Episode 161: Anne Marie Seibel
Chair of the ABA Section of Litigation; Litigation Partner at Bradley
00:52:03
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Show Notes
Anne Marie Seibel, Chair of the ABA Section of Litigation and litigation partner at Bradley, shares her path to leadership within the legal sphere. Hosted by MC Sungaila, this episode dives into the fascinating intersection of Anne Marie’s career trajectory and her prowess in bar leadership. If you're curious about the transformative power of bar leadership on your legal career and keen to unlock valuable strategies for skill enhancement and network expansion, this episode is an absolute must-listen. Tune in for an inspiring conversation that illuminates the boundless possibilities of combining legal expertise with impactful leadership.
Relevant episode links:
Bradley , American Bar Association Litigation Section , The Women Advocate Committee , Paula Hinton – Past Episode , Barb Dawson – Past Episode
About Anne Marie Seibel:
Anne Marie Seibel, a litigation partner at Bradley in Alabama, enjoys pulling together the moving parts in multi-forum or multi-plaintiff high-stakes litigation. In these cases, she partners with her clients to approach the challenges of litigation in efficient and creative ways. Currently, she is using these skills to help a major facilitator of online travel reservations respond to cases across the country. In 2017, she served as lead trial counsel for this client in a two-week trial securing a defense judgment. The New Hampshire Supreme Court upheld this result after Anne Marie’s argument before the court. In prior litigation she played a central role advising HealthSouth Corporation as it defended and prosecuted claims relating to a massive accounting fraud perpetrated against it by corporate officers. That litigation resulted in a $2.8 billion verdict against the company’s former CEO and a $100 million settlement with the company’s former investment bank. Anne Marie’s practice has taken her to trial in venues as diverse as Alabama state and federal courts, New Hampshire state court, AAA arbitrations, and the Tribal Court of the Poarch Band of Creek Indians.
Within the firm, Anne Marie is co-chair of the firm’s Inclusion and Diversity Committee and former chair of the firm’s Associate Committee.
Nationally, Anne Marie serves in the ABA Section of Litigation leadership as Chair of the section. Other prior leadership roles have included serving as an elected member of the Section of Litigation's Council, managing director, co-chair of the Membership and Marketing Committee, co-chair of the Regional Meeting Committee, liaison to the ABA Commission on Women in the Profession, and co-chair of the Woman Advocate Committee.
Transcript
I'm very pleased to have an amazing leader of the bar, a wonderful person, and a great litigator, Anne Marie Seibel, a partner at the Bradley firm. Welcome.
Thank you. It’s my pleasure to be here.
I'm excited for you personally and for the American Bar Association Litigation Section, for you to become the Chair of the Litigation Section for the ABA. It's a great opportunity for you to share with others the role that's played in your development, but also the tremendous riches of bar service at that level, as well as your interesting legal practice for those who might think. Maybe they don't know whether they'd like to do litigation at the level that you do it, but maybe they'll be inspired to do that if they're law students. First, I wanted to start out with the beginnings of the law for you and how it was that you decided to become a lawyer and go to law school. What interested you about it, or what gave you the idea to do it?
I have no lawyers in my family at all, mostly teachers. I had one family friend growing up who was like a grandfather who had always said since I was little that I should be a lawyer. I fought against that for years without even knowing what it meant. I didn't want to be a lawyer. I didn't know anything about it. I was in college and did an internship at the state department because I had an interest in foreign affairs.
My job for the summer was working on the question and answers for the press briefing every day. I would help write it. I would go desk to desk from country to country, and get approval, but you'd always have to make a stop at the legal desk. I was able to see that they were able to influence what was being communicated to the public about these interesting world events that were happening. That was after my second year, maybe in college, and started thinking, “That might be a path that opens up more than the foreign service to me.”
I became interested in looking at what law schools were involved, thinking about the LSAT, and decided to take that path in order to see what it would open up. I wasn't one of those people that had wanted to be a lawyer since I was little. I wasn't sure exactly what I was going to do with it. I just knew that I would like that method of learning and to see what doors opened up from there.
Some of the guests talked about the problem-solving nature of the law and that they enjoyed that. They may not have had a specific idea about which problems they wanted to solve or how to do that, but that was the lawyer's role in helping solve the problem. That resonates with me as something similar to what you're saying in terms of, “The lawyers have this role of shaping,” the messaging at this point, which is very important to policymaking and might be an interesting role to have.
