Episode 34: Nicole Bershon
Los Angeles Superior Court judge
00:52:22
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Show Notes
Judge Nicole Bershon was appointed to the Los Angeles Superior Court in 2013 by Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr. Prior to becoming a judge, she served as a court commissioner and even an inspector general just to name a few of her varied roles in law during her practice. In this episode, she chats with MC Sungaila to share the twists and turns of her journey to the bench, from commissioner to superior court judge, and the supportive community of mentors that helped her along the way. Learn more about her journey by tuning in.
Relevant episode links:
Los Angeles Superior Court, Karen Scott - Past Episode, Jack Reacher
About Nicole Bershon:
Judge Nicole Bershon
Judge Bershon was appointed to the Los Angeles Superior Court in 2013 by Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr. She currently sits at the Torrance Courthouse where she handles a felony trial calendar. Previously, she served as the Site Judge for the Inglewood Courthouse, overseeing daily operations. Prior to becoming a judge, she served as a court commissioner for two years.
Currently, Judge Bershon serves as a Vice-Chair of the Los Angeles Superior Court’s Diversity Committee. She has previously served on the Court's Executive, Community Outreach, Court Security, Jury, and Temporary Judge Committees. She also serves as the Vice-Chair of the California Judges Association’s Committee on Diversity and Inclusivity.
After graduating from law school, Judge Bershon entered private practice with Stutman, Treister & Glatt, and, later, with Irell & Manella, where she handled bankruptcy, civil and criminal litigation, and corporate matters. She then spent six years with the Los Angeles City Attorney’s Office, handling both criminal and civil matters. Before she joined the bench, Judge Bershon spent almost ten years with the Office of the Inspector General for the Los Angeles Police Commission, first as an Assistant Inspector General, and later as the Inspector General for the LAPD.
In 2012, Judge Bershon was nominated as one of Los Angeles’s 50 Most Influential Women by Los Angeles Magazine. She was also recognized by California Women Lawyers as one of its 2012-2013 Women of Achievement awardees. She is a former President of the Women Lawyers Association of Los Angeles and is a past recipient of the organization’s Distinguished Service Award. In addition, she has served on the boards of California Women Lawyers, the Los Angeles County Bar Association, and the Multicultural Bar Alliance of Southern California.
Judge Bershon is a graduate of Princeton University, where she was co-captain of the women’s rugby team. She received her law degree from the UCLA School of Law, where she served as Co-Editor-in-Chief of the UCLA Women’s Law Journal. She teaches Criminal Law and Constitutional Law at USC’s Gould School of Law and is the President of the UCLA Law Alumni Association.
Transcript
I'm very pleased to welcome Judge Nicole Bershon from the Los Angeles Superior Court. Welcome, Judge.
Thank you for having me.
We'll talk about your career and journey to the bench. You're the first on the show, thus far, who's come from a commissioner position to a superior court judge position. Maybe we can talk a little bit about the differences between those, but I wanted to find out how it is, how the heck did you decide to get into the law, to begin with, to go to law school and become a lawyer.
Unlike some of your other guests, it sounded like it was their goal from day one and they were destined on that path. My path to the law was what I would call it by default. When I went to college, people at my college pursued basically 1 of 4 avenues. They went into medicine and I don't like blood. They went into business or investment banking and I'm not particularly good at math. They went into engineering, see answer above or they went into the law. I like to write and argue, so it seemed to be the natural progression for where I would go, but I wasn't ready per se.
I applied to law school with the hopes that I would take a year or two off. I was going to teach English in China. I was very excited about that. The timing being everything, it was 1989 and the Tiananmen Square incident occurred. My program was canceled and my path to law school was expedited. I started UCLA Law School right after graduation. That's how it started.
You were at UCLA around the same time as I was, it was a very exciting place to be. We had a very diverse class with Pre-Prop 209. We had our youngest colleague, who's now a professor at UCLA, Eugene Volokh. He started there at sixteen and our oldest classmate was 65. We had people from all around the world. I got pushed along the path and the next thing I was taking the bar.
I like your description. I'm in the category of, "I can't stand the sight of blood," so that wasn't happening and the whole math thing, and all of that, I relate to that. Prior to joining the bench, you had pretty varied practice experience, which is to some degree common. A lot of judges have had that in and it tends to be a plus in terms of a more general background in the law. Let's talk about that a little bit, so you had some time of private practice and then also your time in the Inspector General's Office,
I was fortunate again. I was consistent with my prior path into the law, not exactly knowing what I wanted to do and letting inertia take hold of me. I went to law school. I love public interest work in law school. I was on the Public Interest Law Foundation. I helped start the UCLA Women's Law Journal, which is still in existence. I'm so excited.
