see pp. 125 onward of Doing Justice, Doing Gender. As for lack of confidence: that was never my problem. Unsatisfying work with mean people in a harsh environment was.
When I later told my then secretary (the fourth and best one; see below!) that I had been told in my otherwise fully positive review that I wasn't confident enough, she made a face of strong disbelief. My secretary was also incredulous when the partners "demoted" me; that is, they kept me from rising as a 4th-year associate and had me remain as a 3rd-year associate for one more year, with no reason given except something vague about my having worked in Germany (which should if anything have counted double for all I fought there; see the earlier post about Hamburg!). Was this another tactic to delay advancement toward partnership, while saving money for the firm (to keep paying the men more?) since I didn't get the 4th-year raise? It certainly had the effect of quashing any remaining desire in me to attain partnership. Why would I want to keep working even more closely with people who treated other people unfairly? A friendly partner (who didn't shout at me after I suggested we interact more professionally, but who did shout at his wife on the phone when we were working late in his office and she called to find out why he wasn't at the dinner party; he replied that he was making money so she could shop, and then he hung up on her) told me demotions were like being knocked down in a boxing match, and that I should get back up and keep going. That was fine advice, but I didn't want to be in a boxing match! I wanted to be making a meaningful difference in the world through my skills and contributions! After the demotion, I looked up my level on the firm's website, where I was listed as a 4th-year associate and was being billed out to clients as a 4th-year, even though I was still being paid as a 3rd-year. Mindful of the clients' money, and of honesty and fairness, I contacted the person in charge of listing billable rates, told her that if she checked she'd find out I had been demoted and should still be billed out as a 3rd-year associate, not a 4th-year. She thanked me, and made the change.
Women associate episodes
In general, there was a resigned camaraderie among some of the female corporate associates. We knew that one (1) from our ranks was already being groomed for partner. This meant there was nothing left for the rest of us to compete over, so we didn't. Instead, we commiserated. Really, we complained. We complained about the workload, the work, the partners, the stress. Sometimes we complained while bonding over a bite of chocolate from the dish I always kept on my desk; the chocolate mitigated the pain, and in any case I've always been obsessed with chocolate and it was natural for me to want to share it. Some partners had golf pictures in their offices and talked about golf; I had chocolate in my office and talked about chocolate.
I was a junior associate, and so were my commiserators. Where were the female senior associates? I don't remember ever working with one, only with male senior associates.
As for all of this complaining about how much we associates hated our jobs: on the one hand, sometimes it is good to vent out your feelings. On the other hand, I grew tired of this constant negativity, and wanted to be in an environment where I actually liked what I did and where those I worked with did too. That's the kind of business I wanted to work in or own some day. Would I find my ikigai and be able to create a positive work environment, like none I had ever experienced?
A happy note: a sweet woman I went to Harvard College with started in the New York office at one point; she didn't stay long, and she wasn't there when I was in NYC, but we communicated and the firm was lucky to have her while they did. Another dear friend from our college class -- who did not become a lawyer -- came to visit me while I was recuperating from separation and divorce, and it meant the world to me to have such friends. I'm still in touch with each of them today (hi, Ladies!).
Side note: another topic of complaint at the firm was paper cuts. And not just paper cuts but Redweld cuts: cuts from the huge thick expanding files that we kept documents in. If you think I'm being facetious, imagine working all day every day with paper, paper, paper, mounds and piles of paper, and with the files that it is kept in, corridors and corridors of files. Imagine dry air-conditioned air, drying out your skin and making you more susceptible to paper cuts. Imagine the harsh air of long Chicago winters doing the same thing. We always had paper cuts, and borrowed bandaids and lotion and antiseptic from each other. The sisterhood bonding over bandaids? If you got a Redweld cut you needed serious first aid and sometimes had to stop and hold your hand higher than your heart. Why, I wondered, had no one invented paper with some sort of rounded microedge that would not cut skin? Who were these Redweld people selling hazardous office supplies that could hit an artery? Would inventing non-bio-hazard office supplies be my ikigai? I suppose every office has the same or similar perils, and some workplaces have much greater physical perils. This might not seem as big a problem as the pay gap and verbal abuse and overwork and other hazards we contended with every day. Yet those paper cuts were in a way the small thing that could break you down, and being a Big Law associate came with a lot of paper cuts, a lot of small things that broke us down.
Women paralegal episodes
A paralegal is a support person who does substantive legal matters such as drafting certain documents, but is not a lawyer; nor is she paid as a lawyer. There was one male paralegal at the firm; most were women. Today that is largely unchanged; the data shows that 87% of paralegals are women; 23% of partners (junior or senior) are women. A good paralegal is indispensable and could practically run a deal or possibly a firm. A bad paralegal can wreck your deal and possibly your life.
A fictional example of a good paralegal is the TV character who was played by Meghan Markle, now the Duchess of Sussex after marrying Prince Harry, on the popular TV show Suits, which I found entertaining, though generally unrealistic like most legal drama shows. What was my experience of what law firm life is really like? You're reading it in my memoirs: misery and misogyny, endless drafting and redrafting of contracts designed to make rich banks richer, abuse and overwork, hyper-specialization to the point of sometimes excruciating repetitiveness of projects, misogyny and misery. By the way, we have quite the roster of biracials in this installment of my memoirs, don't we: Barack Obama, Meghan Markle, my sister, and me! (More on being biracial at the firm, which literally didn't have room for me on the personal info form back then, is in the previous post.)
A real-life example of a good paralegal was the one I worked with at the firm's New York office; she worked for the exiled female senior partner, and we worked together well on the series of deals described above. This paralegal worked hard, did whatever was needed, and didn't leave the office before I did. For example, we had completed another successful closing in this series, the deal was funded, it was late, and we wanted to go home, but not before we checked the post-closing array of documents one more time. What had been perfect, suddenly was not: one document was missing. My blood ran cold. A missing document is not acceptable, and hundreds of millions of dollars were at stake in this deal.
Maybe the document had simply been taken out by someone legitimately reviewing the deal, and inadvertently put back in the wrong place on the closing table. We had these document racks sort of like toast racks, that held dozens of papers down the length of a long conference room table. Everything was in perfect order before the deal closed, as indeed it had to be in order for the deal to close: agreements flawless and signed, ancillary documents present and organized. The document had absolutely been there beforehand or we wouldn't have had our client wire funds to the other side. (The stress in those days of waiting for a wire to hit after it had been initiated was intense, with lawyers and staff standing around watching the telephone and waiting for it to ring with confirmation that the hundreds of millions of dollars had been transferred successfully.) The suddenly missing item wasn't a contract, or a particularly crucial document; then again every document was crucial in its way or we wouldn't have needed it at all, and it was important to have originals of every document, not photocopies. The missing document was an original of a receipt-like confirmation from a related party, literally a small slip of paper the size of a receipt, not something on our paper that we could print a new copy of or easily track down the signer of and have re-signed. And it had vanished. Where had it gone? How would we find it? How would we explain to the partner and client if we didn't find it? I had to find it. Anything that went wrong on a deal was ultimately the associate's fault, fair or not. I got to work on the search for the missing document, which felt like searching for the proverbial needle in a haystack, as I was searching for a scrap of paper in a law firm filled to bursting with paper. What if it had been removed from the law firm? I tried not to panic.
The paralegal stayed with me and looked for the missing document too, even though she could have gone home or argued for doing it the next day or for calling the partner. Had it somehow been moved to a different part of the toast rack? We searched every slot to see if it had been moved and somehow gotten stuck or misfiled behind another document. It was not on the table. Had it somehow been thrown away? We looked through the trash cans in the conference room. It was not in the trash. Who else had access to it? Would the other side actually remove a document? What would be their motivation? If they wanted our client to back their client with hundreds of millions of dollars, they needed everything to be in order, too. Still, could we trust them? I didn't want to ask them, because what if it was a trap? Was I over-thinking?
