Episode 32: Christine Byrd
Los Angeles Superior Court judge; former federal prosecutor and BigLaw partner
00:51:30
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Show Notes
MC Sungaila welcomes the Honorable Christine Byrd of the Los Angeles Superior Court, whose path to the family law bench included serving as a federal prosecutor and BigLaw partner. She offers valuable career advice -- including making sure you are paid commensurate with the value you bring to the law firm you work at -- and how women's career paths often involve multiple lateral moves in order to gain promotions and experience.
Christine Byrd
Christine Byrd is a family law judge, sitting in Dept. 42 as a Dedicated Trial Court to hear long cause matters. Judge Byrd was appointed to the Los Angeles Superior Court in 2010 by then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and has been part of the Family Law Division since appointment. She spent her first six months in the San Fernando Courthouse and then was assigned to the Stanley Mosk Courthouse. In October 2017, she began her long cause assignment.
Judge Byrd is currently serving as a member of the Family Law Curriculum Committee of the Center for Judiciary Education and Research (CJER). She previously served on the Curriculum Committee in 2016-2017. Judge Byrd attended Stanford University for her undergraduate education and then attended the University of Virginia School of Law, receiving her J.D. in 1975. Following law school, she served as law clerk to the Hon. William P. Gray in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California.
Prior to her appointment, she was a partner with Irell & Manella LLP for 14 years, from 1996 - 20 I 0, where she handled complex business litigation and specialized in damages in patent litigation. Her legal career also included nine years as a partner at Jones Day and five years as a federal prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney's Office.
During her 35 years of law practice, she tried numerous jury and non-iury cases, earning her recognition in Southern California "Super Lawyers" and in "Top California Women Litigators," and election as a Fellow in the American College of Trial Lawyers. She also served as a neutral arbitrator in dozens of complex business disputes and was elected as a Fellow in the College of Commercial Arbitrators.
Her other accomplishments include raising two children, now ages 35 and 28, while practicing law full-time, which she could not have done without the help and support of her late husband, the well-known architect Gary Byrd.
Transcript
I am very pleased to have on the show Judge Christine Byrd from the Los Angeles Superior Court. At the LA Superior Court, she focuses on the Family Law Division. Welcome, Judge Byrd.
Thank you. It is good to be here with you.
You have a varied career prior to the bench, certainly not in Family Law, substantively, but also in private practice and Federal government. We will talk about those, but first I wanted to chat a little bit about how you decided you might want to be a lawyer and go to law school in the first instance. What attracted you to the law?
I have read some of your episodes and they are excellently done. I noticed that almost everyone had a great world vision view that brought them to the bench. I cannot say it was anything like that. When I was in college, my roommate's father was a lawyer, and I argued with him over various things, including the Vietnam War. One day he said to me, “You are good at arguing. You should go to law school.” What I thought was a character flaw, which was that I liked arguing with people and talking back to them, turned out to be a good career skill for a lawyer. I thought, “You mean this negative I could turn it into a positive?” then I went to law school.
Sometimes, it can be one of those moments where somebody sees something in you that you do not see or cannot translate because you may not have known a lawyer or known what was involved in that. I know when I was growing up, I had my parents would said, “You could be one of two things. You can be the first woman Jesuit or you can be a lawyer.”
I would always like split hairs and argue things the same thing. My parents were like, “We think we see something in you here.” The same approach that you had. How did that turn out? It sounded like somebody saw that you had a skill that would translate well to the law, and then when you went to law school, did you enjoy it? Did you think like, “I have found a place to enhance my skills and refine them in argument?”
Within the first month or two of being in law school, I knew that I had found my place. The way that lawyers or the law school analyze issues and approach things is a combination of written and speaking. Everything clicked with me and I said, “This is right for me. This is where I was meant to be.” It was obvious. It was a perfect fit.
Sometimes you may not be sure after the initial part sounded good. I know law school can be so challenging. When I was in law school, it was a little bit hard the first year or so because it felt like you got maybe a little broken down and rebuilt in how you presented arguments and how you wrote. For those of us who thought we were good writers before we went to law school, it can be a little humbling. It is good to have a little humility there. It is like an attribute. After law school, you had a judicial clerkship. Can you talk about that a little bit in terms of how that impacted your career and the relationship you had with your judge too? Those can be very close mentoring relationships.
