Episode 98: Noma D. Gurich
Oklahoma Supreme Court Justice
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Today’s guest is Oklahoma Supreme Court Justice Noma D. Gurich. Justice Gurich joins MC Sungaila to share her journey from law school to the bench. Not being an Oklahoma native presented its challenges. Her mindset of always being prepared and open to opportunities became key to her career path. She sheds light on what it’s like working in the Supreme Court and shares the challenges the court faced during the COVID-19 pandemic. Listen in for essential tips for aspiring lawyers and judges.
Relevant episode links:
Justice Noma Gurich, Justice Eileen Moore - past episode, New Leadership , Girls Inc
About Noma D. Gurich:
Justice Gurich has been a member of the judiciary for over 33 years. She has the distinction of being appointed to judicial positions throughout her career by 4 Oklahoma Governors. In 1988, Republican Governor Henry Bellmon appointed her to serve as Judge on the Workers’ Compensation Court (now known as the Court of Existing Claims). Governor Bellmon also appointed Gurich to serve as Presiding Judge of that court for two terms—1989-1993.
In 1994, Governor David Walters re-appointed her to serve a second term on that court. In 1998, Republican Governor Frank Keating appointed Gurich to fill a vacancy on the District Court in Oklahoma County. In 2011, Governor Brad Henry appointed her to fill a vacancy on the Supreme Court of Oklahoma. Justice Gurich has been elected by voters in Oklahoma six times—the first being in 1998, when she was overwhelmingly elected to continue serving as a District Judge in Oklahoma County.
She continued to serve as a District Judge and she was re-elected without opposition in 2002, 2006 and in 2010. As a member of the Supreme Court, Justice Gurich has been on the ballot for two elections: In 2012 and 2018. She was retained in office with a state wide vote of over 65%. Justice Gurich served as Vice Chief Justice in 2017-2018.
I'm very pleased to have on the show, Oklahoma Supreme Court Justice Noma Gurich. Welcome, Justice.
Thank you. It's nice to be here.
Thank you so much for participating in this and sharing your story. You've served at so many levels of judiciary in Oklahoma. You have been a first in a lot of those trailblazing roles. I'm excited to have you here and talk about that. First, I wanted to start with how it is that you decided that law was for you and that you would go to law school.
I did not grow up front with a family of lawyers. I did not know a lawyer or a judge growing up. I went to a seminar right before my senior year of high school at one of the colleges in Indiana. I'm originally from Indiana. One of the lecturers was a pre-law advisor at that college, and he discussed what it meant to go to law school, the process, and what to expect. That was the first time I had ever heard anyone even talk about law school. As it turned out, I went to that university after my senior year of high school. It is the only one I applied to, and I ended up being a Political Science major and working for that same professor for a few years as a student assistant.
I witnessed a lot of pre-law advising of other college students. He encouraged me the whole time to think about it and to make an application. He taught some college-level pre-law classes, and I took everything that he taught. When it came time to apply for law school, this was still in the paper era, so we did not have computers. Everything was mailed and received, letters back and forth. Even your test scores, everything still had to be sent somewhere.
I ended up applying to law school in the State of Indiana, but I also wanted to do something different, so I applied to the University of Oklahoma. My mother was originally from Oklahoma. I had some family in Oklahoma at that time. It seemed that it would be a new adventure. I didn't have any idea how many women they accepted. They didn't publicize the grade points and the scores like they do now. They didn't market for law students.
I got in at Indiana University, and then I also got in at the University of Oklahoma and decided to come on to law school. My pre-law advisor, Mr. Matthews, said, "A handful of top students will get into the top law schools, and a handful of people will go to Ivy League, but everybody else goes to law school. The law schools around the country are all competent.”
The law schools around the country are all competent. Pick a place where you will spend the rest of your career because you'll meet more people, learn the culture, understand more about what's going on and have friends that you'll have for the rest of your career.
“You should pick a place where you probably will spend the rest of your career because you'll meet more people, learn about the culture, and understand what's going on. You'll have friends that you'll have the rest of your career." He knew I liked the university setting and thought that it would be a good experience to pick OU, so I did and stayed. It was good advice.
It is nice when people can see potential in you that you can't see at some point or don't recognize and then stick with you and continue to encourage you to go for it.
In my era in college, it was when Roe V. Wade was decided, and Title IX was enacted into law. Gloria Steinem came through on college tours, and I saw her. She started publishing Ms. Magazines. All of a sudden, you could be Ms. instead of missus or miss. All those things happened while I was in undergraduate school. My pre-law advisor was also starting to work on women's studies. We didn't have anything like that at that point in time. It seemed like the doors were all opening. I don't know if I would've been as encouraged or if he would've been as encouraging had all those things not been happening at the same time. It's interesting how things come together.
I think about that, too. That's certainly something I've gleaned and learned from the show of the different times that you happen to be injected into law school, where you are in your development and what's going on in the greater society, and how that wave can carry you when things are moving as quickly as they were in your setting.
Justice Eileen Moore, who's from the Court of Appeal out here also mentioned that in her interview. She said, "I didn't know that we could do these kinds of things and be lawyers and all of this, but we had that opportunity when we wouldn't have had that previously.” She saw the opening and took the opportunity, and went with it.
It's the same idea. When I got to OU law school, we had 20 women in my class of 225. That was the most they'd had females at one time in law school to that point. It wasn't like I was one of the very first, but I was certainly one of the early classes where there were more than 1 or 2 women. Even looking back, years later, there are very few from that group that I went to law school with that stayed in practice for any length of time. Even looking at a year ahead or behind it, it was another couple of years before people started expecting that women would be in law school.
Even my being in law school, from the end of the 1980s into the early 1990s was so different from the experience of the early 1980s, along the late 1970s. The number of women and opportunities that were available, in terms of where you could get hired after you got your law degree.
One of my interviews, in my third year of law school, was with a small firm in a small from a small community in Oklahoma, and we hit it off. They were all guys. Eventually, they let me know that they couldn't hire me because they didn't think their clients would accept a female attorney. You appreciate that people were honest. It's amazing that you would say something like that, but on the other hand, I ran into them a lot in the courthouse after that. It worked out okay, but it was difficult to get a job.