While these scenarios and more were going through my mind, with the back-up plan of having to tell the partner and suggest solutions, we looked through the remaining documents and the trash again, and we searched the reception area and the phone cabins and the trash cans in those places. I noticed that there were sandwiches in another conference room off the lobby, and I wandered in, not for leftover food remnants, but to see what else was there. Our missing document was there. Our missing document was balled up in a garbage can underneath napkins and other trash. I felt like the detectives on TV series Law & Order rummaging through New York City dumpsters searching for the missing weapon. I didn't stop at the time to think about how this document from our conference room came to be in a trash can in another conference room. I was simply happy we had it back! I ran with it to the paralegal, she smoothed it out and wiped off some food residue, and we placed it into the post-closing array, which we kept secure from then on, and where it would be copied and bound into closing books and remain forevermore. How did the document end up in the dinner trash of another conference room? We speculated, but never found the answer. I'm glad we found the document, we even managed to laugh about it a bit because what else could we do, and we had a sort of sisterhood throughout it all, didn't we.
A real-life example of a bad paralegal was one I worked with in Chicago, who was known for doing hasty and shoddy work and then blaming others. Most people at this firm did truly first-class work, so when someone didn't, that person stood out (like the senior associate in the previous post who wanted documents that wouldn't accomplish what the deal was supposed to accomplish and couldn't seem to set his ego aside for the good of the team or the good of the client, and who now works in Washington for the department that oversees both our food regulations and unaccompanied minors seeking asylum). I worked with this paralegal only once, and made sure I never did again, because I had to work extra, and do her work over, in order to keep a deal on track. There is no time for an associate to do someone else's work, because that associate must meet billable hour expectations, and account for practically every moment of time, all in a fast-paced environment where there was already more work per person than any one person could do.
The untrustworthy paralegal set me up on a terrible blind date once. I'm not blaming her of course, though would you have set me (or anyone) up with a man who was non-compassionate, non-generous, just plain non-nice? Here's what happened: my blind date was a young associate at another law firm, who spent our entire (short) lunch interrogating me on why I was divorced. He somehow made it clear that if he liked my answer, he would pay for the meal, and if he didn't, we would split the bill. I remember thinking that I would rather be back at the job I hated, with no meal at all, or out alone paying for my own meal with no hassles, than out of the office for even 30 minutes with this immature person who was behaving so arrogantly and disrespectfully. He ended up walking out on the check altogether, leaving me to pay for his lunch and mine. And he's the one who had insisted we go to a pricey place instead of just sitting down for a sandwich or cup of tea. Where was the empathy, or even the basic manners? I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised, as I worked with similar guys at my firm professionally, to see how this guy from a similar firm behaved socially. As we used to say back then: no class. This situation made me miss the man my husband used to be.
Remember in a prior post how I fell asleep during a date, basically passing out from exhaustion in a restaurant after I had been working 20-hour days at the firm? Too bad I didn't fall asleep during this one. If there is anyone who doesn't understand why 95% of people married to schizophrenics end up divorced (some people married to schizophrenics end up murdered, and I don't think I told you about that rifle incident though I wasn't afraid of my husband and never believed I was in danger), or if there is anyone who is so judgmental as to bully others for doing their best to find a healthy path, that person is not for me and I am not for him. Divorce details aren't generally good first-date conversation topics, in any case. Even though I had been divorced for a year at that point, it was still hard and sad for me to talk with people I didn't know well about what had happened -- my gentle, kind, fun husband had slipped slowly and then quickly into schizophrenic behaviors, refusing help, and ripping our lives apart -- and I was unprepared to answer hostile questions about this. Maybe too I was unprepared to date. I made a note to self: I was ready to find out how to have a positive social life, and even to figure out how I was going to meet the man of my dreams. I asked myself a question: Could I do any of this while working a minimum of 12 hours a day, and feeling sick and unhappy every day? No. But -- spoiler alert -- I would later manage to emerge into romantic positivity, though not before getting a stalker. This anti-divorce individual was certainly not my stalker; he couldn't get away from me fast enough.
Unexpectedly, this same paralegal gave me the best hand cream I'd ever used in my life. With the not-to-be-underestimated paper cut dangers that we all experienced from drafting and revising and re-revising documents, a good hand cream was extremely valuable and sought by many. I had bought expensive department store hand creams and cheap drugstore versions, but this hand cream was the best one ever: light yet protective, non-greasy, inoffensively fragranced, and truly moisturizing. It was by Mary Kay, and I wanted to buy a year's supply. Believe it or not, I ended up going to a Mary Kay event, and signing up as a Mary Kay consultant, in part to buy the products wholesale, in part to learn business skills that I wasn't learning at the firm because my job was fine print documentation not client development, and in part to make friends and find a sisterhood. I ended up finding much of what I sought, in terms of saving money on personal care products (I was making what most people would call a good salary, at 6 figures; I was grateful for what I earned, and I was also mindful that I was paying off student loans, and doing it with less money than my male counterparts were earning), learning corporate culture building techniques that would serve me well later on, and making new friends. The law firm culture was so masculine, that having a project in a feminine culture to balance this ended up being quite healthy for me. I also experienced a trustworthy corporate culture for the first time, that built us up instead of tearing us down.
For example, the law firm always promised a bonus if we worked certain numbers of hours. I worked those hours, and never received a bonus, with the partners saying that the firm hadn't done as well as hoped that year, or there had been market downturns, or this or that. Mary Kay promised that if you attended so many training classes or sold so many products or recruited so many people, you would get this prize or that bonus. I watched, and they seemed to deliver. I decided to do the work to earn a prize at Mary Kay, partially out of curiosity to see if they would really give it to me. I traveled to Dallas, where the company is headquartered, to receive the prize at the annual convention. (It was so hot there in summer!) This was a working trip of course; I brought Redwelds full of work with me and stayed up most of the night doing that work. My name was called at the convention, and I honestly believed there was someone else there with my name and I looked around to see who it was. Friends, and my mother who came too, said: Valerie, they're calling you! Later, as a Mary Kay national director was presenting the promised prize to me, I paused before accepting it. I looked at it, looked at her, and asked her: are you really giving me this? She smiled and said: it's your first one, isn't it? I grabbed that prize and gave her a big hug, impressed that here was an organization that did what they said they were going to do, and that was based on the Golden Rule idea of treating others the way you'd like to be treated. And, it was founded by a woman and run by women. I read that when a team member's husband was sick, founder Mary Kay Ash sent the couple a book and a note. When I was sick, my law firm bosses shouted at me. These Mary Kay moments were bright spots in otherwise miserable days. With that hand cream, I also reduced my paper cuts.
By the way, I considered whether there was a conflict of interest in experimenting with Mary Kay as a sideline or basically as business education plus sisterhood plus therapy, because many firms and companies seem to discourage "side hustles" as they are now called. But I wasn't representing Mary Kay in legal matters, nor was the firm involved with any matters involving Mary Kay. I worked hard and billed my hours at the firm, bonus or no, and was committed to doing the very best work for firm clients. What I did with the scraps of time remaining outside of that was up to me. In any case, at Mary Kay I found some of the sisterhood I didn't find at the firm, and it gave me a bit of balance.
As for the bad paralegal, it turned out she was stealing people's social security numbers when she had them fill out paperwork for Mary Kay. She left the firm and Mary Kay, under exactly what circumstances I do not know.