It did impact my career. I had trouble finding a judge who would hire a woman law clerk, but Judge Bill Gray here in Los Angeles is famous for always hiring 1 man and 1 woman. He was available and I applied. He also was known for hiring 1 East Coast person and 1 West Coast person. When I interviewed with him, I was very worried as to whether I would qualify as an East or a West Coast because I was in an East Coast school but I was from California. I asked him, “What do you mean when you say East and West?” He said, “The East Coast is anything East of San Bernardino.” He had gone to Harvard. That was his view. I thought, “I like this guy. I think I could work for him.”
I got the clerkship. It was interesting. There was another woman who was very well qualified. She was more qualified than I. She was at Harvard, but he liked me and he wanted to hire me, but he wanted to save face with his existing law clerks who wanted him to hire the other person. He said to his secretary, “Place a call to so-and-so and let the phone ring six times. If she does not answer, then she does not want the job.”
He had her place it at 9:00 AM, California time. That was 12:00 noon at Harvard. This highly qualified person at Harvard was busy doing very important things at noon on the day, and she did not answer. I, on the other hand, was at 9:00 in California. I was sitting there doing nothing except drinking coffee. I got the call and I got the job.
It is a good thing you were there and you picked up. Who knows what would have happened if you had not picked up? Maybe they will circle back to the previous person.
The other thing was that he was very well-respected and because I was his clerk, I was able to get interviews, and then eventually, I did get a job because of the clerkship. It was very helpful to my career.
Make sure you receive pay according to your value.
That is often you can get some great opportunities. At least doors will open for interviews with a clerkship, especially with a well-respected judge like your judge. I want to circle back a little bit in your answer reason. Not many judges would hire women law clerks and he hired one regularly every year. Maybe we can talk a little bit about when you were in law school, graduating, and starting your career, what was it like for women in the law and women law students?
It was extremely difficult for women. There were many places where people would say, “We won't hire women for litigation.” I went to the law school clerkship committee, and what they usually do is place you in a clerkship and they would not consider me because they said I was not good enough for the Supreme Court.
Other than that, the circuit court and the trial courts did not want women because it was such a personal relationship and the men would feel uncomfortable with women. They were wrong. There were quite a number of circuit and trial court judges quite enough. There were some who would hire women, but the clerkship committee did not want to risk their credibility on a woman candidate.
They would not support me and then would not place me, but there were two law professors who basically buck the clerkship committee and use their influence and write me letters of recommendation. I have always felt very fondly towards both of them for being willing to stick up for me. It made a big difference, but I had to find the clerkship opportunities on my own.
After the committee said what they said, you did not take that as the answer. You talked to the other professors who supported your application and determined for yourself, but there were some judges who were willing to entertain women law students’ applications. That is interesting.
I was going to say it is interesting. What happened with the two people who recommended me, one of them went on the Fourth Circuit, I believe, Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson. The other one was Ernie Gellhorn. He was a professor at law school, and then he became a partner at Jones Day. When I was a partner at Jones Day, he asked me to be his administrative partner. I ran the entire Western region of Jones Day, which was four different offices, as an administrative partner for a year. That connection was a good one.
That is such a great story of long-term things boomeranging back from the beginning. To have someone who continued to support you, mentor you, and provide opportunities for you from the beginning and then later in practice. That is pretty cool. Not many things line up that way where somebody would have that opportunity because you would not be in the same place again. That is neat. What year are we talking about when you were applying for a clerkship?
I applied in 1974. I was in the Class of ‘75.
It is interesting that it funneled through the particular committee that would do placements. I do recall we had clerkship coordinators when I was at UCLA Law School, but we had to do our own thing in terms of applying, determining who we would apply to, or at least I did, figuring out who would be a good match and all of that.
I went in not knowing anything saying, “I would like to do a clerktship for one year, and so I am going to go to the top. I would like to have a clerkship at the US Supreme Court.” They were like, “That is nice, but not everyone gets to apply for that, and maybe you should think about something else,” so I ended up clerking on the district court and the Ninth Circuit later, which were wonderful. Sometimes it is good not to know when you go in and ask and you are like, “I just done this and I figured mathematically this works out well.” It is good not to know when you ask those things.