I like open-mindedness, being open to opportunities, and not being too close to them. That's an important life lesson or something to consider, like, “Don't get too married to a particular. Once you have an idea about something, be too focused on one way to go.” Something my mom would say would be, “If you're focused on going to one store, window shop at other stores, you never know you might like something better along the way.” It can be hard to gain that perspective, but it sounds like you had it pretty early on.
An advice I give to my children, the one who is about to enter college is, “You're young. You don't know exactly what opportunities are out there. Have a worldview that allows you to see everything. Keep an open mind. Go find professors that you like and attach yourself to them. As long as you're enjoying the learning, something's going to come of it.”
A lot of it is processed like what you learn in law school, the thinking process, and critical thinking. That's something else that other guests have talked about who are no longer even practicing law saying there's value in that they apply to their leading companies or nonprofits. There's a lot of value to be had from legal education and a lot of ways to use it.
That holds true with the way I've seen people in my class disperse into all different types of areas.
Being open to that, you might want to do one thing now, but later, you have the opportunity to apply those skills in other ways and contribute to the world in other ways. That's helpful. How did you decide then as you're keeping your mind open for opportunities to go into litigation?
I had a professor in law school who took me under his wing. My mom called him my guardian angel whom I didn't even realize was watching out for me. I found out later that he had picked me out during an interview for a scholarship. When I showed up in class, he kept an eye on me. He would call on me in class with some challenging questions to see how I did. After I got through the first semester, he sat down with me to look at options for the summer.
He got a gut feeling that I would want to be a litigator and set me up to intern with a federal judge in Washington, DC for part of the summer, then he told me to try out Alabama. I was from Maryland. I had never been to Alabama. I had no connection, but he said it was important to healthcare, which it was at that point in time. That meant that a lot of excellent plaintiffs, lawyers, and excellent defense lawyers had developed practices there. He is the one that suggested I go to Birmingham and interview. That's where both the idea of being a litigator was in the back of my mind and being somewhere where I could use that set of skills that he'd recognized in me.
That's amazing in about a dozen different ways. The first thing is having the mentoring and the guardian angel part. What you said about that is true. There are some mentors you know about, and others you only recognize after the fact because you may not have known that they said things in particular rooms where it was important for someone to advocate on your behalf.
Sometimes when you have that early in your career, you don't realize how special it is to have someone see that in you and look ahead to your future. The second thing is how sophisticated he was to think about, “Here's what's happening in developing the law, and here's why this would be a great place to be in court.” There would be high-level cases that there's not a glut of attorneys doing those. You would have more opportunities as a newer lawyer to engage in that. That's smart.
It was smart to give me those two different viewpoints. I wrote an opinion that got published that summer, watched a terrorism trial, which was also fascinating in Washington DC, and came down to Birmingham. I ended up at a firm that had a lot of people who had either gone away and come back. We, at that point in time, were also recruiting a lot of people like me because of this need for people to come in and bring their expertise.
What I'm not even sure he realized completely was that it was a way to launch a legal career because not only were the lawyers moving to the state, but you had companies from across the country who are being sued. Right off the bat, as a young lawyer, I was talking to national and in-house counsel from across the country trying to explain the landscape where we were and help them make evaluations. It was a great skill-building process for me. I never thought that's where I would end up necessarily, but it was the high quality of the practice and the amount of mentoring that I could see I would get that led me to go ahead and move all the way from Maryland to Birmingham, Alabama.
Of the many things that the story shows is your willingness to take calculated risks but still a risk the courage to do that as a new lawyer like, “I'll move to a whole new corner of the country and see how this goes.” You could always move back. There's that. It's not the end of the world. You mentioned about to be involved in high-level strategy decision-making by national coordinating or in-house council at the companies, you are seeing a much bigger part of the picture that the clients are facing and understanding how your slice of it or how what's going on in Alabama. It impacts the company nationwide. That is a unique perspective to be able to see, especially so early.
It allows you to build your skills more quickly. I had made a decision in part between some high-end DC firms and coming to Birmingham. I did not appreciate at the time at all that. When I walked in the door here, I was doing what a third or fourth-year associate was doing in DC. We were paired together, but I had more judgment given to me than they did. That's the way the firm was structured. I was at a place where we were planning to make everyone that came in partners as long as they were qualified when they got there.