Women secretary episodes
All of the secretaries were women, except one. Most (though certainly not all) were quite nice, but mine was the best! That is, my final secretary at this firm was the best. Before she was assigned to me, I had secretary after secretary who didn't work out, to the point where I started to worry I'd get a bad reputation among the secretaries and that no one would want to work for me. This story is about as close to comic relief as we will get in this installment -- especially if you picture a movie montage where the protagonist is interviewing one inappropriate potential hire after another, or this long-ish but worth-it clip of the auditions scene in the film The Fabulous Baker Boys (how has Michelle Pfeiffer never won an Oscar, by the way?) -- so here we go!
When I started at the firm, I was assigned a secretary who told me right away and with a belligerent attitude that she had only worked for litigators, and did not want to work for a corporate lawyer, which is what I was. Can you imagine saying something like that to your boss, or hearing that from a team member? I replied that she should go immediately to the floor coordinator and get herself reassigned, because I didn't want anyone working for me who didn't want to do the work. She somehow didn't seem to expect such a reply. She said no, it would be fine after all. She was wrong. She simply didn't do a project I gave her to complete that same day, and didn't tell me. When I went to collect the assignment to review it quickly and include it in the documents I was giving the partner on the deal, the secretary had left the office for the day, and didn't tell me that either. I alerted the partner that there was a problem and I needed to complete this part of the assignment last-minute and that it would be delayed until later that evening. He was not pleased at this delay. Neither was I, as I had to take the time to do it myself on top of the 80 hours I was doing of my own work that week. It was seen as terribly tacky to blame your secretary, and everyone knew that whatever went wrong, or wherever the fault really lay, it was all going to be the associate's fault in the end. After I did my secretary's work, I left a message with the floor coordinator, telling her what happened and letting her know I needed a new secretary right away. She called me back the next morning, and told me my secretary had also left her a message, saying that she knew she was in trouble. At least we all agreed.
My next secretary seemed eager to work for me, until we couldn't find her. She wasn't at her desk, wasn't answering calls or emails, and hadn't let the floor coordinator know her whereabouts. She was discovered asleep in some sort of extra supply room that I hadn't known existed; basically a small closet with some office supplies and a bench. She wasn't reassigned like my first secretary; she was fired.
My next secretary started off rather well, and I had high hopes. Problems developed quickly, however, because she started to have less and less time to do my work, since she was not only doing client work for the junior partner she worked for, which was to be expected, but she was doing personal non-firm work for him too, which was a problem in this situation. When she couldn't turn the documents in a busy and urgent deal for me and for the senior partners I worked for, because she had to print out personal stock portfolio details for the junior partner I shared her with, I knew I could not count on her to prioritize effectively. I talked with her, and with the junior partner, to no avail. She also apparently didn't want to do corporate work. Her junior partner wasn't a shouter; he just didn't seem to pay attention or to care that while he was using our secretary's time for his personal business, I needed her time so that we could do the client work that allowed him to remain a partner. Was he having our secretary print his financial reports so that he could count the 30% more money that he made compared to women, and couldn't he do that on his own time, or at least print his accounts himself? Most secretaries back then worked for one partner and one associate, and it was common for senior partners to demand some personal work, but junior partners did this less often, and in any event ideally the secretary and the associate would communicate and bring in extra help such as a paralegal or night staff if needed. Our little group couldn't seem to manage, so it was time for me to get a new secretary, again. I hear, by the way, that today the secretaries are even more overworked, working for 3 or 4 lawyers at once. I do not know how the parties manage this, though I suspect that it still falls to the associates ultimately to cope or be blamed.
My fourth secretary and I really needed to be a match if I were going to avoid the reputation among the secretaries of being impossible to work with. There were already murmurings, though some secretaries saw me as possibly the nicest lawyer in the entire mega firm. I looked within, and didn't think I had been unreasonable to expect my secretary to do her job, communicate, and stay awake. I looked without, and saw that many lawyers verbally abused their secretaries, which I did not do. Looking back, I wonder exactly how secretaries were assigned. I never had a say in choosing my secretary, just in getting her reassigned if we weren't a fit.
I was worried when I met my fourth secretary and learned that she too had worked mainly for litigators, not for corporate lawyers. Yet, she was open-minded and wanted to learn something new! We communicated well, and she was excellent at her profession, precise and well-organized, someone who thinks during a project instead of working robotically. She asked questions and made suggestions, understood the bigger picture, and we could even be humorous with each other; a sense of humor seemed rare at the firm, a very serious place. We both loved scarves, and would practice various scarf-tying techniques. She was also a chocolate lover! When I would later start businesses, she was very supportive, and we've kept in touch to this day, with little lapses here and there but always renewing our friendship, our sisterhood, as if we had just seen each other the day before. She remained my secretary until I left the firm, and when people asked me if there was anything I missed from that firm, my answer was: my secretary.
Working with women as a woman lawyer involved quite a range of experiences, from collaborative to competitive to disastrous. Why didn't we revolt? It seemed that the system we were in was one we had to cope with. Yet, seeds of the revolution for empathy and equality were already in my heart.
By this point in my young law career, I was already so burnt out, I knew I had to make a change. Of course, that's how Big Law works: "burn 'em and turn 'em." Work people hard, let them burn out and quit, and get new young ones again. Did I leave the law altogether when I left this firm, to find work I loved and that was meaningful to me in a positive environment? No. Did I find increased sisterhood at my next jobs? No. In fact, what happened at my next jobs was so disastrous -- such as being asked to break the law, which I did not do and was then retaliated against -- I don't even include those jobs on my resume. But I'm going to tell you all about them.
More to come...!
Valerie Beck
Abigail Adams, letter to husband John Adams, March 31, 1776
Diary of My Disastrous Law Career: From Harvard to Heaven Help Me
Chapter 6
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| Sisterhood! My little sister and me. As I write this now, my sister's birthday is tomorrow: Happy birthday, Dear Sis! |
I'm often asked why I left the law, after graduating from Harvard College and Harvard Law School and then practicing law at large firms in Germany and the US, and whether I would ever go back to being a lawyer. The short answers are: to save my life, and no! The longer answers are in this blog of memoirs, which, by the way, I hadn't intended to write. I sat down to write something else, which wouldn't come, and these memories from 20 years ago started flooding out instead. I guess it's time!
Sometimes I am also asked what it was like specifically to be a woman lawyer. This blog answers that question, too. This particular post also goes into details of what it was like to work with other women in those days. It's interesting to note that as a woman who quit the law, I am not a rarity; a recent Harvard study shows women leave law firms at a higher rate than men.
I've always felt a sisterhood with other women, such as when I realized that women were paid less, and harassed more. Yet, I didn't always perceive a belief in sisterhood from my sisters at law, so to speak, as divide-and-conquer is an ancient strategy that also worked in law firms in the late 1990s and early 2000s. For example, some women felt competitive with other women, or simply stressed, because the male-dominated law firms, and my law school, didn't have room for many women. A related issue was that most of the women at the law firm were secretaries (legal assistants or administrative assistants are more common terms today), so that the statistical model of a "woman in the law," you might say, was an administrative assistant; a woman lawyer was still anomalous. In addition, many male lawyers had wives at home, so the statistical model of a woman was an at-home wife or a secretary, someone to take care of you and do the behind-the-scenes work. Do such matters further divide women, such as if women lawyers strive for respect that our secretary sisters don't receive? And, why did male allies at the firm seem to be quite silent back then? Desire for power? Habit and inertia due to the social order?
I experienced some sisterhood at law school; we were a beleaguered band of women at Harvard Law during the "nasty '90s," and to me this was a severe contrast to the joyful and intellectually focused experiences I had at Harvard College. Today, 50% of Harvard Law students are women; back then it was around half that, with few women faculty, a Dean who didn't want to discuss diversity and was perceived by many of us as misogynistic, and we had shall we say energetic controversy around all areas of diversity and inclusion. We had some aggressive male antagonists who were supported by the Dean or at least not disciplined by him, and we also had some wonderful male allies at school. I've already written a little bit about law school earlier in this blog, and more is to come below and in future!
