Thriving In BigLaw: A Compilation Episode
00:37:59
Subscribe and listen on…
Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | Google Podcasts | Amazon Music | PocketCasts | iHeartRadio | Player.FM Podcasts
Show Notes
In this compilation episode, we feature the journey and advice of some of our guests who are thriving in BigLaw -- leading firms, practices, offices, and trial and deal teams. Hear from Barb Dawson, Hillary Holmes, Paula Hinton, Cindy Chang, Robin Crowther, and Anne-Marie Seibel.
This episode is powered by Trellis.
Transcript
Welcome to the show where we chronicle women’s journeys to the bench, bar, and beyond, and seek to inspire the next generation of women lawyers and women lost students. We’re pleased to present another compilation episode of guests on the show. This one focused on thriving in big law firms. We feature the journeys to the law of some of our guests who are leading large law firms, practices in large law firms, offices in law firms, and deals and trials in their roles as partners in big law firms. Sit back and enjoy the stories of women leading and thriving in big law.
---
Barb Dawson - Snell & Wilmer
Barb Dawson, Chair of Snell and Wilmer and former Chair of ABA Section of Litigation on her leadership path.
I have been fortunate in having a lot of opportunities to be in leadership positions. Whether it was when I was a young student council to when I was at Iowa State, I was the senior class president, the first woman to be in that role. By being in leadership positions, I got a chance to have a little bit of a sense of the important dynamics to make things function if we have a set of rules. If we work together as a society, we can do some good.
In that process, I kept hearing things that suggested that law school might be a path to more of these things that I liked so much, the organizational dynamics of society. It seemed both natural and unnatural. It seemed natural given some of the choices that I was making as to how I was spending my time and the people I was gravitating to.
Very unnatural in that, being a young woman in the mid-1980s in Iowa, you didn't see a lot of role models that look like you. It felt very much like it was going to be something new and different to be female and going down that path. Fortunately, I found ways that doors opened and I got a chance to experience what I wanted.
I started with another firm. I didn't plan to come to Phoenix at all. I have interviewed with a lot of other firms in the Midwest and other parts of the country, but I had never been to Arizona. I signed up for an interview on a fluke, ended up coming down and clerking, and ultimately joined Evans, Kitchel, & Jenckes, which at the time was the oldest firm in Arizona. Justice Rehnquist had been there. It blew up my first year of practice.
More life lessons, but I called back to the University of Iowa to a mentor and said, “I'm in the situation. I'm going to have to get my resume out there.” I'm going to have to shift gears. This person said, “Why don't I call John Bouma the then-chairman of Snell and Wilmer.” They all shook their heads there. They said, “The Iowans are supposed to go to Snell and Wilmer in the first place. That was your first mistake.”
I took another step there, which I'm grateful for. You learn a lot about going through an experience that doesn't work out. Being in a firm with wonderful people, but having the floor pulled back gave me a different way of looking at my career that I think has been helpful. I sure was glad after that until I landed at Snell and Wilmer. I have been delighted to be there now for many years.
When I came over, I didn't know how I was going to like it. I had heard they worked so hard. It's a rough-and-tumble place. Candidly, that's not been the experience. I have found it to suit me in a lot of respects. First of all, coming from a place that had wonderfully nice people, but economically didn't have stability made me appreciate Snell and Wilmer for that.
At the core, it's very fiscally conservative. We have never had debt and won't have debt. That I realized is the foundation that if you have that stability, all the other things that you want to be able to give to your people, whether that's a good training program, the opportunity to do pro bono or service in the community. It's so much easier to do that because your house is in order. I have appreciated that and candidly, I have taken advantage then of those things that were offered.
From early on, I got the chance to do meaningful pro bono. I loved the fact that it's entrepreneurial here and a little bit free market. If you say, “I want to jump in over there. I want to try that. I will work hard, but let me on that case.” You are probably going to get those opportunities. I felt like I have gotten a lot of opportunities to chart my own course.