Congratulations, it's still there.
Thank you for that. We're proud of it. I did all this great public interest stuff, but I worked at a private firm after my first summer and didn't mind the money. I thought it was intellectually challenging, so I wound up in a bankruptcy firm after graduation. They were lovely people and it was important work. It wasn't for me and that's all they did. When you go to a boutique firm and they don't do anything else, there's no place but out.
I went to another firm that you and I have in common. I thought I would be doing more litigation, but wound up because of their needs, basically running their bankruptcy department. As a second year, I got a published decision out of it, but it was a unique experience. No disrespect to the bankruptcy practitioners out there, but again, more math and more balance sheets were not for me.
I realized at the time that maybe a big firm life was not for me. I had a good friend who had been working at the LA City Attorney's Office at the time, not as a lawyer, and he called me up and he said, "They're starting this Vertical Domestic Violence Prosecution Unit, would you be interested?" "Would I be interested?" I applied and the next thing I took a 50% pay cut and I never looked back. I stayed in government for the rest of my career.
I stayed there for a few years and then, while I was there, I worked with the newly formed office of the Inspector General for LAPD in the wake of the Rodney King incident and the consent decree with the DOJ. They bolstered that office, put a lot of resources too into it, and we're developing it. I met the Inspector General and then I met one of the Assistant Inspector Generals, who's still a friend to this day, our soon-to-be Presiding Judge Samantha Phillips Jessner. She and I were working on a project together with the Women Lawyers Association of Los Angeles. I found out she was leaving, so I applied for the job. I was at the Inspector General's Office for several years, then I became a Court Commissioner and now a Judge.
Another very well-regarded and lovely human being was there, Judge André Birotte.
He’s a very good friend of mine. Not all mentors for women are women and he has been a wonderful mentor throughout my career, a remarkable human being. He was my boss there and when he left, I took his job. He went on to become the United States Attorney for the Central District of California, and then now a Federal Judge and remains to this day a phenomenal human being.
He is a wonderful person and very strong on mentoring, especially the law students at Pepperdine, his alma mater. Let's talk about that mentoring piece a little bit. Sometimes people think, "I need a mentor," but what does that mean and what does that look like? What are the different ways that people can mentor? How the heck do you get one of those?
My strange path as a lawyer is somewhat indicative of what a lack of a mentor can look like. I don't want to call it a rudderless ship because I feel that everything I did was important and brought me to where I am now, but I didn't know where I was going because I didn't have people giving me insight or guidance. We didn't have any lawyers in my family. I had my mother's cousin, but we've had different careers.
Kudos for expanding the diversity of the judicial appointments in not just race, ethnicity, LGBTQ, but diversity in practices, areas, fields, and all that.
I didn't have any mentors. I was a little naive. I graduated from law school in 1992. Women were almost 50% of the law school population. I know some of your prior guests have talked about not being able to find a job out of law school. That was not the case. They were hiring women and it took a little while for me to first be mistaken as a court reporter, but overall, I was treated pretty fairly initially, and I thought that the world was my oyster.
I think about that too in terms of the diff the difference in time between when we graduated and our opportunities. I didn't know what people were talking about in terms of the glass ceiling. I didn't experience that until maybe 4 or 5 years into practice was when I started seeing that. That's a blessing from being in the generation we were in coming out of law school. It was a blessing not to have encountered that earlier.
I was a little bit of ignorance is bliss, though because I was overly confident that this was no longer a problem and little things that happened along the way that was telltale signs, I dismissed them because "We're that generation where it's no longer a problem," and then you hit that wall or ceiling, whatever you want to call it, in 4th year or 3rd year, you're going 90 miles down the freeway, and then you're slamming on your brakes, and you're, "Where did this come from?" You didn't see it because you thought you were on an easy street.
The flip side of that is we were very fortunate coming out of law school where firms were hiring. They were making an active effort to recruit women. They were telling you, "How much of a family we are and we want to have women. Here's our one-woman partner. We're going to bring her out and show you so that you see that we have women." I felt like whatever opportunities I wanted to pursue were available to me.
I went to that firm, then I went to a second firm, and then I left to go to the city attorney's office. When I went into government, it was like, "I could exhale and that veil had lifted." I could see those opportunities again because my supervising attorney was a woman and half the supervisors were women. Most of the people I work with were women in my government job. It depends on the environment that you were in, but once I got back into government, I felt that there were a lot more opportunities for me as a woman.