From day one, I don't need to look at that again. I trust you to make a judgment as to what you can say to a judge. I can remember a specific incident where my national council wanted to put something in, I asked to change it, and they said, “I've got to run it by the partner.” I said, “We don't have time to run it by the partner. We've got to fix it. It's got to go to the judge,” where that difference in learning to think on your feet and having responsibility for the decision that is invaluable when I look back on how quickly I was able to progress and learn to have that judgment for clients.
Learning to think on your feet and having responsibility for the decision is invaluable.
When you realize, “The buck is going to stop here on this particular point,” you step up, take responsibility, embrace that challenge, and grow faster as a result.
I was thankful to have mentors who were allowing me to do that. Once they saw that I could do it, they kept giving me more leash.
You've seen that in training people now. You get a sense of people. When you will trust their judgment and they may think that it's a new arena for them, but you have faith that they will exercise good judgment, and you let them have a longer lead and do that because that's how people grow. That's amazing. Great litigation environment and a good firm for that kind of training. Comparing that to the level of people you are on par with at the larger firms in DC is like, “I'm doing the work of a third year in other locations.” That's amazing. What good advice and thinking from your mentor and also from you to think about it and to take that opportunity.
I knew I was coming and I could leave. It was having those experiences that made me look back at year 3 or 5 and say, “I want to stay here because I'm progressing. There's a future here because people trust me.”
You have to have the opportunity to exercise judgment earlier and to have the clients see you exercising judgment earlier also to become the best counselor you can for clients because what you're taught in law school is to do the research and answer the legal question. There are many other aspects that the clients are dealing with, which you don't see for some time as a junior lawyer. You're still offering this narrow advice. It's amazing to have that perspective because how you offer that advice changes how you're valued by the client, therefore is different. It's an amazing spin out from there from having those opportunities.
I thank my mentors for doing that for me. At that point, you weren't on Zoom, if I needed to go talk to someone, I would sit in their office until it was time for my question to come up. That gave me the opportunity to listen to how they talk to clients. They would include me in the calls with clients. They'd put me forward and say, “Anne Marie is the expert on this. Let her explain it to you.” I wouldn't have been able to do any of that without people that were giving me a little bit of responsibility and faith at an early age.
What you mentioned about watching people do things is important, being in the room and watching how more senior lawyers talk to clients and work through issues with clients or anything else. There's a lot that one ends up doing when one is more experienced than you forget to tell people you do because it's internalized.
When you see it, it's like the a-ha moment happens. You go, “I see how this works,” but even despite the best intentions, somebody wouldn't tell you that because they're not conscious anymore. That's an important thing for newer lawyers to consider to ask to be in the room, have the opportunities, and watch carefully what people are doing because that's the hidden learning opportunity.
What I always tell younger associates is, “You're not going to necessarily be that person. You're going to pick from each of them.” All of my mentors were White males of varying degrees of what I could ever take from what they did. Maybe how they dealt with a client situation, but I would never be the same jury trial lawyer as the other one. It wouldn't be true to myself, and it wouldn't go across well to a jury, but to be able to have as many of those different learning opportunities as you can and then piece it together so when you look back, you say, “I know where I got that from, but I've never been him.”
It's a very deft handling of a certain situation. You're like, “That's something I want to remember,” but it doesn't mean you entirely adopt someone's style because it would not fit. It has to be genuine to you because people respond to that. It doesn't mean you can't take, “That was a great way of handling that, and I'm going to remember that the next time I have to deal with a challenge like that.”
I do think that young lawyers sometimes only look for mentors who look like them. Part of the lesson is that's not what you're there for in the mentoring relationship. They don't have to share everything that you have, but you can still learn from them.
Good techniques or skills. More often now, sometimes for those of us who entered the profession, when there were fewer women and less diversity overall, I feel like if I waited for someone who looked like me to show me the ropes, I'd still be waiting because there wasn't a lot who could do that. You learn from the best in whatever package the best happens to be in. That's how we came in because we had much more limited opportunities, then it's great that newer lawyers have a little bit more breadth in that regard to look at, but then not to narrow your opportunities for learning too much by thinking that it has to come from a certain person.
I've been advocating for that happening on both sides. Because there weren't other female litigators doing what I did ahead of me, the men who wanted to see me develop had no choice but to mentor me. Sometimes now the men are stepping back and saying, “There are some female litigators. They can take care of all of our young women.” I encourage the young women to look for the older men and the men to say, “Just because we now have female litigators doesn't mean I don't have something to give to the young women as well and teach them.”