It looks funny at you like, “It usually works that you have a circuit court clerkship, and then you have the Supreme Court clerkship.” “I did not know that.” That is wonderful that you had that support. That leads to mentoring and sponsorship. That is a good example that you have from the law professor in law school and then subsequently at Jones Day. Do you have other kinds of mentors and sponsors in law practice that also made a difference in your career?
Yes and no. I felt that later on when I became a partner. Some people were supportive and some people were not. As an associate leading up to the partnership, I felt that I was very much in a sink or swim environment. I was the first woman that Jones Day had ever hired in Los Angeles. Nobody knew if I would make it or not and people were not investing in me. What I did was I spent 6 years there and then I spent 5 at the US Attorney’s Office. I wanted to get a good trial experience, which I did. I then came back to Jones Day as a partner. That was when people began to say, “This is a worthy trial lawyer.”
How did you keep yourself going when you realized like, “No one is investing in me. No one sees or knows whether there is a long-term path for me here.” How did you put one foot in front of the other when you knew that was the attitude?
It was not psychologically difficult. I had extreme confidence in my own abilities. I deserve perhaps not, but I did have some desktops with people overcompensation. I found Jones Day has had, in those days, a secret compensation system. I found out that men who were junior to me were being paid the same as I was. In other words, I was being paid low.
I remember that made me realize my view of myself was the compensation. I have held the opinion throughout my career that people can say all sorts of things to you, but if they do not pay you, they are not valuing you. The pay is critical. That is the telling thing that is about how do they perceive you? What are they paying you? I learned that.
It is the bottom line in terms of how much of a contribution someone sees that you make to the firm and also how much they value you in terms of wanting to keep you and being competitive with other firms as well.
There is an old expression that talk is cheap. Sometimes that is applicable. Sometimes it is not, but it is easy to pay your compliments. I would like to have you pay me into the bank account. That was my guiding light throughout all of this was to make sure that they paid me because then I knew that I was being valued. I still think that pay for women is very important.
It spurred me to go to the US Attorney’s Office and get trial experience because I said, “I do not want to be begging people for a job or for a partnership. I want them to beg me to be their partner.” That happened at the end of five years at the US Attorney’s Office. A number of law firms in the city were all begging for me to come and be partner in those firms. I accomplished what I set out to accomplish.
That was based on the skills you would acquire from the US Attorney’s Office. In large firms, there are litigators. Not many of them have trial experience. Having some pretty serious trial experience over those years made you stand out and be something that they thought was you have something that would be very attractive to clients.
Especially jury trial experience. Jury trials were few and far between in the civil bar in Los Angeles in those days took forever to get to trial, and there weren't that many civil trials and many cases settled at the big law firm level. I was with five years’ worth of jury trial experience and it was a big selling point.
At one of the busiest US Attorney’s Offices with some very interesting cases. What kinds of cases did you work on when you were at the US Attorney’s Office?
A big variety. In the beginning, the office assigns you so that you learn everything from bank robberies to counterfeit money. Later, I moved into the drug enforcement unit and there, we did complicated cases. Multi defendants, you might have to have experience with doing wiretaps, introducing wiretap evidence, and proving up a conspiracy. I did the drug cases for a number of years, and both trials and investigations. I then moved into the government fraud unit, which was a false claim against the government and public corruption. It is so complicated financial crime.
That translates well to the civil cases. You are dealing with a lot of documentary evidence. It translates both to a white-collar defense practice potentially when you leave the US Attorney’s Office but also some good skills that go across to civil business litigation. When you returned to Jones Day after the US Attorney’s Office, obviously, they wanted you back since you had that experience. Did it feel odd going back to the same place when you are in a slightly different position when you have come back in terms of your experience level and them wanting you?
I would not use the word odd. It obviously was different, and it was different in a way that I wanted it to be different. I wanted to be a partner and I was. I had the authority and the excitement of being a partner. Yes, different but not odd.
When you came back, that is when your law school professor had you in the position of administrative partner too, so law firm management.
Not immediately, but it was five years later.
Spend money on yourself; don’t wait for somebody else to tell you what to do.
Women having management responsibility in large firms is still a unique proposition even to this day, unfortunately. What did you learn from that role? Did you learn more about the business or leadership, leading the teams of people in the different offices?