That's good to know that there was a more positive feeling about potential opportunities in the City Attorney's Office and in the government. I've seen that in the stories of women lawyers and judges who were even before us. Many of them went into government service. That's where there were more women. Even before our graduation period, the better, stronger opportunities for them were in those settings. It's a good opportunity to get some real experience in terms of trial experience. There's a lot of responsibility you can have in government positions.
That's why to the extent, though, it's changing and our court has a judicial mentoring program, which I'm involved in and there's now an appellate one. Justice Teri Jackson from the First District is very involved in that and mentoring judges and lawyers to think about becoming appellate justices. One of the things that you see and the reason why you see so many lawyers from the government work on the bench is because you get real trial experience. You get repeated and frequent trial experience to the extent that historically has been a valued commodity in terms of skills for appointment. You've been in civil most of your life. You have a lot of appellate arguments and things like that, but a lot of civil practitioners bemoan the lack of real trial experience.
That question on the Superior Court Judicial Application Form says, "List all the trials," and a lot of people would say, "None."
"I second-chaired. I did a mediation." That's all very valuable work. It's just government work and specifically criminal government, you're on trial day in and day out. I remember after going to the City Attorney's Office and you have a very wonderful training program. It was about a month or six weeks, then you go right in. They give you the file and your witnesses may or may not show up. You rock at 12:00 PM. There are no pretrial motions. There is nothing. You're going and that's your life for the whole time.
It's an easy transition, but on the flip side of that, it potentially excludes a whole group of people who bring valuable skills, insights, and knowledge to the bench. Historically, they hadn't been seen as having the same transferable skills. That was something we were missing. That's changed with the past few governors.
Governor Brown was looking a little more of an expansive view in terms of experience, even at the Supreme Court level, for those with academic experience in teaching, the law professors.
I teach law school now. I also see where some of the skills that I've developed and learned as a law school professor have been very helpful to me on the bit. I see it and it's important. I kudos to both him and Governor Newsom for expanding the diversity of judicial appointments and not race, ethnicity, or LGBTQ, but diversity in practices in areas, fields, and all of that.
You see that also in district attorneys and prosecutors being appointed, but also now public defenders being appointed. There is a broad range in that regard as well. There are so many different things. You could be assigned as a Superior Court Judge to any department, starting out in different departments. I talked to another colleague at our mutual firm, Judge Tina Byrd, who says, "I used my experience from being an AUSA in dealing with financial cases is helpful to me in family law."
You don't think about it, but she's like, "Those skills are thoroughly transferable because I'm doing a lot of spreadsheets and numbers and things like that. It's helpful to me. I'm dealing with financial experts." When you say family law, you don't think about that, but the nuts and bolts of it, there are transferable skills that you're not thinking about.
In fact, one of the partners at the first firm that I went to is now a judge. He was appointed the last couple of years. He was assigned directly to the probate court, again, because of all the financial overlays, the tax issues, and all of that. Good for him. Number is not my skillset, but to your point, I know some of your readers who may be considering joining the bench, to the extent that they are thinking of applying, that is something they should not run from if they have those skill sets because some of us judges joke that we became a judge because we're not good at math, but there are times that we need to be good at math to the extent that you have colleagues who have that skillset. They may be helpful in certain disciplines.
Tell me a little bit, though, about your Inspector General role and what was involved there because not everybody has one of those in their jurisdiction. What was involved and how did those skills from that role translate to the bench?
There's the Inspector General's Office for LAPD and also now an Inspector General's Office for the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. In fact, there are a greater number of Inspector General Offices or variations of them throughout the country and even internationally. There's one in Northern Ireland, one in the UK, and one in Canada as more focused on police accountability, police procedures in the wake of controversial shootings and other use of force incidents that more and more this is a burgeoning field.
The LAPD's Inspector General's office dated back to the Rodney King incident and then the civil issues that arose after that. They call it civil unrest and really drill down into the patterns and practices of LAPD. They were sued civilly by the Department of Justice during the Clinton administration. LAPD was sued, alleging a pattern and practice of civil rights violations, and that was in federal court under the monitoring of Judge Gary Feess.
As a result of that, the LAPD and the City of LA entered into a consent decree with the Department of Justice. It wasn't just 2 or 3 pages. It was huge. It had multiple components. It had audit components. It had a requirement of specifically how officer-involved shooting incidents should be investigated, how arrests to be conducted, how gang units are supposed to be created and monitored, and it also specified that an Inspector General's Office is created and have some real teeth.
The Inspector-General then became a direct report to the Police Commission. For LAPD, the Chief of Police is not the head of the department. The five-member voluntary Board of Police Commissioners is the head of the department. The Chief and the Inspector General are direct reports. We're on an equal footing.