That's a good point of standing back and no need to do that. You have some great skills that people would learn from, including the younger women lawyers. Maybe describe a little bit about how your practice has evolved, what work you're doing now, and what you enjoy about that.
I've always described my practice as having a bunch of puzzle pieces to put together. It's come in a bunch of different forms. It can be that I worked in a bunch of pharmaceutical cases where we had an MDL happening in state court cases. I enjoyed being able to think about what arguments were we making in the trial that was going on in Birmingham when there was a trial in New Orleans going on simultaneously. How do you deal with that?
I've also done it in a very large corporate fraud context where we had federal securities litigation and ongoing state court litigation arbitration. You had to put those pieces together all at once and see where the arguments on one side would come back. In that piece, I was the one who was the fulcrum of trying to know what was happening everywhere. I enjoyed doing that. In the last few years, I've been using that same skillset in some ways to litigate a series of cases across the country that happen to be about hotel occupancy tax.
The piece I enjoy is thinking about, “We argued this in New Hampshire. What does it mean from what we're filing in Arizona?” That's the part of the chess game that I enjoy about litigation. I'm still a generalist in terms of the industry and that's becoming a little more rare these days. What makes it fun for me is I can take that expertise by saying, “I know how to deal with a bunch of different cases going on. Let me come in, figure out where the patterns are, and come up with strategies to keep us moving forward in ways to organize the team so that the left hand and the right hand know what they're doing at the same time.”
That is a special skill and approach when you have multiple cases going on at the same time, needing to coordinate what you're saying, what you're doing, how you're litigating that, and how each of those impact the other. There are not a lot of people who have that experience doing all of those together. Definitely, putting them together. A lot of litigators are used to, “I'm going to win the one case that I have,” but the client says, “I've got fifteen all over the country. Let's figure out how we best position all of those and work through this strategy of the big picture in addition to the individual cases.”
That's a special challenge and skill that you have learned and earned over the years. That's valuable to the clients for sure. We do that a lot in appeals. We're also the same thing or where we're consulting on cases like the setting in which you operate, thinking about those issues all the way up to, “What are the appellate courts in each of these venues and how are they going to interact?”
In the strategy of where you go first, which cases are you pushing or not? The fact that the series of cases I've been involved in has been never-ending means I've also built deep relationships with the client and the witnesses that have been personally satisfying as well. You see a witness feels comfortable because I was in the room. They are thankful that a lawyer was involved because it's rare that you can get business people to love lawyers.
It's rare that you can get business people to really love lawyers.
Being able to build that relationship with the cast of characters in particular cases. That's very unusual. As a litigator, you'll come in and the same thing happens with me as an appellate. People like, “We love you. We hope to never see you again. We hope we're not in this situation again.” Sometimes you can't help that. It's good. It's wonderful when you can see, “I can make people feel comfortable about this very uncomfortable thing that they're going through.”
It's valuable to share the work that you're doing because I don't know that we haven't had someone as a guest on the program describing that and describing that strategy and broader approach across cases. It's something valuable for people to think about and to think about even if they are handling discreet cases themselves that this is the scenario that general counsel and in-house counsel are dealing with to be sensitive to that.
It's a specialized skillset that you need to take some time to develop. Thankfully, I had different settings in which I could test out different ways of either running the matters, organizing them, and then as I've developed, finding people who like doing the same thing that I could move on to even different strategies and let them run the day-to-day. That's been a nice evolution as my career has moved on.
That dovetails nicely because that's certainly a leadership role in team building and team leading. I want to shift over to bar work, especially your work with the ABA throughout the years. In your incoming role as Chair of the Litigation Section, how has that experience impacted your skills overall and your enjoyment of the profession?
I'll back up a little bit in terms of why I stuck with ABA work to start with. Part of it comes to what we were discussing, which was that there were not a lot of female litigators that I was running into every day. I went to an ABA meeting and started out in the ABA sectional litigation with a woman advocate committee. As soon as I walked into that room, I had a female litigator who is still a dear friend coming up to me and saying, “You're new. Let's bring you into the fold.”
I left the meeting feeling energized. I'd go back to those meetings. You know what happens at most ABA sectional litigation meetings. You have dine-around where committees get together and the woman advocate committee would get together for dinner, and then you'd sit around and talk. Having those experiences of listening to what was happening in California, Philadelphia, and Texas, and seeing that the grass wasn't necessarily greener anywhere else, but having very candid conversations about how their firm's compensation system worked before I was even a partner.