I will tell you what I learned. I learned that I do not like administrative work at all. I found that I liked being a lawyer. I did it for a while. I did not go to law school to be an administrator. It was a good lesson to learn.
It is good to have the opportunity. Sometimes you have to do something and say, “It was not my cup of tea. I would rather spend time practicing law instead of managing people and managing parts of a practice group or offices.” It is good to have the opportunity to see what is not your cup of tea. That is good too. It is good to discover what you like and what is not your thing. One of the things we talked about prior to the episode was the concept of investing in yourself for your own career and own sanity to some degree in terms of balancing work and family. Can you talk about that a little bit, how you thought about that and what examples of that in your life?
When I went back as a partner at Jones Day, I wanted to make sure that I was good. I was the first woman partner with a child, and I wanted to ensure that everybody knew that I could handle the job even though I had a child. In those days, this seemed to be a question in most law firms. To resolve that, what I did was I hired a car service to drive me to work and drive me home every day. This was before cell phones and what I did was I did work in the backseat of this town car. I was working and able to bill time or read my mail and read the advanced sheets.
Whatever I needed to do, I was accomplishing work door to door, so I did not waste any time commuting. It was very expensive but it was worth it because it did make sure that I got home every evening and had dinner with my husband and my child. I worked later, but I accomplished exactly what I wanted to accomplish, which was to make sure that I was extremely productive with my time and I did not have any wasted time commuting.
It worked, and I have given advice to women, not that they have to hire a car service but to spend the money on themselves if they need to. Do not wait for somebody else to come and tell you how to do it. If you see what should be done, invest the money at the front end. I did not want to wait until I stumbled. I did not want it to wait until somebody came and said, “What are you doing with your time?”
I wanted there to be no questions and I did what was necessary. The other thing I did was I bought myself a fax machine which, as we said earlier, does not sound very high tech but, in those days, it was high-tech. It was extremely expensive also, and I did ask the law firm to buy it for me, and they would not. It involves having another telephone line plus the machine.
I decided that was the way I could work late at night at home, so I did. I put in another telephone line and got a fax machine. It was the kind where the paper comes on a big roll and you had to cut the pages. It was very early tech but it worked for me because it allowed me to work from home in the evenings. I did, and I invested in myself and in my career. It was well worth it. The return is a hundredfold, but I did not wait on somebody else to pay for it.
That can sometimes be a stumbling block for people, depending on what it is. You asked the firm to bless it or pay for something, and they may not do that. The question is, do you say, “I am not going to do that because the firm won't pay for it,” or is it something that you could do yourself and then maybe when the firm sees that is helpful?
They will participate later or even not if it is something that you think is meaningful enough, even going to a particular conference. The firm won't pay for that, but a lot of people in the industry that you want to break into or it is going to be at that conference is very well worth investing your own time and money into that so that you can make connections and bring in business to a firm.
You have to look at it from a cost-benefit standpoint and say, “This is a good investment in my career and this is not.” It depends a bit on what financial resources you have. Investing in your own jet airplane might be extreme, but a fax machine can do.
When you are talking about the driver, I remember Irell. Layn would do that all the time when he was going back.
I told him. I will go and call him. This is another small world story, but I was trying to get him to come to Jones Day and I told him about my car service. He ended back at Irell with his car service and then payback to me and said, “Why don’t you come to Irell,” and I ended up at Irell.
That is what I was wondering. I was like, “Layn had a role in bringing you to Irell.” Layn Phillips as a Federal Judge and US attorney, and then he was my mentor at Irell also. That is so funny that you gave him some advice and then he's like, “Why do not you come over here?
Layn had been in the US Attorney’s Office here in Los Angeles with me. Before he became US attorney in Oklahoma, he was an assistant US attorney here in Los Angeles, and his office was next to mine.
I did not realize how close you were to the US Attorney’s Office. That is funny. What a small world. You have this recurring theme of people bringing back into your life at various points. Is that because you keep in touch with them or does it just happen?
I do not think I do anything different or special. Part of life is people you know in one part of your life pop up again in another.
I am personally very glad that Layn was successful in getting you to move to Irell and work with that firm as well. After Irell was when you joined the bench, what caused you to think, “This would be the next great spot for me to engage with the law as a judge instead of an advocate,” because you enjoy litigation and you are quite good at it.