The Inspector General's office is responsible for going to the scene of officer-involved shootings and in-custody deaths. There are a lot of them. It's 3:00 AM or 4:00 AM and I am driving out to all parts of LA, going to the scenes, making sure the investigation was done appropriately, witnesses were interviewed, and evidence was collected. We then would be briefed on it within 72 hours and we'd be monitoring the investigation throughout its course.
When it was completed, we would do our own review and indicate whether we agreed or disagreed with the Chief of Police's recommendations for the outcome of the investigation. We then would all meet in closed session and the Police Commission, and there ultimately be a decision about how the shooting should be adjudicated out of policy and whether there was any discipline.
We did lots of audits on use of force incidents, more minor ones, search warrants, and gang units arrest. We also took complaints from members of the public. Also, complaints from department employees. There were internal retaliation for reporting misconduct. We did a lot of reports. We had a lot of responsibilities. We had to comply with the consent decree. There were specific compliance requirements that the city would be deemed out of compliance if we didn't comply with those.
One of the things that we had to do in order to get out of the consent decree was to show that we had worked closely with the department to ensure complaints of racial profiling were handled appropriately, and that was one of the big things I've worked on before I left. By the time I had left, we had done our final completion. We got out of the consent decree and then I left. Great wonderful years. It taught me a lot and I'm so glad for that experience.
There are so many different parts to it. It sounds like one of the skills you gained from that was dealing with a number of different stakeholders and working through all of those things. That seems to be a helpful skill to use on the bench as well.
One of the questions people always say is, "Did you always want to be a judge?" Kind of like, "Did I always want to go to law school?" I didn't think I wanted to. My husband, who I've been with for years. He said, "Since I've known you've wanted to be a judge." I said, "I've never vocalized that thought bubble or maybe I did," and he claims I have.
If you look at it, the work you did as the inspector general was different from your work as an advocate. I felt whether I was in private practice or the City Attorney's Office, I wasn't always comfortable in the role of an advocate because I was always looking at the other side, which is a good advocate does, but there were cases or times where I felt like, "I don't like the position we're taking. I know we have to take it, but I don't feel comfortable with it."
When I got to the Inspector General's Office, we were not an advocate. The motto of the office is independent oversight or independent Impartial objective. There are a lot of stakeholders. There's the complainant and the accused police officer. Maybe some community members, some media, or unionists. There are so many different issues. The role is to review the facts. You're not doing the investigation in 99% of the cases. You're coming up with an impartial conclusion and you're not advocating for either side. It's like being a judge. You're the trier of facts. I felt like going to the bench was a natural progression because that is what I'd been doing for the last several years.
I don't think you could have known that in how it would be a bridge to becoming a judge before you entered that position. It seems like a nice little continuum through the inspector general onto the bench. When did you decide, "That's something I would like to apply to be appointed to as a bench officer?"
Not that I was burnt out, I love what I did, but I also felt that in order to truly be an impartial and objective civilian oversee of law enforcement, you needed to have fresh eyes at some point. I personally didn't believe I should be in that business forever. Not that I get jaded and I was trying not to get jaded, but sometimes you're seeing people at their worst. You're not necessarily seeing them at their best and you want to maintain that fresh perspective. I felt like it was time for me to move on. We finished the consent decree and reorganized the office, starting with André. We've done a lot of good work. It was time to move on.
It sounded like you reached a crescendo and you tied a bow on a bunch of things. It was either, "Now I'm going to come back and start a new on other projects. I could tie the bow on that and move to something else."
Give other people who were interested in the opportunity to promote and move in. I had been out of the courtroom though, for quite some time. Other than serving as a Judge Pro Tempore, which I was allowed to do, I didn't do traffic matters. I did small claims, but I'd been out of the courtroom except to serve as a custodian of records and in-camera proceedings, and I felt that applying straight to the trial court would be difficult, A because I was rusty and B, I felt from a credibility perspective, a lot of judges didn't know me.
We are guided by the same canons of ethics as a commissioner as you are a judge.
I had friends who had gone through the commissioner process. For those of your readers who don't know, commissioners in LA County and the State of California are subordinate judicial officers or magistrates in other states. They do what they call limited jurisdictions. They tend to the higher volume cases that involve more self-represented litigants, small claims, traffic, and some minor limited civil misdemeanor arraignments.
Commissioners can do other things with the stipulation of parties. They do some domestic violence restraining orders and some family law matters. That process is one where the judges choose you as opposed to the governor, so you apply. It's the same judicial application. You apply, you go through a screening process, and then a list is created by a commissioner committee that is comprised of judges, and then you're ranked on the list, and as new openings come up, then you could join and be appointed a commissioner, or they call it elected.