I was privy to some of those discussions and how they were getting work. What was critically important to me was a group of women that was 15 to 20 years older than I was. When my kids were born, their kids were in high school and about to leave, and listening to them talk about, “You who are struggling with this infant right now need to think about what it's going to look like when that infant is eighteen and what your practice is going to look like when you have an empty nest.” That was completely critical to keeping me in the game for that many years.
I would come home, and I remember one of the partners I was working with said, “You come back from these meetings and you're energized. What is it about?” Part of it was these women who are all working at a high level. Part of it was the interaction. When you're in the ABA section of litigation, one of the real benefits is that we have leadership meetings where you bring in the top of the top professionals to speak during our plenary sessions.
You'd come home having listened to a former attorney general speak, about a critical court case, or listen to Bryan Stevenson and say, “This is why people are in the profession. It’s to make a difference.” We're all doing that in different ways, but the bar organization puts a premium on trying to be sure that we're paying attention to the rule of law and to ethics rules and to the rules that we all are governed by creating a network where you're supporting each other and being sure that as much of the profession as possible is practicing at a level that we can be proud of.
Paula Hinton was a guest on a previous episode. She talked about her almost group text network of women that she's developed in the litigation section over the years. What an amazing resource of personal and professional support that's come from that. What you are talking about is another variation of that.
Paula was the first person I met. She did bring me in. She also gave me my best piece of advice, which was to banish the word balance out from my vocabulary and to not talk about balance, because you'll always feel like you're falling off the tight road. Start thinking about it as managing. I'm managing the different responsibilities I have. That has made a big difference and has been the way I've managed the fact that I have a busy practice and I've busy roles in the firm. I have a busy life with two kids at home as well, but Paula is the one I credit with changing my framework to allow me to see myself as being able to succeed as opposed to balancing where I'd be falling off at any given time.
Balancing seems like it's never achievable. It’s amazing how words impact your mindset.
It is a switch in the mindset to say, “I know how to manage things.” One of the things I like about all my puzzle pieces is that I'm a good manager at that. Am I always managing all the responsibilities evenly? No, but that's the way life works. I've been taking that into this year of being extremely busy with the section share of saying, “For this period of time, I have a different set of things to manage. I need to back up on some other things in order to make room for what I'm managing.”
The important role of being able to lead the section forward and be sure that there's a section leader who is not a White male. Although I love my White male section leaders and they're fabulous, it's important that the audience see different people leading in different ways. In this critical time, for the country, being sure that we are thinking about the rule of law and what that means for us going forward.
I was going to ask what it means to you personally to be in that role at this point in time, and to serve the ABA in that way.
I’m honored that I'm being entrusted with it. I do think of it as a service. Danny Van Horn is just finishing up. I've had a great relationship with where he considers him to be a servant leader of the section for this time period. I had the privilege of working over the past on our strategic plan. It's been a matter of saying, “My job now is for us to take that forward and to be thoughtful and lead the section to the strategic plan.”
That is being sure that we're paying attention to what good works lawyers are doing, that we're making the rule of law central, and that we're paying attention to diversity and diversity in the profession. I feel privileged to be in that position right now and to be able to have people that are out in the room who I knew were like I was many years ago, saying, “If she can do it, I can be there years from now.” That's very meaningful to me.
That concept of being entrusted for this period of time with this responsibility and the role of the litigation section has played an important role in a lot of different ways and as you mentioned, and the rule of law and in advancing the careers of others. There's a lot there, but I like the concept of you being entrusted for this period of time with that carrying the baton forward and passing it to the next leader after that.
That's the way we end up being sustainable. I didn't go into bar service thinking that I was going to be chair.
Did you ever imagine that you would be in this particular spot?
I had never thought of it. I was in it in the beginning for the mentoring and the networking. My biggest advice to someone that's starting out is you raise your hand and do a good job then you can see where it leads you. For goodness' sake, don't raise your hand and then fall down on the job. It was that I'd taken little steps and people started to say, “We could see you doing this. Would you be willing to apply?” It took people that I didn't realize were watching me to say, “You should step up into this role.”
Just raise your hand and do a good job, and then you can see where it leads you.
There was a year that I wanted to step back and I got a phone call that said, “Please don't step back. We need people like you in these positions. We'll make it easy for you. Continue to do it.” As I got deeper into the section, learned more about the good works, and how much people cared about each other because it is a place that's very welcoming and people are watching out for each other and each other's careers, that's when I started thinking about, “Maybe I could serve in this way.”