I loved litigation. After moving to Irell & Manella, I was there from 1996 until 2010, and it was the high point of my litigation career. It was wonderful, but what happened was a personal tragedy. In 2008, my husband died, and I found that without him, law practice was as if the wind had gone out of my sails. He was not there and most of my career had been with him putting wind in those sails. I thought, “I need to do something different. Something to break with a past for a start.” I thought what I wanted to do was to move away to some new or different place, but our son was still in high school. I couldn't do that to him.
I thought, “What can I do?” I can assure you that breaking the barrier of being a full-time working lawyer and being a widow is a barrier that I did not want to break, but it is something that more and more women have to face that it will happen to them. I had to do something with it. There is that old expression when life gives you lemons, and you make lemonade.
I have to do something new, fresh, and different, and going on the bench was what I came up with. As soon as I thought of that, I thought, “I would love to do that.” I put in my name, and five months later, I got a call from the Governor's Office. After going on the bench, it was a bit like going to law school. I realized very quickly that this was wonderful. This is what I need. It is brand new. Intellectually, it was very challenging, personally. It was very exciting and I was meant to have this as my next career.
Very significant events and personal life can cause you to reassess what your next professional loop is as well. Being on the bench helps that you had such significant trial experience prior to that. You are comfortable with that. On the other side of the bench, in terms of advocacy and a lot of people do not bring that much jury trial experience, for example, to the bench.
A lot of people need to apply many times and have several years before they get appointed. It did seem like it was a good convergence of timing when you did that because that is unusual to have that appointment so quickly. How have you enjoyed it now? You have been in Family Law, which is totally different from both the civil or the criminal law advocacy work that you did prior to the bench. You clearly enjoy it because you have been in Family Law since your appointment to the bench. What do you like about that?
What I like about Family Law is it is extremely complicated and very messy. Most people would say that is what you do not like about it, but for me, it made it challenging. That is what I wanted. I wanted a challenge, overcome that challenge, and have the excitement of having succeeded in a whole new arena. Family Law offered that opportunity.
There is some overlap with the work that I was doing before. Family Law involves a large component of financial issues. Everything from sending child support to valuing businesses and dividing them or assessing real estate. All of that. It is not as if I am out there doing the assessment, but expert witnesses are testifying.
For me, to have an expert accountant come in and run through the financials for a business, I understood. It was a language that I already knew, and it is a big component of Family Law. There was a push at some point to get more newly appointed judges who had a financial litigation background into the Family Law bench, and quite a number of us came in that wave and are now doing long-cause cases. A larger percentage of those involved significant financial issues as well.
When life gives you lemons, you make lemonade.
You are in the long cause now, so that would not seem that those would be more complex cases. I would say financially or economically complex as well. Isn’t that interesting? We think about the substance of love, but we do not think about the component parts of things. The numbers and the financial alone being comfortable with that analysis of financial statements and things like that are par for the course in those kinds of cases in Family Law.
They are critical components of Family Law. For people who have W-2 wages, even knowing how to read a paystub is sometimes like reading Greek and Latin. There are a lot of financial issues. It depends at all on the financial brackets of the litigants. There are financial issues in Family Law.
There is a custody aspect but there is what you are doing. You are dividing up the finances or the property. That is important to have that background. You said that there was a move to have people who had that familiarity with looking at balance sheets, financial spreadsheets, and things like that being in the Family Law court. It makes a lot of sense in terms of diversifying the skills that everybody is bringing to the bench.
You mentioned custody. That is one of the messiest areas of Family Law. There is a lot of judicial discretion involved, but every child or family is different. That is when I say that Family Law is very messy. It is very messy. That is such a wonderful challenge to put or layer that on top of those financial issues that are totally different approaches or ways to look at them and to have all of those issues combined in the same case. That is what makes Family Law exciting.
Maybe not in your more complex cases, but it is very common for litigants to be self-represented in Family Law. There is that additional layer of working with the parties directly sometimes on things that either are emotionally or economically messy. That is a whole other layer of skills on top of that.
It is very challenging when people are self-represented. What I like about all of it is it is so difficult, challenging, and complicated. I love it.