I was on that list when there was this huge budget crisis and a bill had been passed to convert new openings. I was on the list for six years. I was number one for eighteen months, which is a record. While that was number one, that's when Judge Birotte had left to go to the US Attorney's Office and his position was coming open. I was debating, "Do I apply? Do I not apply?"
Another good friend of his who also became a mentor, Judge John Meigs, who is now retired, Supervising Judge of Inglewood, said to André, "Tell her to put in for Inspector General because we don't know what's happening with his budget." I applied and I became Inspector General. I was Inspector General for years and then I got a call that there was a commissioner opening. It was one of those, you've got to take it or you would not.
After that long amount of time has been waiting as well. That's very helpful because one of the things I hoped to share through this show was the number of different ways there are to become a judge and the different types of judges. Magistrate Judge Karen Scott was on the show. That's a judicial appointment at the Federal level. That's the corollary of the commissioner at the superior court level. It's very helpful to know about that because maybe that would be something people would want to pursue.
I would encourage it. I thought it was a wonderful opportunity. I got back in the courtroom. I got to hone my skills. The other thing is you get to meet a number of judges. Me being me, I got involved in every single committee, which I loved. I met all these wonderful people. When you put in to become a judge, they send around the form from the JNE commission, the Judicial Nomination Evaluations Committee, which is a statewide committee that vets judges.
In LA County, they send a questionnaire to 50% of our bench. They're sending it to judges who may not have known me as a lawyer, but they knew me as a committee member or someone who handled the case for them or a fellow member of the benchwarmers, which is the judge's softball team that I played on. You have an opportunity to meet judges in a very positive environment when you're showing your best foot and it helped my application.
That's such a pragmatic point and something that people don't think about. How many people weigh in during the appointment process? You're going to be familiar with the judges in that arena if they're asked in whatever capacity, whether it's the committee work or your work on the bench. That would have been something you wouldn't have had that familiarity with them if you hadn't done that because you weren't in the courtroom. They would be wondering who you were.
It was truly beneficial because if you're an appellate practitioner or a criminal practitioner, and you're applying as an advocate or practitioner, there's probably a relatively limited universe of bench officers that you're coming before. Some of those may not turn in an application or a questionnaire, but it can be a much broader base when you're a commissioner.
You can join a committee and our court has many committees. I've been the Vice-Chair of The Diversity Committee and I'm on the Committee Relations. Some of those committees have a hundred members. Our Relations Committee has 100 members. Those are judges from family, criminal, probate, and civil, and they have commissioner members. If you're a commissioner and you're on that committee and you meet other judges, you have an opportunity to get exposed to judges from all sorts of disciplines.
Also, you could see, fundamentally, being a commissioner, "Do I like being in a judicial role? I think I would. It seems like a natural progression, but do I enjoy what it means to do this on a day-to-day basis?"
There's much more positive than negative and the occasional challenges on the bench, whether it's a high-volume courtroom and you're trying hard and everyone's telling you can't go a minute over 4:30 and you're doing your best or a challenging litigant and honing those temperament issues. We're guided by the same Canons of Judicial Ethics as a commissioner as you are a judge. The disclosure issues, the recusal issues, the no social media posting issue, and all those issues. You get to see both the benefits of being a bench officer and the limitations. You are somewhat limited to first amendment rights, political contributions, and things like that. You realize, "Is this something that I can live with, or is this too constraining for me?"
That's a good point as well. I think about it and what does it mean and how you live your life in a number of different ways. There are a lot of wonderful things to being on the bench, but there are also certain constraints about things that you can't do. I think about that in terms of judges saying as well, "We enjoy doing a lot of advocacy or community work or serving on different boards."
"Now, being on the bench, we're limited in doing in what we can do directly in that regard, but we do have the power of convening and bringing stakeholders to the table to discuss issues that we may also think are important to the community. We have that power convening power, but it isn't as direct as to the some of the things you can do when you're not on the bench."
"Are you comfortable with that? Is that going to be enough for you in terms of how you can make a difference in areas that are important to you?" Those are good practical advice there. You liked it and applied to be on the Superior Court. What kind of assignments have you had since you've been on the superior court? Sometimes people don't think about that. You do get assigned and moved around to a number of different areas within the court.
It's not a joke because it's very important because there's such a need for family law judges and it's such important work. It can be difficult work, but so important. There's a relatively steep learning curve. There's this general preference. I don't know if it's a rule, a policy, or an official, but at least with LA Superior Court, the judges who become family law judges have to stay at least three years in that position, so there's some continuity, but a lot of judges who first go to family law had been criminal judges. You're doing criminal practitioners, you're doing criminal, and the next thing you know, you're at a family law court.