Many women I know who graduated law school in the 1970s would go to government positions generally after that, whether it's the attorney general or the district office things like that. Those were a little bit more open to women.
That's true. I could have gone that route, but I had already figured out enough that I wanted to try to go into private practice, although not by myself. Weeks before the bar exam, a small family firm hired me to start after the bar exam. They did it because they paid me less, but I didn't know that at the time, and it was a job and opportunity. Looking back, I was extremely fortunate to have the opportunity to go into private practice right out of law school without having any more connection to Oklahoma than I had.
It helps to go to law school in the area where you plan to practice, at least you have that in terms of familiarity with people in the region.
I learned a long time ago that I don't like being a tourist. I like to figure out where we're going and from where. I had the good fortune of working in several different government positions in law school as summers and part-time. I met a lot of people that were 1 year or 2 older and were from Oklahoma City or from the State of Oklahoma, and I tried to learn.
It wasn't just learning to practice law, but it was also learning about community learning, who's important, whom you need to meet, and how you start, from the beginning, meeting people. We call it networking. We didn't call it anything in those days, but it's the same concept. As you get involved, you reach out and find people who will help you along the way. Not women, I didn't find too many women.
When you think of women helping other women, that's not the case, but I've had my share of people who have helped me who were men. Many have gone out on the limb to help out.
I think so too. I had people who became cheerleaders too. Other guys in my law school class, some of them didn't go into law school thinking they would ever practice with women. It was a little bit of a curiosity coming from a different state, almost everybody was from Oklahoma. That was part of it too. People used to say I was from the East and I said, "I'm from the I'm from East of Oklahoma." Indiana's hardly the east. I was different enough. I'm tall and I've never been shy. I was totally on my own. I had to rely on myself. "Don't be stupid about it."
I try to make friends. I had a cousin who had married a lawyer and he helped me with my first summer job at a state agency. We didn't have any lawyers in the family anywhere for generations, so that was fortuitous. In that job, I ended up meeting other people that got me the next job, and the next job. That's been the way it's worked.
It can be hard to ask for help though, sometimes because you're like, "I don't want to impose on anyone," so that can be hard. Sometimes people offer their help which is nice.
I have the philosophy, "There's no harm in asking." You get an attitude, either a helpful attitude or a negative attitude. You have to also read people a little bit. I like people and I'm a pretty good student of people, society watching, and understanding people. I tried some jury trials along the way before I got on the bench. I never feared being outside of my home county because, even though I might be the first woman they had seen in that county, which was true several times, or the first attorney to ever even do anything before there were women on TV shows that were lawyers. I'm a friendly person and I'm nice.
I figured out early on that I could never be as mean and rotten as some of the men I was around. Their style was to totally intimidate, bully, and back down people. That wasn't me, but you could disarm a lot of people by being nice and polite, not letting them change you, and continuing to show back up and be courteous.
In a jury trial setting, if someone wants to go off on you, it's like, "Bring it on," because nobody's going to like that and the jury's not going to like that. You do find your strength and what works along the way. You have to let go of those things that don't work well because you can be your own worst enemy. There's no sense in having that responsibility. I'm very much a believer in being a student of life, whether I was starting or I'm at this point in my career.
You do find your strength along the way, you find what works and you have to let go of those things that don't work very well.
There's a fine line. You can learn different skills or techniques from people. "I want to try that on and see if that works for me," but if it doesn't fit your personality, then you shouldn't try to force yourself into a particular mode because it won't be genuine.
The issue of being sincere and genuine is that people pick up on that easily. I came out where everybody had to have the little bow tie at your neck, and it was the dress for success, and you had to have black shoes and never wore pants in the courtroom, and all of that. I came out of law school feeling like I had to fit into that mold to be accepted, and I did that. I wore those clothes and I acted that way, but I also figured out along the way that the people who think they're smarter than you are, are generally not.
After a while, you figure out nobody is smarter than you are. They're just more skilled, have been around longer, have seen more things, and had more experiences to draw on. I always liked rules of procedure because rules were the great equalizer. If the judge followed the rules that they had in place and appreciated people who were prepared and ready to discuss something in terms of an organized cohesive presentation, people can rant and rave all they want.
Rules were sort of the great equalizer.
I learned this later too being a judge, the judge is always looking for a person that they can trust. It's not necessarily you trust your bank account but, "Am I being told something that seems rational and reasonable? Does this fit within my view of the law? Is this person being dramatic? Is there something else going on here? What's the real story?" You're always looking for that person who seems the most straightforward, prepared, and genuine. It is a good strategy. It's a win-win. I always like the win-wins.
Those are always the best when you can do that. That's a good point in terms of effectiveness. That's a form of credibility, being authentic and judges can rely on your word is good and correct. That is an effective form of advocacy because you gain comfort and credibility with the judges. It's not always the but might win the day.
As a judge, I try to cut to the chase. You guys can stand here, point, and complain all you want about each other, but I'm looking for solutions and someone who wants to help me solve this problem. Assume that I'm not going to like you any better or any worse, no matter what you say about each other. Let's just get that over with.
That's a good set of frameworks for that because you got to the heart of it. People have come here with a problem that they could not solve themselves and need help. I need help to be able to cut through everything, learn what I need to learn and make that decision. How did you decide to join the bench?
While I was in law school, they had a student court at the university that was called The Student Superior Court and it was a three-law student bench. I came to Oklahoma with no car, no money, and a little bit of savings, so I worked from the very beginning. In my first semesters, I worked on the campus. I ended up working for the student government association. I got to know the president of the class. A vacancy came up on that court and appointed me to that court. I got my first court appointment while I was in law school. It was so much fun. I served with a couple of other law students.
At first, they were both older and later younger. Some of those people have stayed in my life, the whole career. I liked what we did. We mostly dealt with traffic tickets and things on campus. In those days, authorities were always trying to get kids out of the dorm for smoking dope or something so there were search and seizure issues. They wouldn't give us very much to know to decide, but there were a few things and it was interesting.