Was any of this gender bias helping me feel healthy and fulfilled, in jobs where I already disliked the work and the attitudes of many of my colleagues? No, of course not. Was this all ultimately somehow part of my personal, professional, and even spiritual growth? Well, let the disaster recollection continue!
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| Dependability, leadership, service, and patriotism: a view of sisterhood and citizenship that I embraced from an early age, earning this Daughters of the American Revolution accolade as a senior in high school, just before going to Harvard College and later Harvard Law School. Such values were part of what I hoped to find in my law career. |
Lawyer Job 3: Chicago (continued) and New York
Women junior partner episodes
When I interviewed for the job at one of Chicago's largest and most prestigious law firms that we've been discussing in the past two posts plus this post, one of the attorneys I interviewed with was a female junior partner. She seemed very nice, if ultra tense, and said that she hoped I'd join the firm and we'd have lunch and talk and keep in touch. Would she be my hoped-for mentor? No. I joined the firm, we never had lunch, we never had another talk, and we never kept in touch. Whenever I reached out to her, she was always too busy to talk or have lunch. And that was the end of that.
I started to get to know another female junior partner, who seemed nice if ultra focused. She called me at one point and said she had work for me; generally a good thing career-wise, and, I thought, a good way to bond with another woman at the firm. The problem: the project had to be done over the weekend, and I was exhausted and looking forward to sleeping 20 hours that weekend -- 20 hours each day if possible -- to make up for a maximum of 5 hours of sleep per day during the week. I was also supposed to see friends that Saturday for a sort of annual reunion. I told her I was at capacity, as I had sometimes told male attorneys too, and that frankly I was exhausted and needed to take the weekend off, while also seeing some friends who were planning a once-a-year event. She asked why I needed to take the whole weekend off. I reiterated that I was simply burnt out and had to find a way to replenish and would there be any way for me to start the project on Monday or perhaps supervise a paralegal in the meantime? She got angry and never gave me work again. There's our theme again of my perception that vulnerability or sharing of any personal details in the workplace was a negative or would be used against me, and our theme that my law firm wanted robots, not humans.
Then there was the woman junior partner who did what all big firms had a legend of some woman doing: she worked straight through her pregnancy, left the office and had a baby one night, and was back at work in the office the next day. It's true; I was on a deal with her when it happened. She was a little bit later than usual the morning after giving birth, but she still came in. I couldn't manage to work the next day after having my wisdom teeth pulled or having a miscarriage (see two posts back, "Sweet Home Chicago: Was My Job Killing Me?"), and was amazed at this woman's physical fortitude and mental attitude. If that's what she wanted to do, fine. But how many people want to do that? Or are physically able to do that? And what kind of expectation does it set up for others who might have different priorities, child care situations, or health concerns? What kind of competition does it set up for women? It was as if the power of the feminine to give birth and be a portal for another soul were merely a nuisance to be ignored, as any sort of authentic feminine expression except for the smile of a pretty young secretary enjoyed by male lawyers seemed at this firm to be a nuisance to be ignored, and as if work were more important than anything else. Did I want to be a partner like her at a place like this?
The junior partner who gave birth one day and was back at her desk the next day was actually relatively decent to work with; that is, she was gruff, quick to judge, and sometimes unkind, yet no more so than the men. While she was exceedingly demanding of others, she apparently placed those same standards upon herself, and in that way I suppose could be regarded as fair.
There were a handful of other female junior partners I worked with at this firm of 375 lawyers (the firm is even larger today) who seemed stable and kind, yet most of them did always seem exhausted. I applauded personally when two of them later left separately to start their own firms. I even interviewed with one of them at one point, but realized that while I respected her values in terms of the types of clients she wanted to represent, not just large corporations who sometimes made vast amounts of money through the sale of harmful products, I didn't want the same painfully intense work pace, or extreme overwork, which it was clear her firm would replicate.
It seemed to me by the way that junior partner was almost the worst job at the firm. Junior partners were paid more than associates (with men still being paid more than women according to the spreadsheet a secretary accidentally left by a copy machine one day; full disaster in the previous post), yet it wasn't free money: junior partners often worked even more hours than associates. As a junior partner, you had the pressures of partnership without the rewards of ownership, as you were still an employee. And, you could be stuck in junior partner purgatory forever, or until you quit or were asked to leave, never moving up to full equity partner. Was the relatively new junior partner level another way for firms to prevent too many people from diluting the equity partner ranks and profits per partner? In a sense, it had to be, because the firm's hierarchical and financial model couldn't hold up otherwise. Numbers of attorneys grew until a recession, and then layoffs started happening or no new lawyers were hired. Firms were being run more and more like their big corporate clients, with labor -- human beings -- seen as an expense, not an investment. With all of that in mind, plus the fact that I didn't like the work I was doing or the environment in which I was doing it, did I even want to make partner, even if I had a chance, which it seemed I did not? And if I did not want to move up, what was I doing there; what was the goal?
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| The goal for many of my Harvard Law School classmates was to be at exactly the kind of Big Law firm where I worked, representing large corporate clients, and indeed many of us went to such firms. We were funneled into such work through on-campus interviews, fly-out week, and articles like the Big Law managing partner profiles that were the cover story in the Winter 1996 Harvard Law Bulletin, the first edition I received as an alum, having graduated in June 1996. Law School culture was competitive and harsh in my opinion, perhaps to prepare us for a similar environment at law firms? Today there is much more emphasis on public interest law, legal scholarship, and other aspects of law, as well as on collaboration between students, though Big Law still entices many. |
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| My first HLS alumni magazine also contained this little blurb about the handful of women professors at the Law School, and lists now US Senator and candidate for US President Elizabeth Warren as a new professor. Dearth of women law professors, and absence of any law professors who were women of color, was something very much discussed while I was a student, during the "nasty Nineties" before Dean (now Supreme Court Justice) Elena Kagan and Dean Martha Minow brought positive change to Law School culture and expanded opportunities for students and faculty inside the school and beyond. Click here for a Harvard Crimson article from 2018 looking back at Elizabeth Warren's arrival at the Law School and the anti-woman culture we experienced there in the 1990s, including, during my first year, the murder of my HLS Professor Gerald Frug's wife, Mary Joe Frug, who was a law professor at Northeastern Law and the subject of a cruel Harvard Law Review parody by male students after she was murdered. More on school in an upcoming post. |
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| This same issue also contained mention of a new book by now former US President Barack Obama, HLS class of 1991, who in 1996 was running for Illinois State Senate. I met him at a fundraiser in Chicago after he sent letters to fellow alumni including me, and voted for him in the various elections. |
Women senior partner episodes
There were 6 female equity partners at the firm at that time, out of a total of 100 equity partners. (This was not unlike the ratio of female to male Harvard Law professors at the time.) One was in a different department, which she chaired, but we were on the same floor. I made it a point to get to know her a bit, and found her always cheerful and kind even though she seemed exceedingly busy, always squeezing in one more email, one more phone call, before breezing off to one more meeting.
The other woman senior partner I got to know was a corporate partner -- corporate was my department -- and I sought her out too. She was incredibly smart and well-organized. She was not a screamer like some of the male senior partners, who screamed and shouted at associates, creating what to me was an aggressive and unpleasant environment. I did a lot of work for her, and learned a great deal from her, including some of what she sacrificed to reach her position, and what she sacrificed to keep it.