Very lucky in my career. When I started, I was a Commissioner at the Inglewood courthouse. Everything's timing, the court went through all these budget issues and they had to close a lot of courtrooms and consolidate a lot of courtrooms. They consolidated the small claims courthouses. Inglewood became a hub of small claims that Santa Monica, West LA, Malibu, Beverly Hills, and Torrance were heard in Inglewood. They initially asked me as a commissioner because I was good with high-volume courtrooms to handle it and I did as a commissioner.
When I became a judge, they asked me to continue that, which I did. I'd been doing some criminal before that. Within a few months of becoming a judge, they asked me to be the Supervising Judge of Inglewood because I had supervisorial experience at the Inspector General's Office. There was an opening in Torrance to do criminal and I wanted to do criminal, so I did criminal. I moved to the Torrance courthouse and I never looked back. I've pretty much only done criminal since then, though I help out occasionally with domestic violence restraining orders or if there's a small claims matter, but it's been criminal for the majority of my career.
I knew about the Inglewood situation and that's highly unusual, as you would say, to be so earlier in your Superior Court career to have that, but you had so much experience in that setting as a commissioner.
That's the other thing, too. LA is a unique experience because we're such a big court, but if people are interested, especially in a big county like LA, some of the branch courthouses do everything. They may have criminal, civil, traffic, and family. If you are at a branch courthouse, you oftentimes have the opportunity if somebody is out and you can sub in. I'm always willing to help out.
If you want to change it up a little, you want to go handle a small claims case or you want to handle the traffic case. There are those opportunities where much less siloed in the branch courthouses. There are other counties throughout the state that have two judges. Those judges do everything. They're a generalist. One day they have a civil docket the next day, they have a criminal docket. The next day they have juvenile and traffic. It depends on where you are.
Some people will say, "I want to be a family law judge. I want to be a criminal judge." I'm like, "That's great, but your assignment could be anywhere and all of those things over time. I hope you want to be a judge because the subject matter could change and vary. To someone like me as an appellate lawyer, I'm like, "That sounds enjoyable," because that's part of the fun of being an appellate lawyer is our subject matter changes all the time. That's always fresh, if it were only the same appeals over and over, that would be not as fun to me as having cutting your teeth in new areas of the law and learning a number of new undecided issues, shall we say, which is fun.
I'm doing family trials. There's been so much change in criminal justice reform or legislature, and every year there are new laws. Some of which are forward-thinking. There are some laws that require you to retroactively look at cases. In terms of the opportunity to continue learning about criminal, it's constantly there. You're in the same discipline, but if Judge Jessner becomes presiding judge, calls me on January 2nd and says, "I want you to go to civil." If she tells me where, I will follow.
That's the other thing. I was like, "It's not up to you. It's where the court needs you."
You could go to Lancaster up the 14. Our County Spans, 100 miles from start to finish. You could be all the way up in Lancaster, which is 100 miles, one way up, and all the way down to San Pedro. It's 10 million people.
It’s the breadth and where the various courthouses are. I want to talk about the mentoring piece a little bit more as well because you have had some great mentors, Judge Birotte, Judge Meigs, Judge Jessner, and there are others too who have been very helpful in your career. I want to talk about that a little bit. How did they get in that position? How did you talk to them about being a mentor? It's a mystery. They're like, "A mentor? How does that happen? What does it look like? I'm scared to ask someone to help me." You're very comfortable with it. I thought I'd ask.
As I got out of law school, I thought I was fine and everything was great. It took me eight years to realize that I would like some insight from colleagues that I could brainstorm. I had a good friend. She was a law clerk with me and then became a partner at the first firm I was at. We were summer clerks together. We were both asked to get coffee by a potential client at the initial client meeting. We looked at our partner and he got it. He said, "They're not here for that." We were bonded in that. She called me and said, "I'm getting off of the board of the Women Lawyers Association of Los Angeles and I think you'd be great." I don't know where my head was. I was like, "There's a Women Lawyers Association in Los Angeles? That sounds great."
You're the Founder of UCLA Women's Law Journal. How could you not know that?
I wonder where my brain was sometimes. I said, "That sounds like a great idea." That was my home. The first board meeting and the president at the time was someone we both know, Eileen Decker, also a former United States Attorney for the Central District of California and now the Vice President of the Los Angeles Board of Police Commissioners, our paths crossed again. This is a phenomenal woman and a phenomenal group of people. What I loved is again the diversity in race, ethnicity, and LGBTQ.