You talked about how you've interviewed Barb Dawson before. I worked as one of her managing directors. Being able to see her lead in a way that I had not seen other people lead before also allowed me to say, “I cannot be Barb, but I can pick up some of what she has.” It allowed me to see myself in that role.
That's a great way of describing that. Barb carries that with her in a lot of ways because she doesn't have a lot of personal ego in that. She also has that servant leadership aspect but also encourages others to see themselves in new roles and things they might not have thought about before. That's such a great description.
She has a real gift for that.
As a result, she's inspired a lot of women to lead through her approach to that. It's not a heavy-handed approach, but you get the energy and inspiration from seeing her work.
I value the fact that she can still be a listening ear for me and has gone through the process ahead of me and can give me feedback on, “This is something you need to worry about. This is not. Let that roll off your back.”
You never know where things will go. It's evolved. The ABA and those in it have played different roles throughout your career from providing a broader view of women's experiences in law firms and in the profession to gaining mentors and those who have shown great leadership traits that people don't think about in bar service. If you're thinking about a particular committee or whatever, it's much more holistic, especially within the ABA.
The ability to give back to the next generation as well because a lot of what I do in this position now is making 400 appointments and looking at, “Who can we elevate into a position where they may not feel that they're ready, but we should put them there, give them enough guardrails, and let them see if they can succeed?” That was a privilege to go through that process. I enjoy finding new leaders who I can see a spark in that looks something like what I had with the energy that I was coming home from the conferences and saying, “If you have that, let me find you a way that you can do this, that you can manage along with all those other responsibilities that I know you have at home.”
What a neat opportunity to pay that forward and to provide some of the opportunities that you were provided for others.
I want to be the person who they don't know is saying good things about them behind their backs. They suddenly are appointed and said, “I wonder how that happened.”
I like the way you said, “I want to be the one they never know about.” It's fun. They're like, “I wonder how that happened.” It's neat to see that because they may not know who it is, but somebody saw something in them. Knowing that without even knowing who it is energizing.
It's hard to take time to stop and do bar work or any other service activity. You're in the midst of a busy practice. It does sometimes take tapping someone on the shoulder and saying, “This is important. It's going to be worthwhile to you both personally and professionally because of all the networking and referral opportunities that we all have across the country as well.”
What would you say are some of the top reasons for newer lawyers in particular, but even those who haven't been involved in bar service previously to think about doing it?
Wherever you're practicing it is important to have a group of confidants or network that's outside of that law firm, government agency, or wherever you are. Having that personal board of directors that's in a bunch of different places, the bar allows you to do that. There are the plaintiff's lawyers, defense, in-house counsel, and judges.
Anything that you're interested in doing, you can get that perspective. It's important to be able to take some time that is for you outside of what you're doing for your clients and even your own firm to nurture that because you don't know where you're going to end up. I've certainly seen my group of colleagues through bar service who have had life emergencies or had a change in jobs, and they rely on that bar group to help them chart the paths forward.
That's one thing for sure that I don't think people think about in terms of I'm going to go work for what's an amorphous bar. It is also special to be able to be a part of a group that is thinking about good works. What's access to justice look like for different groups of people? Sexual litigation is studying that all the time, working with the bigger ABA to pass resolutions to be sure there is access to justice. What does the rule of law look like? How do we explain it beyond lawyers?
We are working on some of that now to think about how can we explain to non-lawyers what's happening in judicial decision-making. Why might two judges come at something from very different perspectives? Why might both perspectives be legitimate? Why do we need to respect what that final decision is? That is something that lawyers need to be able to do.
One thing that I've been hoping we can do as well is that as divided as we are now as a country, if the lawyers can't demonstrate how to talk to each other, I don't know how we can expect anyone else to and to be able to spend some time having people with opposing views and demonstrate how you can have a civil conversation and get to a resolution, which is what litigators do all the time. Being able to think about it. Those are some of the reasons that off the top of my head that make it worthwhile to spend those precious hours on something that is outside of whatever is paying your bills.
It's also raising your gaze a little bit at the law and its impact on society and how you can contribute to that beyond particular clients and cases. For a lot of us, that's why we went to law school. We were hoping to create a meaningful difference in the law and in the world. It's nice to have an outlet to be able to do that and to be with others who can still have that interest as well.