I also had the opportunity to work as a Law Student Clerk for the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals. We have a split appellate system in Oklahoma like Texas with a Supreme Court on the civil side and a Court of Criminal Appeals on the criminal side. It's a lot easier to say that everything that's not criminal is under our jurisdiction, which is everything you can imagine. There are some cases that have an aspect of the criminal and civil procedure involved. Our court decides whether or not we keep it or send it to them.
I was at the Court of Crim so I was assisting with opinions with the judges at the time and doing research. Not that criminal law was going to be my area of expertise, but I'm doing some writing and working with some other law students. It was such an interesting and good experience, but I also observed that the only way that I ever needed to be a judge was to be a real lawyer because you needed to know a lot about what was going on.
I didn't know a lot about prosecution and defense. I was learning it at law school, but we didn't have that much opportunity to observe. I learned a lot through reading transcripts of trials, seeing exhibits, and understanding how the pieces went together. I then talked to a lot of people. There were some women that were attorneys working with the appellate courts and had limited opportunities when they first got out of law school. They're a little bit older than I was,
One of the attorneys told us at one point that she had graduated in the early '70s, and she was told to put her typing speed on her resume. Typing in those days was a way to demean you, but not now. Everybody needs to keyboard and I'm very thankful. At that point in time, it was a way to demean a female, "You can't make it as a lawyer. You can make it as a legal assistant or something."
All of those people had a big impact on me and helped me understand. My goal was to break out of the government setting. I couldn't have articulated that in the same way that I can now, but it was very clear to me that that's where I needed to be if I possibly could. For whatever good or bad reason, I broke out of that more traditional female lawyer setting.
I also worked at the US Attorney's Office in Oklahoma City for a year as a clerk. They had one woman prosecutor at that time. The offices weren't big like they are now. I worked with other law students, but both at the Court of Criminal Appeals and the US Attorney's Office, I was the only female law student because criminal law wasn't ladylike in those days.
One of my mentors early in my career was Layn Phillips, who was a US Attorney in Oklahoma.
In the Western District, he was a trial judge. He was a taskmaster and was very strict. Federal Court was about as informal as State Court in the early days when I started to practice. You could walk into a judge's office and get an order signed, and all that stuff. When Layn Phillips got on the bench, there was none of that. Everything was formal. People were scared to go into his courtroom for even a motion docket. There were all kinds of stories in which he criticized people's clothing. A lot of it was a little bit exaggerated.
By that point, I had changed law firms and I was in the second small firm that I worked with. We had quite a bit of federal practice and we had a case in the office that was represented by a former physician from a medical school who had been let go. It wasn't a termination case. She was a research scientist and they would not release all of her research documents.
We had this case pending in front of Judge Phillips and there was also a sexual harassment aspect to it before he brought those kinds of cases. He ended up sending the case to a summary jury trial with one of the magistrates. I went through a summary jury trial process in that case. It made a lot of sense to do it that way. At that point, they were trying to settle cases with settlement magistrates and then the summary jury trials. It was a great experience.
The medical school or people that were involved were shocked because being a less formal setting, there were a number of people there observing, the witnesses, and potential witnesses because we did all the talking, but they needed to follow along. We got the case resolved. We got all of her records. She didn't end up getting any money for harassment. The summary jury found that the statute had run and the time had lapsed. The important thing was that she gets her research. It turned out to be a good result, but I never had any negative with Layn Phillips. Even thinking about it now, he makes you a little nervous but he was a good man and very smart.
There was another magistrate judge from the Northern District named John Wagner that also worked with him for several years. I was more closely personal friends with John Wagner. He was a year behind me in law school. We had a lot of friends in common. The thing about Oklahoma, eventually you end up meeting everybody in the whole state. I don't know how that works, but it's a small enough place that you run into people. Again, that whole idea is that you stay where you get your law school education because you know many people. I never feared John Wagner. I respected him, but I didn't fear him.
I always wanted to be that judge. I was respected, but I wasn't feared because I didn't want to be one of those people who went off on some story about me being extremely heavy-handed. I wanted to be that serious and stern, or maybe I required them to do something they didn't want to do, but I didn't do it out of any malice. I did it because this is my job. My job is to move things along.
You had asked me about how I got interested in the judiciary, while I was with one small firm for a few years and then I went to a second firm. My senior partner, who hired me said, "Where do you see yourself in five years?" I said, "My ultimate goal is to be a judge." He said, "When the time's right, maybe I can help you." That was it. It was like, "Sure."
I applied for a magistrate position in Oklahoma when I got out of law school. There were no women in appellate courts and federal courts. After Ronald Reagan appointed Sandra Day O'Connor in 1981, our governor, at the time in 1982 appointed the first woman to the Oklahoma Supreme Court. I always said the right woman because she had been a trial judge in a small community. She had been a practicing attorney along with her husband for her whole career. Their daughter was a lawyer. She had the respect and credibility that you needed to be on the appellate court so that people would accept that that was a good appointment.
We then got another female on the Supreme Court a few years later in 1984 by the same governor. That female, by the way, Justice Kauger, is our senior justice. She's still with us and a wonderful person. She has been helpful to me throughout my entire career. There were no women in Federal Court yet until about 1984 or 1985 after the 2 women on our Supreme Court.
I applied for a position, but the woman that got the job had been a law clerk for one of the federal judges. That's not something I ever had the opportunity to do. I realized after talking to a few people and exploring that I had no way to break into the federal bench. I spent more time studying the system in Oklahoma and the selection committee and how that all worked.
I knew that I would not be well receptive in Oklahoma County because it was pretty much still the good old boys. There were a couple of good old girls, but not too many. I wasn't from Oklahoma City and I didn't have all of that string of references. I hadn't been in the DA's office and I had not been a public defender assistant. I didn't have that inside connection.
At that time, we had a court of record that that is worker's comp. The workers’ comp court was a full court under the judicial retirement system. The salary was equal to a general jurisdiction judge on the trial bench. Not many people realized that. Historically, it had more women on that court, so women were more accepted.
The governor makes the appointment in Oklahoma after the selection committee makes the decision for appellate judges and the workers' comp court, and then any vacancies on the trial bench. A governor that had been a governor years before in the '60s had been a US senator who came back to run his governor a second time because they now allowed you to have two terms.