That's what I love about it. Eileen also got me involved with Women Lawyers. She and I had known each other from when we had clerked. She clerked for Judge Taylor and I clerked for Judge Tyler. We'd known each other a long time. She's like, "You might like this." The same thing. I have the same experience. I loved it.
I thought I would never have met 75% of these people in my practice because they're all over the county and they're in all different practice areas. I would never have encountered them. It's like a little microcosm of what it means to practice law in that particular area and be a woman. It was formative for me in my experience in practicing in Los Angeles with WALA. It wouldn't have been the same experience without WALA.
I felt like, "These are my people. I'm home now. We can talk about these stories of the good, the bad, how we brainstorm and strategize." It's funny talking about mentorship throughout my career. Those same people have popped up in someplace shape or form. When I was going through the commissioner process, Judge Judith Chirlin, now retired, was on the board and very helpful.
Another wonderful, fabulous human being that I miss every day is Judge Beverly Reid O'Connell, who's a friend of ours and who passed so suddenly. Judge O'Connell was such a wonderful mentor to so many women judges because she was at the US Attorney's Office and came to LA Superior Court. She was a mentor to so many young women judges who were starting out. I met her through WALA.
I have my own story. She was visiting by designation on the Court of Appeal and I had an oral argument. She wasn't on my panel, but she was still on the bench. It was all women on the bench, which was remarkable. There was me and then there was another woman, the advocate on the other side. We're all beside ourselves. We're all together.
There are so many different avenues of mentorship right now.
Judge O'Connell was so nice because she knew I was usually a little bit nervous when you're about to get up and argue. She wasn't on the panel. She was able to do it. She looked at me and she goes, "You got this," then back to her regular judge face. That personified her so much that she's so supportive of other women and always there to give you a positive feeling before a challenging time.
That was the great thing about WALA. It's such a supportive and encouraging group of people under the umbrella of mentors, sponsors, supporters, allies, and all those different terms, but they weren't just mentors at WALA. They're the people who recommend you for other positions. They're not just looking at your career from a 180-degree perspective of where do you want to go next, but when they hear of opportunities, they're putting your name up, supporting you, and offering to be a listening ear when you want to practice your interview speech, or whatever it was.
What I felt in terms of where I found my mentors is you join something that you want to do, believe in, and are passionate about because then your skills will show. You will meet kindred spirits who are on the same page as you. Hopefully, if you believe in something, you will show your best self, impress people, and then they will think about you when job opportunities come.
In the old days, people had their golf courses or cocktails work organizations like this, you can have your all working at the food bank, or you're helping women get a domestic violence restraining order, and you're working on an amicus brief. You're meeting people through that and getting to know each other. You're thinking about them. You may not be a family law practitioner, but you hear about a family law judge job, and you call up your friend and you say, "Are you interested?" It evolves naturally from that.
That's the summary of it. You were telling it through the actual experience of the story. It all fits together, but that's exemplified, "This is how it works. Here are all the people we met." I still think about that. As you said, finding your tribe in a way. On the other hand, being very expansive was the same thing, the diversity of practice areas, experiences, small firms, government, and all these different things that half of them in law school I didn't even know were a way to practice. Also, the judges from different positions in different courts, but all women supporting each other. That is a testament to the leadership of WALA and the presidents and executive committees that fostered that approach to each other.
They're very supportive. A lot of former presidents are now on the bench.
It works out that way. That's a great exemplification of it. Sometimes people are concerned, "I need one of those, but I don't know how does that work." Sometimes people think it means asking someone out for coffee that you would be scared to ask for coffee. That might be part of it, but there is this working side by side, elbow to elbow, on things that you both care about. That could also be a way.
You're also serving your community and serving the bar at the same time as meeting people. That's the larger thing of like-minded interest in service and giving something to the community in different ways. That's probably the common thread of people who are involved in bar associations and other community activities. That's a common thread amongst the bench, too. You have an interest in that. This is another way to do that.
I can't speak Pre-Schwarzenegger, but starting from Governor Schwartzenegger, Governor Brown, and Governor Newsom, community service commitment to the larger community is probably as important of criteria as your temperament, legal abilities and intellect. It doesn't have to be one particular thing. They're looking for, "Are you committed to something other than yourself, whatever that may be?" The other interesting thing is that these appointment secretaries are pretty smart. They'll look at someone's applications, "They joined something a year ago in anticipation of their application." They see through that.
It's like, "Is it in your DNA? Is it who you are? You can't help but do that. You've repeatedly done it in different ways over your lifetime. Did you suddenly get religion a couple of years ago and decide, "I have to fill in the gaps?" That comes across if that happened.