For example, the firm was founded in Chicago, and she was originally based in the firm's New York satellite office, but one of her partners there forced her out. How could one equity partner force another equity partner out of her own city? Well, it happened, and she took up residence at a hotel in walking distance to the Chicago office. I asked if I could help her find a house or apartment in Chicago, but she said no. She was very well-organized not only in work matters but in matters of hotel and airline points and reservations; this was a lesson that would serve me well in the law, and in my life and businesses after the law!
Because some of her deals were New York-based, I went with her to New York to observe and assist as she led one of these transactions, which was part of a series of around a dozen similar and similarly complicated transactions involving mountains of contracts and ancillary documents and tax opinions. (If anyone else remembers aircraft leveraged lease deals, hey!) After that, I was able to handle the closings myself in the rest of the series, which freed her up to develop other projects; we were a successful team in that way. So, just as she commuted to Chicago for her career, I spent a winter commuting to New York during the week and back home to Chicago on the weekends. Time for some New York stories and disasters:
As soon as I met or rather crossed paths with the managing partner of the New York office, I could see why the female senior partner he forced out of the office might actually be more content not to be around him: what a screamer. I never actually had a conversation with this man, just heard and saw him screaming and shouting at lawyers and staff, and not just inside his office as was the custom in Chicago -- a more genteel form of rudeness? -- but in the corridors and lobby. In my opinion, this was not only rude but tacky. I believed that screaming at your team is not the way I wanted to run a business if I ever had that opportunity, whether behind semi-closed doors or out in the open.
Speaking of screaming, an associate at the other side's law firm on these New York transactions tried screaming at me. This was not only unacceptable to me, as was having a partner scream at me, but thoroughly ridiculous. Backing up a bit: normally, our firm would have held closings and meetings at our offices, because we represented the party funding the deal, and the agreements were on our paper so to speak, meaning that we initiated the contracts and ancillary documents (which I got to help draft, and re-draft, and re-draft, and re-draft). But because our female senior partner had been forced out of the NYC office, she sometimes either couldn't use our conference rooms there, or chose not to, or maybe they were just often booked up as that office was smaller than the Chicago office, which had an entire floor of conference rooms plus conference rooms on every floor of offices. So, we went to the office of the lawyers representing the main party on the other side of the transaction, and held meetings and closings in one of their conference rooms. The female senior partner had delegated this particular closing to me so was not there herself. Her client was there, an executive at one of the largest corporations in America, seated at the conference room table and going over some of his own documents. Suddenly the other side's associate -- my counterpart -- came up to me and started shouting at me, in front of my firm's client, to do this and do that and how could I have done this and what was wrong with me for doing that. First of all, I had done nothing wrong and everything right. Secondly, he wouldn't really know that because as far as I could tell he wasn't doing much work at all on the deal, and while I was the same associate from our side on every deal in this series, their side sent a different associate each time, who didn't have a sense of the scope or details of the project. Thirdly, he was shouting at me in front of my client; this New York style of open bullying was as mentioned even more repugnant to me than private bullying though both are intolerable. Finally, did I mention I cannot tolerate bullying!
If he had been a screamer partner at my own firm, I would have done what I did in such instances: waited for the screamer to finish, then told him that I couldn't work as effectively toward the client's goals in this kind of environment, and asked him if we could find a more positive method of communication. Sometimes this worked, and sometimes it didn't! In this case however, I confess I didn't take quite such a high ground, perhaps because I really had nothing to lose, and also because this associate seemed to me to be an immature kid (actually some of the partners seemed like that too) who couldn't even back up his words with any substance whatsoever. He was all hot air, as we said, and not even convincing. I told this obnoxious associate that he was to stop bullying and shouting and ordering around and carrying on immediately, that if he ever spoke with me in such a tone again I would file a complaint with the attorney registration and disciplinary committee which even if it were ultimately dismissed because no one around here seemed to have manners better than you'd find at a street fight I would press forward to the very end so that he would have to face consequences with his firm and on his record, that he was never to disrespect me especially in front of my firm's client who was essentially lending his firm's client hundreds of millions of dollars in a deal much too complex for this associate to begin to comprehend, and that my firm's client could certainly find someplace else to invest their hundreds of millions of excess dollars and how would he like to be the associate who lost the deal for his shabby firm that was lucky to have stumbled into this largesse!
Maybe that wasn't so charitable of me. I believe in non-violence, including in speech. What was in my mind: I was trying to show the client that our firm wouldn't be bullied in any fashion, while also putting an end to this associate's disrespectful behavior toward me. Just as many of the bullies in Germany backed off when stood up to or bullied back (first post), that associate backed off immediately, and took me to lunch the next day. My firm's client never looked up from his paperwork.
Later, I told the female senior partner about what had happened -- I wasn't sure if the client would mention it and I wanted to do so first, and in any case I wanted to ask her why she thought this junior associate verbally attacked me. She took it all completely calmly, and said: Valerie, that firm uses these deals as practice to teach their associates to be mean. I asked myself: what was I doing in this profession, where people were taught to be mean? This just did not suit me; encouraging empathy and kindness suits me. Where was my ikigai, my positive purpose combined with positive career, where every interaction could be an opportunity to uplift, instead of to degrade? Note to self, I told myself: one day, if I have a business, I won't teach my team how to be mean but how to be amazingly positive, helpful, compassionate, and effective!
Side notes about these New York deals:
My fabulous sister lived in New York at the time, and I was excited to spend time with her! We have always been very close; as kids for example, we would each start drawing a picture, and then hand it to the other to finish. But because I was so busy, working the same hours in New York as in Chicago, I hardly ever had time to leave the conference room. So, I would invite my sister to join me in the conference room. Sometimes I'd send out for lunch, and we'd munch and catch up a bit between the documents. This was not ideal, and was really quite absurd, but at least I got to see my sister.
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| Something meaningful happens: I discover Teuscher Chocolates of Switzerland, while escaping a New York City law firm conference room. |
Still, I made a point to try to escape the conference room at least once a day if I could, or once a week! I was always in the habit of seeking out the best chocolate shops in town, no matter what town I was in, as chocolate has been a life long love, source of inspiration, field of study, and general passion. One day I got a tip to visit Teuscher Chocolates of Switzerland, which had a store at Rockefeller Plaza, and another one on the Upper East Side. The other side's firm was downtown near Wall Street, far from either chocolate shop location. My firm's New York office was in midtown, not far from Rockefeller Plaza. I've always loved walking, and wanted to visit the Upper East Side location. So, one day, I made a break for it, and through a combination of taxis and walking managed to get to the Upper East Side location and back downtown without anyone noticing how long I was gone. Or at least no one said anything. Trick: leave a hot cup of tea at your seat and a scarf on the back of your chair, so other attorneys passing by will think you just stepped out to the ladies room or for a quick breath of fresh air. In any case, Teuscher is known for their Champagne truffles, which I tasted for the first time in New York. I mentioned to the store worker that I was visiting on business from Chicago, and she asked if I had visited their Chicago store. I had not! Later, I got to know the Chicago store very well, as they played a starring role when I opened my first business, Chicago Chocolate Tours! I'm getting way ahead of myself, but isn't it something when you can look back on events that at the time may have seemed random or unimportant, or painful and terrible, but that in hindsight were absolutely clearly crucial. It's all connected!