All of my friends worked on his campaign and I would go in the evenings after work and stuff envelopes because this was still the '80s and this was still snail mail and all that. I got to know a lot of people. A lot of my friends knew a lot of people connected to that governor and he got elected. He was in office when some vacancies occurred on the comp court. I thought, "Here we go." I had never been through a judicial nominating commission. I knew I had to figure that out.
Eventually, I made it through that commission and got nominated. I knew a lot of people that worked for the governor's office, his chief of staff, and people like that. That had a lot to do with him picking me for that comp court so I got my first judicial position in the late '80s, in 1988 on the Workers’ Compensation Court. He then immediately appointed me as the presiding judge, and I stayed as presiding judge for a couple of years.
I went into its own court. We had our own budget and had two locations, Oklahoma City and Tulsa. I learned a lot. I was in the capital. I was being paid the same as district judges. I was getting judicial retirement credits, benefits, and everything the same. I came up for reappointment after six years, which was our term. You had to have eight years to vest in our retirement system.
My first governor was a Republican. My second governor was a Democrat and he reappointed me, but I knew a number of the people on his staff because they had been at the comp court from time to time. I managed to get into my eighth year. In my tenth year on that court, I was appointed by a Republican again to the position in Oklahoma County, which I then had to run for election, and I won. He had 3 midterm appointments and the other 2 lost and I won.
I knew a lot of people in Oklahoma by then. With workers’ comp, you work with the Chamber of Commerce, State Chamber of Commerce, local chambers, and a lot of employment groups. I spoke at something every month, sometimes twice a month. I made myself available for safety council and anything. People wanted us to tour plants or businesses, so I did all of that.
You never stop campaigning. I worked with HR people with some of the bigger businesses in the whole state in the Oklahoma City area. I wasn't unknown. I was unknown to people downtown, but I wasn't so unknown. The people I met during my first ten years of practice all came back and helped me with the election. My treasurer later was President of the Oklahoma Bar Association. It was an amazing thing. I had law student friends or people whom I'd gone to law school with, helped.
You never stop campaigning.
I never had another opponent and stayed there for several years. I was a presiding judge there also for a couple of years. Our Supreme Court was districted into nine districts around Oklahoma. The person who sat for Oklahoma City District was an interesting gentleman who had immigrated to the United States after World War II. He was originally from Poland and he was working for the Polish underground, was in a concentration camp, liberated by Americans from Oklahoma, brought him back to Oklahoma, sponsored him, went to law school, and became a Supreme Court Justice a month after I was sworn in as an attorney.
He had been on the Oklahoma City bench or the Supreme Court my entire career. He seemed like he would never die. He was in great health. He eventually passed away at nearly 90 years old. He never missed a day of work like the Queen of England. He was at work one day and died the next. He was an amazing man. There were a lot of people that wanted to apply for that job because it hadn't been open in a lot of years.
There's one line of people who are interested in that.
There were about 20 people and 2/3 of them were judges, other intermediate appellate judges, trial judges, some scholarly attorneys, and our Lieutenant Governor. She had run for governor and lost and she applied for the position also. It was right at the end of a term for a Democrat governor. The selection came on January 7th, 2011. He went out of office the following Monday, January 10th. It was his last appointment. I was nominated along with the Lieutenant Governor and another intermediate appellate judge. They're highly respected people. I thought that I was the least of the three, but things happen and there I was. I had a Republican, Democrat, Republican, and Democrat.
You find a way in the beginning and look at the opportunities and say, "This court is a good way to go. I have the best opportunity to join the bench," in the workers' comp situation. That turned out to be a great jumping-off point to get to know other people, especially with the presiding judge and you're out more in the legislature community where people get to know you, and then that builds on itself to provide more opportunities down the line.
Sometimes people set their goals. If it doesn't work out, they give up because it doesn't seem like they're going to get there. Everything is an opportunity. If I would've only served on the comp court, I wouldn't have stayed there forever. I would've gone back to practice. I could've done that. I could've been a district judge in Oklahoma County for the rest of my career. I wasn't unhappy, but I also knew as a workers’ comp judge that I needed to be taken seriously. I needed to have the district court bench experience to ever have a chance at an appellate position.
I didn't know that I would ever have a chance, but I knew that if I ever had the chance, I needed to be prepared. I've always tried to explain to younger people that you don't know what's coming next, but wherever you are, you take advantage of that opportunity and you do your very best and learn from it. You are preparing for something. Sometimes you have no idea what's coming next, but all of a sudden, you're the most prepared person for it. It is amazing how things can work out like that.
There's a lot in there to unpack. You can have a particular goal, but then there are a lot of other ways to get there. As you said, being prepared for that opportunity to open up or it may not, but you put yourself in a good position to be considered for that. Also, I had that feeling myself. I'm being prepared for something, but I don't know what it is. It may not even be something that you imagine, but it turns out to be the right thing.
Serving on the bench, your credibility with law firms goes up. You have access to people that you would not have access to. I started trying to take opportunities as they came along to deal with law students and college students. The judiciary didn't look like me when I was their age. That's my privilege to be able to say, "You can do something else. This is an option. It may not be what you want to do, but it's an option. You don't have to have a lot of money, prestige, and position. You have to have a vision and you have to be willing to work." Nothing that ever matters comes easy. In life, the things that you work for, say for, things you struggle to achieve, and the complicated family issues that get resolved, that's what we cherish, not the stuff that's handed out.
Nothing that ever matters comes easy in life.
Whom you become in the of the challenges and hardships is part of it too. You're being prepared.
People like to say, "I didn't get that. I failed," and I said, "You just didn't succeed. You didn't fail." Along the way, I applied for judgeships in federal court. I applied for a couple of other judgeships along the way that I didn't get. I had to wait and try again. I had applied for our Court of Criminal Appeals with the same governor a few years before the Supreme Court because I didn't think the Justice on the Supreme Court would ever pass away.