You don't have to be committed to something. You could be on a special committee of your bar that's focused on entertainment or labor law, or something that you're devoted to helping your colleagues improve the profession or that aspect. It doesn't have to be working in a soup kitchen or something like that. They want to show that you were involved somewhere outside of yourself.
Being authentic about whatever that is. Thank you so much for discussing the mentor piece because I don't know if some people thought about it as much as you have in how that all fits together.
I do it now and I tell my students. I teach at USC and several of them have reached out to me. I can't give them a job, but I can give them ideas. Join our organization. It's cheap or low cost as a student or considers externing for the court. If you're willing, we don't pay. If you have a professor you like, ask them. I'm always willing. There are so many different versions. I'm on the board of UCLA Law School's Alumni Association and we do a lot of mentorships there too. If you're a current student, look at your alumni board. There are so many different avenues of mentorship right now.
Are you ready for the lightning round?
I'm ready for the lightning round. Bring it on.
Which talent would you most like to have but don't?
It's singing. I cannot sing. My daughters have beautiful voices. I watched American Idol and other shows and that's my brain release, but I see how music and someone's voice can move you. I would love to be able to sing.
Everyone needs an audience and an appreciator. You can fulfill that role. You're singing. At least you can appreciate the singer. Who are your favorite writers? They don't have to be legal.
They're not. When I'm done with my day, I want an escape. I love mysteries with a little crime element. It's a busman's holiday because I do it all the time, but there's a woman writer, Karin Slaughter. She was a police officer. She has a lot of books with female police officers or detectives as heroines. She's from Atlanta. They're set in Atlanta. I like Lee Child. I do like the Jack Reacher series. Vince Flynn, David Baldacci, and I know he gets a bad rep amongst some people, but I still love the Grisham books. He can weave such an amazing page-turner. You can finish that book in two hours because you don't want to put it down. He has an amazing gift.
It's a good fast-paced read. I was on a legal writing storytelling panel with Illinois Appellate Court’s Justice David Ellis, who's also a legal thriller and a mystery writer. He's written some books with James Patterson as well. He's pretty interesting, so you might want to check his things out.
I will.
He's a judge who also is writing, a nice man as well. Who is your hero in real life?
Everybody says Ruth Bader Ginsburg and I agree 100%. This has nothing to do with her judicial philosophy and I haven't done a deep dive on her positions and judicial constitutional interpretation approach, but Justice Jackson became my hero the way she handled herself. This has nothing to do with politics or your position on either side, but the grace and dignity with which she carried herself in that environment became my new hero. Talk about grace under pressure. Also, Senator Booker. Not to be political, but his grace and joy in being so proud of her achievement. I thought it was a beautiful thing to watch.
Talk about having positive reinforcement during the challenging time that he provided that to her. She's a lovely person.
You're going to have two of my other heroes on soon. Judge Samantha Jessner, our soon-to-be presiding judge. I followed her to the Inspector General's office. I followed her to the court. I will follow her everywhere. Also, Justice Lee Edmon was the first woman presiding judge. It took about 150 years to get one and she was it. She came in under one of the most difficult times with flashing $1 billion from the court budget. She kept the lights on and the commissioners employed when a lot of other courts laid off their commissioners. She's another one of my heroes.
I spoke with her and she's amazing. I had positive experiences as a new lawyer with her when she was the president of the LA County Bar. She was so warm, thoughtful, and welcoming to ideas from some brand-new lawyer from Orange County. I thought, "What a lovely person," you remember that thing for the rest of your career when somebody is that gracious. That's how she is. She's gracious with so many people. It's so lovely to see her. I hadn't realized that she was the first female presiding judge of the LA Superior Court. That was mind-boggling to me.
It was in 2011.
I'm like, "Wow," and then, Judge Kuhl, she was excellent as well. Given the choice of anyone in the world, who would you invite as a dinner guest?
It's Eleanor Roosevelt or Shirley Chisholm. I always love quotes. They have some phenomenal quotes that are indicative of being a strong woman in the public eye and fighting and standing up for what you believe in and being willing to persevere forward. Either one of them, I'd love to have dinner with.
That would be cool. Last question. What is your motto, if you have one?
I have three, but one I won't share with you because it doesn't reflect so well on me. One is, "Evil prospers when good men or women do nothing." This is also a Shirley Chisholm quote is, "If they won't give you a seat at the table, bring a folding chair."
Thank you for reminding me of those excellent quotes and good admonitions. Thank you so much for sharing your insights and experiences. It's so clear that you're enjoying being on the bench and sharing the opportunity to be on the bench by mentoring others and getting information out there about the process, which is wonderful. Thank you so much, Judge Nicole Bershon, for joining the show.
Thank you for having me and thank you for doing this amazing show.