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| Grand Central Station in New York City underwent restoration in the mid and late 1990s, and I got to see the spectacular ceiling that had been black with 2 inches of grime from decades of air pollution, restored and revealed as an artistic green and gold rendering of the Zodiac. I took this picture on a more recent trip -- a chocolate-related trip! -- a few years ago. I confess that when I was an overworked lawyer, walking through Grand Central between my nearby hotel and my firm's nearby office, I didn't always look up. |
One more New York note for now: the week between Christmas and New Year's was always one of the busiest for the corporate department, because clients wanted to close deals and get them on their financial books before the end of the year. So while other people might spend this precious week with family or on vacation, we corporate associates and some of the partners worked even longer hours than usual. My own sister, brother, and mother always hated that I had to do this, and so did I. That winter of traveling to New York was no different, and there I was the day after Christmas, away from my family, who always gathered in Chicago. A saving grace: New York, exciting city that I've always loved yet also the filthiest and most energetically stressful city in America in my opinion, can be wondrously calm and pristine at Christmastime, or at least it could be back then, as tourists went home and locals went to their families. Instead of staying at the big brand hotel where the female senior partner's staff always booked me, near the New York office, I took it upon myself to stay at the Waldorf, which I pointed out was less expensive that particular week due I suppose to the holiday. The client paid for our flights and hotel, and I was saving the client a bit of money. It felt like a special vacation to stay at that historic hotel, which now is part of a big brand too but at the time felt like a trip back in time and which gave me a bit of rest and an environment of some serenity and elegance, which I had sorely missed during the harshness of working in New York and working at my firm anywhere and working as a lawyer in general.
And, one more note about the female senior partner for now, whom I truly respected: she is the same one who explained to me (in the previous post) how the partners kept women associates from rising toward partner by putting a mention in our reviews every year that we were either too aggressive (for the women who tried to be one of the boys), or not confident enough (for the women like me who didn't try to be one of the boys). Men were not told anything similar. Divide and conquer. This type of gender stereotype was apparently common in the law; see pp. 125 onward of Doing Justice, Doing Gender. As for lack of confidence: that was never my problem. Unsatisfying work with mean people in a harsh environment was.
When I later told my then secretary (the fourth and best one; see below!) that I had been told in my otherwise fully positive review that I wasn't confident enough, she made a face of strong disbelief. My secretary was also incredulous when the partners "demoted" me; that is, they kept me from rising as a 4th-year associate and had me remain as a 3rd-year associate for one more year, with no reason given except something vague about my having worked in Germany (which should if anything have counted double for all I fought there; see the earlier post about Hamburg!). Was this another tactic to delay advancement toward partnership, while saving money for the firm (to keep paying the men more?) since I didn't get the 4th-year raise? It certainly had the effect of quashing any remaining desire in me to attain partnership. Why would I want to keep working even more closely with people who treated other people unfairly? A friendly partner (who didn't shout at me after I suggested we interact more professionally, but who did shout at his wife on the phone when we were working late in his office and she called to find out why he wasn't at the dinner party; he replied that he was making money so she could shop, and then he hung up on her) told me demotions were like being knocked down in a boxing match, and that I should get back up and keep going. That was fine advice, but I didn't want to be in a boxing match! I wanted to be making a meaningful difference in the world through my skills and contributions! After the demotion, I looked up my level on the firm's website, where I was listed as a 4th-year associate and was being billed out to clients as a 4th-year, even though I was still being paid as a 3rd-year. Mindful of the clients' money, and of honesty and fairness, I contacted the person in charge of listing billable rates, told her that if she checked she'd find out I had been demoted and should still be billed out as a 3rd-year associate, not a 4th-year. She thanked me, and made the change.
Women associate episodes
In general, there was a resigned camaraderie among some of the female corporate associates. We knew that one (1) from our ranks was already being groomed for partner. This meant there was nothing left for the rest of us to compete over, so we didn't. Instead, we commiserated. Really, we complained. We complained about the workload, the work, the partners, the stress. Sometimes we complained while bonding over a bite of chocolate from the dish I always kept on my desk; the chocolate mitigated the pain, and in any case I've always been obsessed with chocolate and it was natural for me to want to share it. Some partners had golf pictures in their offices and talked about golf; I had chocolate in my office and talked about chocolate.
I was a junior associate, and so were my commiserators. Where were the female senior associates? I don't remember ever working with one, only with male senior associates.
As for all of this complaining about how much we associates hated our jobs: on the one hand, sometimes it is good to vent out your feelings. On the other hand, I grew tired of this constant negativity, and wanted to be in an environment where I actually liked what I did and where those I worked with did too. That's the kind of business I wanted to work in or own some day. Would I find my ikigai and be able to create a positive work environment, like none I had ever experienced?
A happy note: a sweet woman I went to Harvard College with started in the New York office at one point; she didn't stay long, and she wasn't there when I was in NYC, but we communicated and the firm was lucky to have her while they did. Another dear friend from our college class -- who did not become a lawyer -- came to visit me while I was recuperating from separation and divorce, and it meant the world to me to have such friends. I'm still in touch with each of them today (hi, Ladies!).
Side note: another topic of complaint at the firm was paper cuts. And not just paper cuts but Redweld cuts: cuts from the huge thick expanding files that we kept documents in. If you think I'm being facetious, imagine working all day every day with paper, paper, paper, mounds and piles of paper, and with the files that it is kept in, corridors and corridors of files. Imagine dry air-conditioned air, drying out your skin and making you more susceptible to paper cuts. Imagine the harsh air of long Chicago winters doing the same thing. We always had paper cuts, and borrowed bandaids and lotion and antiseptic from each other. The sisterhood bonding over bandaids? If you got a Redweld cut you needed serious first aid and sometimes had to stop and hold your hand higher than your heart. Why, I wondered, had no one invented paper with some sort of rounded microedge that would not cut skin? Who were these Redweld people selling hazardous office supplies that could hit an artery? Would inventing non-bio-hazard office supplies be my ikigai? I suppose every office has the same or similar perils, and some workplaces have much greater physical perils. This might not seem as big a problem as the pay gap and verbal abuse and overwork and other hazards we contended with every day. Yet those paper cuts were in a way the small thing that could break you down, and being a Big Law associate came with a lot of paper cuts, a lot of small things that broke us down.
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Women paralegal episodes
A paralegal is a support person who does substantive legal matters such as drafting certain documents, but is not a lawyer; nor is she paid as a lawyer. There was one male paralegal at the firm; most were women. Today that is largely unchanged; the data shows that 87% of paralegals are women; 23% of partners (junior or senior) are women. A good paralegal is indispensable and could practically run a deal or possibly a firm. A bad paralegal can wreck your deal and possibly your life.
A fictional example of a good paralegal is the TV character who was played by Meghan Markle, now the Duchess of Sussex after marrying Prince Harry, on the popular TV show Suits, which I found entertaining, though generally unrealistic like most legal drama shows. What was my experience of what law firm life is really like? You're reading it in my memoirs: misery and misogyny, endless drafting and redrafting of contracts designed to make rich banks richer, abuse and overwork, hyper-specialization to the point of sometimes excruciating repetitiveness of projects, misogyny and misery. By the way, we have quite the roster of biracials in this installment of my memoirs, don't we: Barack Obama, Meghan Markle, my sister, and me! (More on being biracial at the firm, which literally didn't have room for me on the personal info form back then, is in the previous post.)
A real-life example of a good paralegal was the one I worked with at the firm's New York office; she worked for the exiled female senior partner, and we worked together well on the series of deals described above. This paralegal worked hard, did whatever was needed, and didn't leave the office before I did. For example, we had completed another successful closing in this series, the deal was funded, it was late, and we wanted to go home, but not before we checked the post-closing array of documents one more time. What had been perfect, suddenly was not: one document was missing. My blood ran cold. A missing document is not acceptable, and hundreds of millions of dollars were at stake in this deal.