There was an Oklahoma City position on the Court of Criminal Appeals. I went in front of that same governor and had a terrible interview. It was one of the worst interviews I ever had in my life. I knew there was someone else that was going to get it by the end, one of the other applicants. That was pretty clear, but it went very flat. When I went back to the Supreme Court, he mentioned that someone had mentioned to him that he had interviewed me before for a different position. He made some comments like, "Sorry about that," or something. It's like, "It's okay."
It's a good thing if you don't have a clear memory of that. That's good.
I then had the best interview I ever had in my life the second time with the same governor. I felt totally at ease and authentic. I have nothing to hide. I have nothing to try to impress you with. I can only tell you who I am, what I've done, and what I'm willing to do. Fortunately, most of the people in Oklahoma don't ask your position on highly political things. It was a good interview about your strengths, weaknesses, accomplishments, and what you think about being a judge. I was very at peace. I've done everything I can do. Later on, people told me that they thought my interview was the best of the three. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.
It's the same people in different circumstances and going, "That did not work." You might think, "He knew that. The Governor is to remember that was a total dead interview." Who knows what will happen the next time or where the governor's mindset was in each of those interviews? Maybe he already decided and knew whom he was going to appoint. This wasn't there for all of it. That is the starkest example because you're talking about these same people having interviews at different times and having completely different outcomes.
A few years in between, he was in the middle of his first term, and then the end of his second term, when I saw him again. I much rather wanted the Supreme Court over the Court of Criminal Appeals, but again, it was a strategic move on my part. I also thought that if I got to the Court of Criminal Appeals, I might get to the Supreme Court later. We added a female to our bench and she did serve on the Court of Criminal Appeals before she got on the Supreme Court. I had the right strategy. I wasn't the right person.
You saw a path and someone else has followed that path. You were right about that. It's also what you said about the sense of, "Whatever happens, I at least have put my best foot forward. I have done everything that's in my power," which is a much better feeling to have than, "I messed up that interview." At least you can say, "I did everything. I did the best interview. I've presented myself genuinely, and here's what I have to offer." That's fine. It's at least a better feel.
When I was a younger attorney and the governor in '82 and '84 appointed the two women to this court, many of us thought, "There will never be another woman on this court because now they have their women," which was pretty much what was happening. There was not another woman appointed to the Oklahoma Supreme Court until I was appointed in 2011. Between '84 and 2011, I would never have guessed that in '84, I would be the next one.
It's not that you can't imagine it. It's just not on the horizon right now. As my life progressed and my career progressed, it became more on the horizon. That's part of it too. You've got to be patient. Things don't work like you want them to. When you're on the bench, you don't get to choose whom you work with. It's not like a law firm where you get to pick your friends or your most confident people. You put up with a lot of different personalities. Some are easy to work with and some are not. That in itself has been a great learning experience. I feel like I can get along with about anybody, and that's good.
That's a point. You don't choose your colleagues. Somebody else does.
One of the men I worked with here, before he retired always said, "Make friends out of enemies." That is so true. It's not being in a judicial position, but it's practicing law or being successful at anything you want to do. If you make enemies, you limit yourself because all of a sudden, people shift away from thinking about what your good qualities are to trying to dig up some of your bad qualities. That has a lot to do with your reputation generally. I have never gone after anybody.
Even in all of the times where I've been in competition with someone for a judicial position, I concentrated on my campaign or presentation. I didn't do anything to disparage them, encourage anyone to work against them, or do anything. That's not the way to do it. Other people get into some of these positions and go after the people that they know are on the list so that it gives them a better chance. That's never been my strategy. I don't think it's a positive strategy. It might work for a few people, but in the long run, it doesn't pay off.
Most everyone I've ever worked with on every bench, whether they were colleagues, assistants, reporters, docket clerks, or whatever, I've been everybody's friend. Not in the sense that I compromise the time that I need to do my job well, but in the sense that I'm a nice person. I like people. I want people to be happy. I want the people that work for me to be happy.
I am happy when younger people moved on to other positions. They started with me, finished college, finished law school, started a different career, started a family, or whatever. I don't have to have people that stay with me my whole life because I want them to do better. I want them to go where they want to go. One of my former staff attorneys here at the court and you've contacted her, Jana Knott, started a podcast when she got into private practice a few years ago. I'm very proud of her. She started right out of law school with me.
I know about her podcast and we've connected because there are only a few appellate podcasts around.
She felt strongly on our court that there should be something comparable to the SCOTUSblog, where people would be informed about decisions that we make week to week. In the old days, it was in a published bar journal, now everything's pretty much online. People lose track of things. They don't hear about things until they need to know about that particular case, but there's a lot of information. We have become a little more transparent over the years too, and trying to put more information on our website and trying to upgrade it. We're always in the process of working on that. It's given to someone who wanted to take the time and effort to do it. It's very much appreciated by practicing bar.
In the state, the State Supreme Court is the final word on issues and state law. It's important to keep abreast and track of that and have the equivalent SCOTUSblog or what have you on those decisions.
When I saw your show and read a few, I think this is so fascinating. The audience is all over the place now. It's not in your hometown anymore. It's not in that little seminar you're talking to. Hopefully, that makes a difference. If anyone reads this to come to visit me in Oklahoma, I am fine with it.
That's part of the hope. I thought about that too. If you happen to be in that particular bar program, you'll hear that, but if you're a member of a different bar, you're not a member of a bar yet, or you're in a high school and trying to wonder or think about what you could do with a law degree, this is the great democratization of having it be available without having that narrow point of entry so.
We have Girls State every year and I've been a speaker at Girls State for several years. The University of Oklahoma has a program they call New Leadership that recruits college women to do a 5 or 6-day class, and they stay in the dorms and come to the capital and meet judges, lawyers, governors, legislators, or whoever. I always try to do a panel. We do an appellate panel for that. Every time I go somewhere, I offer if anyone wants to come and do a job shadow.
I have one girl who stayed that did job shadow for a day and I have another one coming. I have a few high schools that I talked to. I used to work with Key Club. I've done job shadow days for ten at a time. It's easier to do 10 on 1 day than to do 10 days. I figured that out along the way. I then had law students. We pretty much always have a law student next turn or 2 to law schools that are close to Oklahoma City, so that makes it nice.