You like a good challenge. A good challenge makes you feel alive.
I do not know about feeling alive, but it makes me feel very worthwhile.
You want to feel that you are contributing and doing something meaningful. Sometimes a tough puzzle can make you feel that way. What advice would you give to women lawyers who might want to join the bench or women law students who are starting out in their practice? Those are two different things and you can answer one, both, or whatever you like.
For women law students, become a good lawyer first before you think of the bench because that is the only way to get there. You have to have ten years as a lawyer, but do not forget about it. Keep it there. That is what happened to me. After I had clerked, I was like, “It would be wonderful to be a judge,” but then I became a lawyer and I loved it. When my husband died, I said, “Is there anything else that I wanted to do?” It then came back.
For the women who are already a lawyer and then thinking about whether or not to be a judge, I would say that they should observe some courtrooms and talk with some judges first. There is a difference in what cases you are going to hear, depending on where you are assigned. Federal and state cases are very different. Do some groundwork before you say, “That is what I want to do.” Figure out whether you would like it.
That is solid advice. There are a couple of different ways. One is that depending on being a judge, even in the same court in different types of areas of the law is different, and you do not necessarily control those assignments. You could be moving between a lot of different places as a trial judge in state court in California, for sure. Also, the difference between different courts, state, federal, trial, or appellate. The day and the life of the particular judge has going to be very different depending on which court you are in, and then the process of becoming a judge is different in each of those.
Part of what I hope to highlight through the show is that some people are elected in some states and some people are appointed. The magistrate judges are appointed by the US district judges and the merit selection panel. Others have governor appointments like you do to LA Superior Court. That is part of the calculus too. Are you comfortable with the process that is required for the position? Before that, do you want this position? Is it something that you could see yourself enjoying?
There are also less visible bench officer positions. We have commissioners in the state court. They are employees and you have to have been a lawyer first, but that is also an entryway into the bench. There are many administrative judges for the administrative agencies in the state that people do not often think about, but there are administrative law judges associated with every single state agency.
Some of them are part of the agency or come from a pool in Sacramento. There are lots of positions there where you are a decision-maker. They are non-jury, and those are very interesting positions as well. I always like to encourage women to think more broadly, not just judge but also these other positions.
That is one that I have not talked about yet on the show in terms of the administrative judges at certain agencies, both state and Federal.
The most obvious one is if you are working in the employment law area, that is going to the labor agencies. They have full-time administrative law judges doing very interesting work.
There are different roles. On the show, I also interviewed the clerk of the court at the Ninth Circuit and also one of the mediators. She is one of the court mediators for the Ninth Circuit also. Those are different kinds of jobs that people do not think about. They are not judicial jobs necessarily, but they are in the court system. There are different roles that you could also contribute with a law degree.
That is why so many tend to become lawyers first. Practice a little bit, but then there are lots of avenues that are available that are very interesting.
Keeping an open mind. My mom likes to say it, which is like, “Look at both sides of the street.” When you are focusing on one thing, sometimes that is also a nice little shop over there instead of the one I was looking at or focusing on. Keeping an open mind and being open to opportunities and areas where you may not have considered them previously. They might be a good fit for you and a way to add to your toolkit as well. The recognition that if you first look at it, you think about your experience with financial experts and things like that. You would not think about translating so directly to your role in the Family Law court.
Once you investigate that a little bit about what's involved in those cases, you say, “That is a good fit and I would find that to be very interesting.” That is another example of sometimes you do not know until you get in the position that there is that overlap. Being thoughtful about things, opportunities and different positions, and seeing how they overlap with other skills that you have.
Maybe not the most obvious one but something that is rewarding for you. That is ultimately what you have talked about in your career journey, which is you enjoy challenges. You have had different challenges at different points, and that is part of what gives you some sense of meaning and contribution in your different roles.
Constantly challenging yourself, looking to grow, and be the best at whatever you are doing at that point in time because I have seen you, and I know you are great. Are there any particular judges that you admire, that you emulate or said, “This particular judge, I like the way he or she did act.” Maybe it is the judge he clerked for or somebody else on your bench.