It’s to be able to make a tangible difference. I've been watching or coming up on the ABA annual meeting and there's a lot of resolutions. I've been watching groups of lawyers who have very busy day jobs spend time saying, “Should we ask Congress to put this rule in place or that?” You need people to be thoughtful about that so that the rules of the game are fair for everyone that's involved.
If we didn't have people taking the time to do that, the system wouldn't be as trusted as we need it to be to move forward. That's been a privilege of being in this role where you do get to see that high-level discussion, but it's open to anyone. You could be a new lawyer, and if you have an interest in a specific area of law, there's a place for you to deep dive into the ABA sectional litigation.
The House of Delegates resolutions annual meeting is a whole other level of debate, drafting, and things like that. They cover many different areas of the law and important areas that it's helpful to have the ABA weigh in on.
It's a reminder that lawyers touch much of society. Once as you're talking about when you get into the details of whatever case you're on, you forget that you're in this profession that means a lot and should mean a lot, and that if we don't take care of it, there's a lot of things that could come tumbling down if the lawyers aren't proud of their profession and protected carefully.
There are a lot of things that could come tumbling down if lawyers aren’t proud of their profession.
The law's an important place for disputes to be resolved. You want to continue to have strong faith in that system through the rule of law and otherwise. There's legitimacy or a sense of legitimacy with regard to the decision-making, which helps order society. All of that is important. The point you mentioned about being able to meet people from all different practice areas all over the country, whether you're at a local bar association or national and international level like the ABA.
One of the beautiful things about it is that bar service is able to meet people who are doing many different kinds of practice and keeps your mind open about what it means to be a lawyer as well. You see the folks who do your kind of law but there are many other areas that lawyers are touching. It makes you feel part of that larger community when you can meet people who are doing that work.
A plug for our affinity committees within the section, The Women Advocate Committee, or the minority trial lawyer, LGBTQ litigator that you walk in there and it’s across the entire spectrum, everything from judges to in-house counsel to government lawyers. All that they share is an interest in moving the law forward and supporting each other. It's hard to find that.
There are a lot of other groups that have sharper elbows in terms of being in maybe an industry group where everyone's trying to get the same pool of work. We are trying to work together as teammates to help each other. The networking is pretty incredible. It is a way that if I'm sitting in Alabama, I may be the only Alabama lawyer someone knows, and you can get referrals that way.
I refer out the same way, because if you've worked with someone on a bar committee, you get a pretty good feel of how reliable they are, and how they might be with clients, and that's another way to build your reputation. That's one reason I encourage young lawyers to do it because not everyone is someplace where you're getting first-year experience quickly.
It's a way of building a network of trust of people who can say, “I know this young person. They're still a third-year lawyer, but they handled themselves well in this public situation. We can send a case to them.” You can still ask for a partner to supervise, but you wouldn't have that platform without involvement in some type of other activity. You can't only stay behind your desk.
That's a very similar thing to newer lawyers about why they should be involved outside the firm, outside the hallway. Their office is on to be out in the community in part because people may not talk to you about particular substantive areas that you may not be an expert in any particular subject matter yet, but you can show how trustworthy and reliable people get to know you as a person and all of those things that you can still do. It is never too soon to start doing that.
I'm glad you said that because some people don't believe me when I say that. I'm like, “It's to your benefit.” You learn new skills in doing that as well especially if you don't have the opportunities that you had early in your career in terms of your work on cases with some great mentors. Maybe this is the opportunity that you have to get those training opportunities for speaking, serving, leading, and collaborating in the bar association.
It builds a whole set of skillset that you can use in your daily practice by those interactions and being around a bunch of different lawyers who look different than you and speak differently. You pick up what you like and don't like there. It was never too soon to start. It's never too soon for us either. We will take someone on day one of law practice and earlier because we know that. We want the profession to be stronger because they've spent time with lawyers from across the country.
The opportunity to see some very accomplished lawyers and how they carry themselves and learn from that as well. That's a great point. Thank you much for sharing about your practice, journey, the ABA, bar service, and leadership. Usually, I close with a few lightning-ground questions. I'm going to start with which talent would you most like to have, but don't.
I would like to sing. My daughter can sing. I cannot sing. I don't know how often I'd use it, but I'd like to be able to do it.
It would be nice to add to your toolbox, but your daughter does. You can appreciate it.
I can appreciate how smart it is, and I enjoy listening, but I cannot do it myself.
Who are some of your favorite writers?