It's important that we continue to be there, answer questions, and make it comfortable for people to feel like they can ask a question so that they can see a little bit of what we do and spend a day if we need to. It's fun for me. I don't get worn out, but it's a good thing. We have several high schools that do mock trial competitions. One of my friends, who's a judge in Tulsa, brings four teams to our judicial center before the season starts when they can scrimmage in January. We've done that for a number of years and had a few of those students who have gone on to law school. If anybody reaches out to me, I've gone to some of the different colleges in Oklahoma and spoken to groups, I'm there.
One of the events I'm proud of doing with the show was the Girls Inc. program that we did with 100 high school girls who were in an externship program with Girls Inc, all 11th graders. We had a live panel of judges and lawyers who could interact directly. Many of my friends were inviting them to come shadow and see what they were doing in court, but then having recorded it on the show. Now it's available and reaches 100 people who are in the room, but it's so much more vibrant and can reach so many more girls and the 5,000 other girls, and even girls in Orange County work with. It's exciting to see the new opportunities.
That's wonderful. You have large groups of the population to deal with. Oklahoma's a little easier to move from place to place and set things up than it would be. I know how complicated California is, but the fact that you're doing it is great. That's remarkable.
I'm happy about that. Hopefully, we'll do more. My vision would be to do versions of that with people in the area, Girls Inc., and all across the country to have that same experience for them. We'll see where that goes. Thanks so much for seeing the vision of this as well and understanding how helpful it is for public education, civic education, and opportunities for girls and young women too. I want to switch a little bit to appellate advocacy and what ideas or tips you might have for that in terms of brief writing or oral argument. What is the most helpful thing for your court for an advocate to do?
We have a limited oral argument in front of the Supreme Court. We have four attorneys who work for the court that we call referees and they hold an oral presentation on nearly every case. Some cases then go on to oral argument in front of us, but in a lot of cases, we can either observe it online as they're doing it or listen to it. Also, we get a report from the referees.
The best skill in Oklahoma in appellate practice would be brief writing and it would be being a good writer. It's amazing to me how some people spend their pages creating that drama that I used to see in the trial court with how bad it's been and how I've been treated. That is an absolute total waste of paper, ink, and time.
The best skill in Oklahoma appellate practice would be brief writing and being a really good writer.
It's one thing to state the problem clearly and concisely, and then explain how you may have tried to solve the problem and the barriers that you're encountering, but that's a different attitude to take in a brief and to start telling you how bad it's been and treated poorly by the judge and opposing counsel. That doesn't go anywhere. That's even worse in writing because you can look at it over and over again. That's the first thing that I would mention.
I like to see the chronology. I like to know if that's relevant at all, and usually, it is to some extent. I like to see how things fit together. If we're even dealing with a fact pattern on a regular appellate case that involves when the accident occurred, things happened, and action was taken, and if there's a statute of limitations problem, all of those dates become important. I see people who write briefs and make your notes and then five pages later, you figure out when something was filed. That's so distracting. It's so much better to have it laid out.
I always used to tell people, even at the state court level, when they were doing a briefing, "Tell me what you want me to do." If this is an original action in front of our court and you're seeking a writ of some sort and you want something done, tell me how as an appellate judge I can do something, and then tell me what you want me to do. If it is to stop something or to require something, have that early on in the brief so that I can understand why you're building the case against the other side and in favor of the relief that you're seeking.
On the trial bench, I used to have to turn to the last page to figure out what it was that somebody wanted me to do. Sometimes that's true, even in the appellate briefing. There are so many problems, errors, or things that become more difficult. Are you asking for everything to be thrown out? When we have our referees meet with people, those are the questions they ask. "What is the real issue here? What is it that you want the court to do?" Give me a timeline. Is this an emergency? If it's an emergency, people say it's an emergency. Sometimes they are, sometimes they're not. Sometimes people don't tell you it's an emergency, but when you find out about it, it is an emergency.
That's the thing I did like about being a trial judge because I can bring people in and ask them those questions. When we do oral argument, we are selected in that it is an issue of broad interest to the state. We've had an oral argument on issues involving state questions, taxation, marijuana, and the topics that people are discussing everywhere in the country. We will have an oral argument on that magnitude of a case, but this court has never had the tradition of doing routine oral arguments.
In California, they have oral argument dockets every single week, and they set cases. We have never had that tradition here. It's hard to get that tradition started because you have people who've been here a while on the bench, and then you have newer people. You got to get everybody working together. You've got to carve out a time so that we do that. It's not that you couldn't do it, but you would have to be very intentional, plan for it, and implement it.
Everyone that gets on this bench wants more oral argument. That's what we all think we want. I don't disagree with it. I took a lot of stuff home, worked on weekends, and did the same thing here. Everything here deserves the same attention. In the district court, I would have some things that were default judgments. You have to make sure all the documents are there, I’s were dotted, and T’s crossed. We had some issues that there wasn't anything to talk about. It was all laid out. There was only one thing you could do anyway. You had discovery disputes and I made them go off into my jury room and talk about it. Usually, we got it resolved and things like that.
Everything deserves equal attention in my view. Everything that comes in the door, this is the last resort or the only place maybe you can get relief on a particular thing. I'm not the only decision maker, but I need to make sure that I've considered all the options and all the consequences. It does take more time and it should take more time. Until someone wants to come in, one of the young justices then says, "I'm going to figure out how we do this."
It can be hard because the system is what it is. It's already set up. You need to reconfigure that all together to have arguments in every case. It's one of those things. It's hard to change.
It is. With COVID, we learned a lot more as everyone did about remote technology. We now have the ability to watch what's going on. The referees are not the judge and they do not take any advocacy position. They simply ask questions about, "Is there something that you need to supplement in your materials? If you have five things, can you focus on exactly what it is and how you see this to play out?"
They let people have more time. They're not interrupted with questions like when we have an oral argument as everybody else does. You interrupt people. Sometimes a little bit disruptive for the advocate. Our referee system is not that way at all. You get your allotted time and you get to do that presentation. In some ways, it's way more efficient.