I would say that there is one thing that the judge I clerked for said to me once that I have never forgotten. He had to sentence a woman in some criminal case and she had children and it was hard for him. I asked him if he worried about whether he was doing the right thing when he sentenced criminal defendants. He looked at me, and he said, “No. It is not my job to be right. It is my job to do the best that I can. As long as I know I have done the best that I can, then I can sleep well at night.”
At that time, it was significant, but now that I am a judge, it has much more significant for me. Especially in Family Law, I do not know precisely the right thing for every child in every custody case that I have handled, but I try to do the best job that I can with the information and skillset that I have and the law that has been given to me. I try to do my best, and so I do sleep well at night. That comes from Judge Gray.
That is a good reminder in general because we can be hard on ourselves, whether we are lawyers or judges. We can be pretty hard on ourselves in terms of performance and doing the absolute best as perfect as this right. That is a good reminder.
Do the best job you can with the information and skillset you have.
One of his other law clerks is also a family law judge. Steve Cochran. It is interesting that he inspired at least two more judges. One of his other law clerks is Kim Wardlaw who is on the Ninth Circuit.
In my experience, coming out of law school, working for three different amazing judges were some of the first people that I looked up to in the law and learned so much from. I do not think when you have that experience, if you can think any differently, that is such a great job. It is such a wonderful job because they are such wonderful people who have been important to you as well in terms of your growth. You look up to them, but that is cool that so many fellow clerks are on different benches.
He had a good sense of carrying the responsibility with grace which inspired the people around him.
It is a good way of phrasing that. Taking it seriously but carrying it with grace. I end with a little lightning round of questions. Are you ready for the lightning round?
If I do not know the answers, then I pass.
Which talent would you most like to have but you do not?
I would like to be tall, and I am not.
I am not sure if that was a talent, but that is okay. What trait do you most deplore in others and then what trait do you most deplore in yourself?
I am terrible at scheduling. I am always having calendar conflicts. Thank God I have a clerk here that controls the calendar. That is the trait that I deplore the most about myself. In terms of what I like in other people, I love it when people give me a straight answer. Whether it is what I want to hear or not, it does not matter.
Who are your favorite writers?
Ian McEwan. He is my favorite author. His use of language and his ability to paint a scene to the point where you can see, smell, and feel it as if you are there. After that, I have a lot of mysteries. I like mystery writers, but Ian McEwan is top of my list.
Who is your hero in real life?
I know you were going to ask me this question. I was thinking, “Who do I think is a hero?” It depends on how you define it, but I have a law school classmate that I would define as a hero. His name is John Charles Thomas, and he became a justice on the Virginia Supreme Court and is now retired. His entire life story, which I won't try to give you a thumbnail sketch, is so inspirational. I feel honored and privileged to have been a tiny bit of his life during those years in law school. He was one of the original children who integrated schools in Virginia. He was the first African-American justice on the Virginia Supreme Court. There is a long list of things that make him the first. It is hard to be the first, so he is my hero.
It is hard to be the first in many ways in terms of people expecting or whatever people expect from you in that position and what it takes to get there. Given the choice of anyone in the world, who would you invite for dinner?
I would invite my own children. I have two wonderful, interesting children. They are great conversationalists. They are interested in so many things, and I love having conversations with my children.
Isn’t that nice when you can say that about your children? You enjoy them, you would enjoy spending time with them as adults, and having those conversations. That is great. Last question. What is your motto, if you have one?
I do not have a motto and I am not a big fan of mottos because they can be shallow. My view of people, the world, and everything is very nuanced. I was one of those people who was afraid that I would fail the multi-state portion of the bar exam because I could always see another answer or a combination of the A, B, C and D. I am not a motto kind of person.
It is too one-dimensional, you are saying. It is funny that you would say that about the multi-state because I had the same situation. I am like, “There are too many possibilities.”
You have listed only four and I know there are ten.
That is a good way that you have nuance and prismatic view of things. That fits with many different aspects of your career that you have had to and how they all fit together in a kaleidoscope way for you as well. Thank you so much for joining the show and sharing some of your career journeys with us. I appreciate it.
Thank you for having me and thank you so much for doing this project. It is interesting and wonderful. I know it is taking a lot of time, and I want to thank you for doing it.
Thank you so much. I enjoy talking with you and other amazing women lawyers and judges, and learning from all of you too. It is very fun to do.
Thank you.