In some traditional, I like the Jane Austen style. I spent a summer in high school in England. We would read English literature, and then we went to Jane Austen's house. It stuck with me. I enjoy that. Anything that has a historical fiction or even biography type bent into my spare time. I don't normally do fantasy, but something that has a historical tie where I can do some reading to follow up on it is interesting to me.
There's a little escapist aspect to some of that, which is nice. Who is your hero in real life?
It would be my family who came over from Europe. My dad was a displaced person. My grandmother took three kids and fled as the Russians were coming into occupied Poland and eventually brought them over to the United States when my dad was eight. On the other side, my grandfather was born in Italy. They all grew up in immigrant populations in New York City. To see where the next generations have gone.
In my dad's generation, impressively, there were three boys who benefited from public education all came to the United States under the age of fourteen, learned English, got PhDs, and then passed them on to the next generation the care about education and seeing my grandfather who was a Marvel worker, worked on the Empire State Building and the stonework in the lobby there.
He had always dreamed of his grandchildren taking a few steps forward in the American Dream. I would say having the courage to do that and then making it through all those years when it was tough. I hated that my grandfather can't see where I am now. He knew I became a lawyer, but to think about what they would think of those next generations and where they've gone is meaningful to me. I consider them heroes for being brave to take those steps.
I have some similar parallel stories many of us do of our relatives coming to America and doing the tremendous change in 1 or 2 generations, the courage I took and risk to come to a country where they knew no one and often didn't know the language or anything like that, to work hard for the next generation to be able to accomplish that for those opportunities. That's a whole different breed because they are willing to do that. It's great to be the beneficiary of those who do that. For what in life do you feel most grateful?
For my family and everyone's health. We're fortunate that everyone is healthy in multiple generations. To be able to have that time together where we can still get multiple generations in one place and share those ties. We're leaving to go celebrate my dad's 80th birthday. To be able to do that with three generations is special.
That's such a great reminder of enjoying those moments of being able to have everyone together. Often we're moving fast and doing other things that it's hard to focus on the moment you're in. It's nice to acknowledge that and say, “This is pretty neat that we're all able to do this and enjoy many generations together.”
It is true. We're spread out pretty well. We celebrated my mother-in-law's 80th with three generations together. I know that it's a moment in time we're fortunate that at this moment we could celebrate who knows what comes in the future, but you're exactly right. To be able to take the time for those celebrations is an important part of managing everything that's on your plate.
Managing, not balancing back to that. Given the choice of anyone in the world, who would you invite to a dinner party, either living or not living?
I would invite the Obamas to a dinner party. I have listened to all of his first autobiographies, both her books. I’m listening to their voices which was fun for all three of those books. I enjoyed that, but it'd be fascinating to sit down and talk to them about their paths, which were unusual everything that they've seen explored, and they seem like they'd be fun for dinner. I don't know if they would or not, but it seems like they might.
It seems like it would be a fun and enjoyable dinner. It is an interesting one. They're both such unique personalities, but then to have them together would be a whole different thing as opposed to having dinner with one of them.
Maybe I should invite the girls too.
That would be a great idea. You're like, “Tell me the real scoop about your mom.” Last question, what is your motto, if you have one?
One thing that has stuck with me and a lot of different settings was something that a dance teacher said when we were little. We were always told to smile, concentrate, and stay in character. As I've thought about it, and I've said it to my daughter when she performs, it applies in a lot of different areas of life. Even when I get up to give a speech now with the section chair hat on, that's what I want to do. Smile and keep myself calm, concentrate on what you're trying to deliver, and stay in character. Be sure I'm presenting the way that I want to present. I give credit to my old dance teacher for those some words of wisdom to live by.
Those are good ones. They're something that you can do quickly almost as a checklist. When you stand up to do something, you have that moment of butterflies and like, “I'm disoriented for the moment. Focus.” It gets you back into what you're doing now and being in that moment in the best way possible. It's cool that you saw that and said, “This translates to a lot of other things,” and made it continue to be useful and helpful as you went on to other things besides dance.
She is one of those mentors along the way. It stuck with me many years later.
Thank you so much for joining the show and sharing this. I've seen you from the Women Advocate Committee days moving forward. It's not a surprise to me that you ended up in the position of chairing the section, but it's beautiful to see. I'm happy for you and for the section that you're taking on that role.
Thank you so much. Thank you for dedicating many hours to this show. It's a fabulous way to be an inspiration for many women to come, and I know it's going to be treasured as these are kept for years.
Thank you so much.