That's the first time I've heard of a system like that. It's unique. That's one of the interesting learnings for me in the show. I know the number of ways that a Supreme Court could operate, but I find out that's not true. There are many different ways and each of the states has different ways as there are different ways to join the bench, whether it's an election, peer appointment, or having some nominating commission. It varies and there's value in learning all of those differences. Also, some states think this is the only way to do it, but you're like, "There are lots of different ways this could be done. Maybe you want to consider a change. Here are some options in other jurisdictions."
That's what we're trying to do right now with websites. We have our own state court system. We do not have electronic filing yet. We still are very paper-intensive, but we also have a good search tool for the state courts and for the litigants. We've had that up and running since the '90s and it's a free service. We've put more emphasis on other things on broader access. With COVID, budgets, shrinking revenues, and so forth, it becomes more difficult to go back and finish some of those other projects.
We still fully intend to do it. We started years ago and had a pilot project. It failed miserably. We've automated a lot of things. We just have not gotten to the point where it's e-filing but we did during COVID allow email filing. Our rules have always anticipated that. We just never implemented it. A number of counties have continued to do that. There's no issue at all with that.
To the extent that we could do as many things for people and make it easier, we've tried to do that, but during COVID we figured out there was a lot of low technology like drop boxes outside the courthouse or real mail. We closed the building for a while and people were saying, "How do we do this?" I said, "It's called snail mail." It's picking it up and we used to spray it all with Lysol in the early days. We use third-party delivery. We still accepted Federal Express.
I enjoyed being chief during those times because I'm a doer. I'm not a victim. I'm going to always figure out something that I can do that's positive. We had a pandemic committee, so we could do Teams meetings with everybody around the state and keep up with what the disease issues were, what the courthouse look like, and how they were managing it. I managed to get our Court of Criminal Appeals to agree to three administrative orders. Although they have nothing to do with the administration, they do have something to do with statute limitations and other issues like a speedy trial, and all kinds of stuff that would've affected their dockets too.
We entered into joint orders, closing everything between mid-March and mid-May, which we tracked pretty much what our governor and everybody were doing around the country. We had an NBA game with a Thunder where a Utah Jazz player was ill in mid-March of 2020, which started the whole thing around the country, the closings. That was our first experience with all that we knew of COVID. We later found out that it had been here a little while like everybody else found out that.
Our City-County Health Department was great and they worked with us. We had an in-person bar exam in July of 2020, which was very controversial. A lot of states were not going to do that. They tried to think of other solutions. We knew our technology was not to the point where we could ever have done a remote exam. I figured all along that the way we did it was to be as safe and careful as we could.
We had about 150 people take the July bar in person. We had it at a convention center where there was nothing else going on, which was not like a normal bar exam where the mariachi band is playing next door or something. The law schools all brought box lunches and dropped them off. We had six feet spacing, masks, sanitation, and checked the air filters in the auditorium. We had not a single illness reported or a single tracing. We couldn't get together even in September of that year inside, so we swore people in as new lawyers on the steps of our building outside, which was fun.
Our health department worked with us and helped us, beyond the very beginning of tier two of COVID shots. We started with a shot clinic in our judicial center on January 2021. We were the first clinic that they had held. They reached out to all the judges across the state through city-county regional health departments and the governor's office. The health department assisted us in Oklahoma County and Tulsa Counties. We were treated, as we should have been, like law enforcement right below the first responders in the medical community because you see judges in every setting across the state.
That was a nice thing too about being in a smaller area. We had that hands-on connection and cooperation. We delayed jury trials for a few months, but the judges were so creative. We even had things outside spaced out. We have some protocols that were so well-received by the public and that they're still in place because there's no sense of having everybody stay 350 people in a room for any length of time, even now.
It was an amazing time. I've always liked it. When the law is black and white, it doesn't take a lot to be a judge, but when it's not black and white, that's when you start figuring out how to solve things. Not that I wanted any of this to happen and not that we weren't all terrified. I can sew a little bit so I even made masks before masks were available. I was handing them out to the few people that were coming into work because we started rotating people immediately or leaving them at home.
It was like, "I don't care what you do. You have to do something. You have to answer that phone. Even if you don't have fifteen people to answer the phone, I answer the phone." It's okay. Someone on the other side knows that someone cares and someone's there. That was always my concern. "You're not in this alone. If anyone's got a great idea, let's share it and talk about it every week. Let's make sure that every side of the state knows what everybody else is doing so we can learn from each other."
You don't have to reinvent the wheel if somebody has come up with a great solution that's working, then others can know about it and implement it. You were Chief Justice as well, what's the difference in your view between being a Chief Justice and a Justice on the Supreme Court? What additional responsibilities or duties are involved with being a Chief Justice?
The Supreme Court is the superintending power for all the state courts. We are responsible for working with the legislature and budgets and working with all 77 counties on budgets. We are unified in the sense that all judges, secretary bailiffs, and court reporters are state employees. We administer all of that out of the Judicial Center in Oklahoma City. Payroll, changes in personnel, and everything are handled here.
The Supreme Court is the superintendent power for all the state courts.
We have had a crisis and court reporting because there are so few court reporters for so many places, especially rural parts of the state. We came up with some new creative ways of contracting with retired court reporters and freelancers, even that we had to come up with to make things more available. There are a lot of things. It has little to do with research and writing. It has a lot more to do with dealing with personnel issues, closures, electricity, or tornado, we also have those. You have to figure out what you do and what's the alternative.
We also have the Supreme Court deals with all the judicial discipline as well as attorney discipline. When you're in the chief's office, you get everything first. There are some decisions you can make under our rules as the chief and low-level discipline cases maybe a personal interview. The more complicated cases involve everybody on the bench.
At the same time as COVID, we also had a serious judicial complaint going through the system that resulted in a trial of a judge. That was a district judge in Oklahoma County. Our system has nine trial judges from around the state that are appointed to sit on that case. We hadn't had a case like that in decades. That all happened during COVID. We held it at our Judicial Center and we had it online and livestreamed it. It took the better part of three weeks. We had over 70 witnesses coming in, but we didn't allow any audience because it was still September of 2020 and COVID issues.