Maybe the document had simply been taken out by someone legitimately reviewing the deal, and inadvertently put back in the wrong place on the closing table. We had these document racks sort of like toast racks, that held dozens of papers down the length of a long conference room table. Everything was in perfect order before the deal closed, as indeed it had to be in order for the deal to close: agreements flawless and signed, ancillary documents present and organized. The document had absolutely been there beforehand or we wouldn't have had our client wire funds to the other side. (The stress in those days of waiting for a wire to hit after it had been initiated was intense, with lawyers and staff standing around watching the telephone and waiting for it to ring with confirmation that the hundreds of millions of dollars had been transferred successfully.) The suddenly missing item wasn't a contract, or a particularly crucial document; then again every document was crucial in its way or we wouldn't have needed it at all, and it was important to have originals of every document, not photocopies. The missing document was an original of a receipt-like confirmation from a related party, literally a small slip of paper the size of a receipt, not something on our paper that we could print a new copy of or easily track down the signer of and have re-signed. And it had vanished. Where had it gone? How would we find it? How would we explain to the partner and client if we didn't find it? I had to find it. Anything that went wrong on a deal was ultimately the associate's fault, fair or not. I got to work on the search for the missing document, which felt like searching for the proverbial needle in a haystack, as I was searching for a scrap of paper in a law firm filled to bursting with paper. What if it had been removed from the law firm? I tried not to panic.
The paralegal stayed with me and looked for the missing document too, even though she could have gone home or argued for doing it the next day or for calling the partner. Had it somehow been moved to a different part of the toast rack? We searched every slot to see if it had been moved and somehow gotten stuck or misfiled behind another document. It was not on the table. Had it somehow been thrown away? We looked through the trash cans in the conference room. It was not in the trash. Who else had access to it? Would the other side actually remove a document? What would be their motivation? If they wanted our client to back their client with hundreds of millions of dollars, they needed everything to be in order, too. Still, could we trust them? I didn't want to ask them, because what if it was a trap? Was I over-thinking?
While these scenarios and more were going through my mind, with the back-up plan of having to tell the partner and suggest solutions, we looked through the remaining documents and the trash again, and we searched the reception area and the phone cabins and the trash cans in those places. I noticed that there were sandwiches in another conference room off the lobby, and I wandered in, not for leftover food remnants, but to see what else was there. Our missing document was there. Our missing document was balled up in a garbage can underneath napkins and other trash. I felt like the detectives on TV series Law & Order rummaging through New York City dumpsters searching for the missing weapon. I didn't stop at the time to think about how this document from our conference room came to be in a trash can in another conference room. I was simply happy we had it back! I ran with it to the paralegal, she smoothed it out and wiped off some food residue, and we placed it into the post-closing array, which we kept secure from then on, and where it would be copied and bound into closing books and remain forevermore. How did the document end up in the dinner trash of another conference room? We speculated, but never found the answer. I'm glad we found the document, we even managed to laugh about it a bit because what else could we do, and we had a sort of sisterhood throughout it all, didn't we.
A real-life example of a bad paralegal was one I worked with in Chicago, who was known for doing hasty and shoddy work and then blaming others. Most people at this firm did truly first-class work, so when someone didn't, that person stood out (like the senior associate in the previous post who wanted documents that wouldn't accomplish what the deal was supposed to accomplish and couldn't seem to set his ego aside for the good of the team or the good of the client, and who now works in Washington for the department that oversees both our food regulations and unaccompanied minors seeking asylum). I worked with this paralegal only once, and made sure I never did again, because I had to work extra, and do her work over, in order to keep a deal on track. There is no time for an associate to do someone else's work, because that associate must meet billable hour expectations, and account for practically every moment of time, all in a fast-paced environment where there was already more work per person than any one person could do.
The untrustworthy paralegal set me up on a terrible blind date once. I'm not blaming her of course, though would you have set me (or anyone) up with a man who was non-compassionate, non-generous, just plain non-nice? Here's what happened: my blind date was a young associate at another law firm, who spent our entire (short) lunch interrogating me on why I was divorced. He somehow made it clear that if he liked my answer, he would pay for the meal, and if he didn't, we would split the bill. I remember thinking that I would rather be back at the job I hated, with no meal at all, or out alone paying for my own meal with no hassles, than out of the office for even 30 minutes with this immature person who was behaving so arrogantly and disrespectfully. He ended up walking out on the check altogether, leaving me to pay for his lunch and mine. And he's the one who had insisted we go to a pricey place instead of just sitting down for a sandwich or cup of tea. Where was the empathy, or even the basic manners? I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised, as I worked with similar guys at my firm professionally, to see how this guy from a similar firm behaved socially. As we used to say back then: no class. This situation made me miss the man my husband used to be.
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| Wedding rings and heartbreak: age 28, before divorcing my wonderful husband-turned-schizophrenic stranger 1 year later, after 7 years of marriage. |
Remember in a prior post how I fell asleep during a date, basically passing out from exhaustion in a restaurant after I had been working 20-hour days at the firm? Too bad I didn't fall asleep during this one. If there is anyone who doesn't understand why 95% of people married to schizophrenics end up divorced (some people married to schizophrenics end up murdered, and I don't think I told you about that rifle incident though I wasn't afraid of my husband and never believed I was in danger), or if there is anyone who is so judgmental as to bully others for doing their best to find a healthy path, that person is not for me and I am not for him. Divorce details aren't generally good first-date conversation topics, in any case. Even though I had been divorced for a year at that point, it was still hard and sad for me to talk with people I didn't know well about what had happened -- my gentle, kind, fun husband had slipped slowly and then quickly into schizophrenic behaviors, refusing help, and ripping our lives apart -- and I was unprepared to answer hostile questions about this. Maybe too I was unprepared to date. I made a note to self: I was ready to find out how to have a positive social life, and even to figure out how I was going to meet the man of my dreams. I asked myself a question: Could I do any of this while working a minimum of 12 hours a day, and feeling sick and unhappy every day? No. But -- spoiler alert -- I would later manage to emerge into romantic positivity, though not before getting a stalker. This anti-divorce individual was certainly not my stalker; he couldn't get away from me fast enough.
Unexpectedly, this same paralegal gave me the best hand cream I'd ever used in my life. With the not-to-be-underestimated paper cut dangers that we all experienced from drafting and revising and re-revising documents, a good hand cream was extremely valuable and sought by many. I had bought expensive department store hand creams and cheap drugstore versions, but this hand cream was the best one ever: light yet protective, non-greasy, inoffensively fragranced, and truly moisturizing. It was by Mary Kay, and I wanted to buy a year's supply. Believe it or not, I ended up going to a Mary Kay event, and signing up as a Mary Kay consultant, in part to buy the products wholesale, in part to learn business skills that I wasn't learning at the firm because my job was fine print documentation not client development, and in part to make friends and find a sisterhood. I ended up finding much of what I sought, in terms of saving money on personal care products (I was making what most people would call a good salary, at 6 figures; I was grateful for what I earned, and I was also mindful that I was paying off student loans, and doing it with less money than my male counterparts were earning), learning corporate culture building techniques that would serve me well later on, and making new friends. The law firm culture was so masculine, that having a project in a feminine culture to balance this ended up being quite healthy for me. I also experienced a trustworthy corporate culture for the first time, that built us up instead of tearing us down.
For example, the law firm always promised a bonus if we worked certain numbers of hours. I worked those hours, and never received a bonus, with the partners saying that the firm hadn't done as well as hoped that year, or there had been market downturns, or this or that. Mary Kay promised that if you attended so many training classes or sold so many products or recruited so many people, you would get this prize or that bonus. I watched, and they seemed to deliver. I decided to do the work to earn a prize at Mary Kay, partially out of curiosity to see if they would really give it to me. I traveled to Dallas, where the company is headquartered, to receive the prize at the annual convention. (It was so hot there in summer!) This was a working trip of course; I brought Redwelds full of work with me and stayed up most of the night doing that work. My name was called at the convention, and I honestly believed there was someone else there with my name and I looked around to see who it was. Friends, and my mother who came too, said: Valerie, they're calling you! Later, as a Mary Kay national director was presenting the promised prize to me, I paused before accepting it. I looked at it, looked at her, and asked her: are you really giving me this? She smiled and said: it's your first one, isn't it? I grabbed that prize and gave her a big hug, impressed that here was an organization that did what they said they were going to do, and that was based on the Golden Rule idea of treating others the way you'd like to be treated. And, it was founded by a woman and run by women. I read that when a team member's husband was sick, founder Mary Kay Ash sent the couple a book and a note. When I was sick, my law firm bosses shouted at me. These Mary Kay moments were bright spots in otherwise miserable days. With that hand cream, I also reduced my paper cuts.
By the way, I considered whether there was a conflict of interest in experimenting with Mary Kay as a sideline or basically as business education plus sisterhood plus therapy, because many firms and companies seem to discourage "side hustles" as they are now called. But I wasn't representing Mary Kay in legal matters, nor was the firm involved with any matters involving Mary Kay. I worked hard and billed my hours at the firm, bonus or no, and was committed to doing the very best work for firm clients. What I did with the scraps of time remaining outside of that was up to me. In any case, at Mary Kay I found some of the sisterhood I didn't find at the firm, and it gave me a bit of balance.
As for the bad paralegal, it turned out she was stealing people's social security numbers when she had them fill out paperwork for Mary Kay. She left the firm and Mary Kay, under exactly what circumstances I do not know.
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Women secretary episodes
All of the secretaries were women, except one. Most (though certainly not all) were quite nice, but mine was the best! That is, my final secretary at this firm was the best. Before she was assigned to me, I had secretary after secretary who didn't work out, to the point where I started to worry I'd get a bad reputation among the secretaries and that no one would want to work for me. This story is about as close to comic relief as we will get in this installment -- especially if you picture a movie montage where the protagonist is interviewing one inappropriate potential hire after another, or this long-ish but worth-it clip of the auditions scene in the film The Fabulous Baker Boys (how has Michelle Pfeiffer never won an Oscar, by the way?) -- so here we go!
When I started at the firm, I was assigned a secretary who told me right away and with a belligerent attitude that she had only worked for litigators, and did not want to work for a corporate lawyer, which is what I was. Can you imagine saying something like that to your boss, or hearing that from a team member? I replied that she should go immediately to the floor coordinator and get herself reassigned, because I didn't want anyone working for me who didn't want to do the work. She somehow didn't seem to expect such a reply. She said no, it would be fine after all. She was wrong. She simply didn't do a project I gave her to complete that same day, and didn't tell me. When I went to collect the assignment to review it quickly and include it in the documents I was giving the partner on the deal, the secretary had left the office for the day, and didn't tell me that either. I alerted the partner that there was a problem and I needed to complete this part of the assignment last-minute and that it would be delayed until later that evening. He was not pleased at this delay. Neither was I, as I had to take the time to do it myself on top of the 80 hours I was doing of my own work that week. It was seen as terribly tacky to blame your secretary, and everyone knew that whatever went wrong, or wherever the fault really lay, it was all going to be the associate's fault in the end. After I did my secretary's work, I left a message with the floor coordinator, telling her what happened and letting her know I needed a new secretary right away. She called me back the next morning, and told me my secretary had also left her a message, saying that she knew she was in trouble. At least we all agreed.
My next secretary seemed eager to work for me, until we couldn't find her. She wasn't at her desk, wasn't answering calls or emails, and hadn't let the floor coordinator know her whereabouts. She was discovered asleep in some sort of extra supply room that I hadn't known existed; basically a small closet with some office supplies and a bench. She wasn't reassigned like my first secretary; she was fired.
My next secretary started off rather well, and I had high hopes. Problems developed quickly, however, because she started to have less and less time to do my work, since she was not only doing client work for the junior partner she worked for, which was to be expected, but she was doing personal non-firm work for him too, which was a problem in this situation. When she couldn't turn the documents in a busy and urgent deal for me and for the senior partners I worked for, because she had to print out personal stock portfolio details for the junior partner I shared her with, I knew I could not count on her to prioritize effectively. I talked with her, and with the junior partner, to no avail. She also apparently didn't want to do corporate work. Her junior partner wasn't a shouter; he just didn't seem to pay attention or to care that while he was using our secretary's time for his personal business, I needed her time so that we could do the client work that allowed him to remain a partner. Was he having our secretary print his financial reports so that he could count the 30% more money that he made compared to women, and couldn't he do that on his own time, or at least print his accounts himself? Most secretaries back then worked for one partner and one associate, and it was common for senior partners to demand some personal work, but junior partners did this less often, and in any event ideally the secretary and the associate would communicate and bring in extra help such as a paralegal or night staff if needed. Our little group couldn't seem to manage, so it was time for me to get a new secretary, again. I hear, by the way, that today the secretaries are even more overworked, working for 3 or 4 lawyers at once. I do not know how the parties manage this, though I suspect that it still falls to the associates ultimately to cope or be blamed.
My fourth secretary and I really needed to be a match if I were going to avoid the reputation among the secretaries of being impossible to work with. There were already murmurings, though some secretaries saw me as possibly the nicest lawyer in the entire mega firm. I looked within, and didn't think I had been unreasonable to expect my secretary to do her job, communicate, and stay awake. I looked without, and saw that many lawyers verbally abused their secretaries, which I did not do. Looking back, I wonder exactly how secretaries were assigned. I never had a say in choosing my secretary, just in getting her reassigned if we weren't a fit.
I was worried when I met my fourth secretary and learned that she too had worked mainly for litigators, not for corporate lawyers. Yet, she was open-minded and wanted to learn something new! We communicated well, and she was excellent at her profession, precise and well-organized, someone who thinks during a project instead of working robotically. She asked questions and made suggestions, understood the bigger picture, and we could even be humorous with each other; a sense of humor seemed rare at the firm, a very serious place. We both loved scarves, and would practice various scarf-tying techniques. She was also a chocolate lover! When I would later start businesses, she was very supportive, and we've kept in touch to this day, with little lapses here and there but always renewing our friendship, our sisterhood, as if we had just seen each other the day before. She remained my secretary until I left the firm, and when people asked me if there was anything I missed from that firm, my answer was: my secretary.
Working with women as a woman lawyer involved quite a range of experiences, from collaborative to competitive to disastrous. Why didn't we revolt? It seemed that the system we were in was one we had to cope with. Yet, seeds of the revolution for empathy and equality were already in my heart.
By this point in my young law career, I was already so burnt out, I knew I had to make a change. Of course, that's how Big Law works: "burn 'em and turn 'em." Work people hard, let them burn out and quit, and get new young ones again. Did I leave the law altogether when I left this firm, to find work I loved and that was meaningful to me in a positive environment? No. Did I find increased sisterhood at my next jobs? No. In fact, what happened at my next jobs was so disastrous -- such as being asked to break the law, which I did not do and was then retaliated against -- I don't even include those jobs on my resume. But I'm going to tell you all about them.
More to come...!
Valerie Beck
Valerie, I am your Harrington Classmate, Susan Starrett.
ReplyDeleteI wondered what you were doing, and googled you. I read your entire blog-all your stories. I laughed so hard and felt so much empathy and disgust at the “way of the world”. You are so brilliant and articulate your incredulous wonder of why things are the way they are resonated with me completely. I remembered your spirit so clearly in your writing.
You are a one in a million and an important voice of our time. I encourage you in your writing.
Susan! What a pleasure to hear from you! Thank you so much for reading, and for your incredibly kind and empathetic comments! I was thinking of how to weave in a Harrington story or two; stay tuned! Your thoughtfulness and encouragement mean so much to me; thank you again!
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