All of that had to be handled by getting the judges in and out of the building, getting lunches, and all the logistics. Again, I felt like I had enough help. I'm creative. I'm going to find a way to do everything. I said, "Let me be in charge of everything and I'll fix it all." You have a lot of those things that you don't even know you're going to have to deal with as chief. We had changes on the bench. We had our historic courtroom when the state capital was closed for renovation. For most of 2019, it was opened briefly in 2020, and then it was all closed because of COVID. They had some damage in the courtroom from water leaks and had to do some more renovation.
You're dealing with things like that. The buck stops there for the whole state. You have to be on the job and do all the rest of your work too. That can be challenging. Our chief justice doesn't write as many opinions. There are a lot smaller memos that have to do with licensing and bar licensing and so forth that you may work on. We have two staff attorneys and they go with you to the chief's office. We then have 2 other people in that office permanently, 1 attorney and 1 administrative assistant. It's still a small office. We then have an administrative director of our court system and a staff there. It's not a lot of people that work on issues.
Also, because we move in and out of the chief's office every two years, you got to get up to speed. We have our own IT department here. During COVID, we expanded our audiovisual. We didn't even have a department of audiovisual until COVID, and now we do. I happen to do TV ministry at my church and run a TV camera once in a while.
I'm a little more interested in AV than some people, which was great because we put permanent cameras in our hearing room in our judicial center, in the Court of Criminal Appeals, and the courtroom in the capital. We have updated our equipment to make it easier to do things livestreaming and so forth. The Court of Criminal Appeals does a lot of live streaming on their docket also, which we didn't do before COVID.
All these things are constant. You get to know all the secrets and all the different judges across the state and all the court clerks. When you get back into your office as justice and you have your regular weekly materials to review and your opinions you're working on and your staff and so forth, there's a little bit of a letdown. I had so many projects going on that I continue to work on and generally speaking, everything that's generated starts with one person. You eventually get people to help and you get things done. I continue to work on my projects and I seem to find more all the time.
We also adopted the uniform bar exam during my many years as chief justice. We had the same bar exam in Oklahoma for years. We had the multiple-choice portion of the uniform bar since the '70s but had our own essays. I had a committee and the committee was able to meet and do some research, even with COVID and make recommendations. We started the uniform bar exam last summer of 2021. That was a big undertaking. I'm someone who wants to get something done. I only had two years, so I had to work fast.
That's what I was going to say. You know you have this narrow timeframe to do that as well. You want to, execute the various projects that you have. That's not a long time. I don't know that people realize that the chief justice role does have this administrative role of reports and also attorney licensing. There are so many other aspects to that position.
I was fairly well-known in Oklahoma City because I've had my whole career here, but the justice who followed me was from a Southwestern part of the state. When you start like that, you also have to go out and introduce yourself to everybody. With COVID protocols, which were still followed in 2021, it was hard to do stuff. We're back to more normal this 2022. Everybody's still worried to some extent, but we've all learned to deal with it.
We need more knowledge and try different things. It's not the same level of concern.
You keep getting another shot.
Thank you so much for chatting and sharing all of your experiences. I appreciate it. I typically end with a few lightning-round questions. The first question would be what talent do you wish you had, but you don't?
I wish I could play the piano. I learned other musical instruments along the way, but I never had the time to learn how to play the piano.
I thought you were musical in other ways, just not the piano. Who are your favorite writers?
I am a lot more interested in biographies. I don't do a lot of pleasure reading because I read constantly. I don't have a set author that I follow. I have a lot of friends that follow certain authors and they're always constantly telling me stories about it, but I tend to read things that are interesting. I enjoy biographies of different justices, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor and Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Fortunately, I was able to meet each of them in the last several years. It means a lot more to me if something about whom I'm reading about. My husband reads all the time, and so he's constantly filling me in with everything that's good and interesting. That's fine.
Who is your hero in real life?
Queen Elizabeth comes to mind because she's been on all of our minds so much. She started her career the year I was born. She's going to be buried a week before my birthday. To see her over the years and how she's handled so many things that were so difficult in so many ways with that steadfast calming presence. She was such a great leadership model for anyone.
When anyone rises out of something dismal and shows a lot of character, Liz Cheney is to be admired regardless of what position anyone takes politically with her. She certainly took a well-known political risk to take the stance that she's taken. Regardless of anything, I admire people who are willing to do what they believe is right even in the face of great sacrifice.
That's something that The Queen exemplified her whole life. It was that sense of duty. I even think that a day or so before she passed, she was meeting the new prime minister. That is sheer willpower to get up, do that, and have that sense of duty and responsibility that she was going to see that transition, no matter what was going on. That's a strong lady.
She’s a strong lady that everyone respected. She came out of an era where women had not been queen and she rose to the occasion, whether she was 26, 56, or 86. That's a miracle.
Consistently over that time, that's the other thing. When you said people rising to the occasion or having courage, that is something that she routinely and consistently did. That's part of her remarkable sense of her legacy as well. Given the choice of anyone in the world, who would you invite as a dinner guest to a dinner party?
I would like to meet Harry and Megan. No offense to the Prince and Princess of Wales. It would be interesting to meet them and spend a little time with them and get their perspective on the life they've chosen for themselves, the life that Harry has experienced, and all the things that he's gone through in his life. They'd be a lot of fun.
The last question is what is your motto if you have one?
You need to take advantage of every opportunity that's offered to you. You need to live in the present. You need to do your best. You need to be learning and growing. It comes back to the idea that you're always preparing for something for the next thing in your life. You don't even know what that's going to be. If you take the time and make the effort to do your best where you are at the present, you'll be prepared for that next big opportunity.
That's a great takeaway and a great way and inspiring way to end. Once again, thank you so much Justice Gurich for this time and for everything you've shared. I enjoyed it.
Thank you. It's nice to meet you and to have this chance to visit with you. I can tell that you are a highly skilled attorney and a classy person. I appreciate what you're doing and how you're sharing.
Thank you so much. I appreciate it. It wouldn't happen without you and all the other fabulous women judges and lawyers who have agreed to do this. I appreciate you taking the time and effort to do this.
I'm glad to do it. Thank you.