It feels like that with the guidance of lots of people packed around you who have a lot of great experience and gently guide you as needed. For me, it's been a fit and a lot of fun in working with a lot of people who I have found to be extraordinary. Many more pass through our doors and go on to distinguished careers in other areas. I am very pleased to be associated with the quality of people who come to Snell and Wilmer.
Outside of the firm, the leadership opportunities I have had have come in spaces where first, the organization itself was meaningful to me. I have been a part of a variety of organizations, but the ones that I led are the ones where my interests very much align with their mission. Picking and finding organizations where you have a passion for what they are doing sure makes it easier. It's very authentic if you are loving what they are doing and it's easy to get highly engaged, so that's been important.
I have always said, “I'm willing to do the work.” I felt like opportunities have come to me never because someone looked around the room and said, “She would be the strongest speaker, the best advocator.” No. I'm the one that will raise my hand and say, “We need a survey. I will do the survey and summarize it. I will write the article,” but I have loved that because by doing the work, I’m always learning. Often if you are raising your hand to do the work, it's going to be a team activity. You get to know other people with similar interests. That's been the path that's worked for me and been a blast. I'd say finding organizations about which you are passionate and rolling up your sleeves. It's a good path to leadership.
Hillary Holmes - Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher
Hillary Holmes, Practice Group Leader Gibson Dunn and Crutcher on finding her area of practice.
When I was in law school, you could clerk in the summers at multiple law firms. That's less common now, but some do it. I worked at two law firms the first summer and three law firms the second summer, and for each one of those, I made sure to try out multiple practice areas. I had a nice buffet of non-litigation options by the time I was done with law school.
Basically, I had whittled it down to knowing I wanted to be in the capital markets or mergers and acquisitions, but that deal-making side. I kicked around oil and gas transactions and employment law, which is transactional in some way, not litigation employment. I tried out public finance, which was the practice that my mother had spent her career in. I like that because it's similar to capital markets. It's capital markets for municipalities or raising capital for nonprofits, hospitals, and things like that. It's quite similar, but rather than big public companies, which is what I do.
The trouble was that in the small town that Houston is, especially back then, with all the closings and the signings of the deal I went to, my mother was on the other side of the conference room. The people who knew me as a little girl was coming up and being like, “I remember when you were only this high.” I realized that was probably not the best way to kick off my career as my own person. I ended up going to the for-profit side of capital markets.
I tried a lot, and some law firms have rotation systems. They want you to go through several practice areas once you come out of law school. The firm that I joined was more open-ended. You needed to choose litigation or corporate. With corporate, you could try out as many different options as you like, but I found capital markets pretty quickly. To your point earlier, your practice ends up being partially a function of your circumstances at the time. That could be geography, but it's also the market and what legal services are demanded at the time.
At the time, capital markets in Houston were very busy and active. There was a ton of work to do. I was able to get a lot of experience quickly. It helps you go up the curve faster when you happen to be in this situation. I enjoyed it. It was fun. We would do stock and bond offerings. It was very collaborative and fast-paced. It's code-based because of its securities laws. I like rules and learning, understanding, and following them, so that was nice.
It's also a friendly type of practice because everyone on the deal, whatever side you're on, you are working towards the same commercial objective. The bankers and the company want to make money. The lawyers on all sides want to make sure no one breaks the law. The deal gets done on time and is a huge success. We all win in the end. It's not a zero-sum game like some litigation can be at times. I liked that.
Thriving in BigLaw: The bankers want to make money. The company wants to make money. The lawyers, on all sides, want to make sure no one breaks the law. That deal gets done on time and is a huge success, and we all win in the end.
Back then, everything was done in person. You spent a lot of time together until 3:00 AM in conference rooms doing these deals. You got to know each other well and each other's families as a young lawyer. That made it a lot of fun because you were in the trenches with peers, whether they be at your firm or other law firms.
From those, I've developed some of my most lifelong relationships. Somebody I was at 3:00 AM as a second-year lawyer at the printer is now a partner at another law firm. We can refer each other to business and work together on deals. It's seamless. We know each other so well and trust each other. Those relationships were special.
I loved all those aspects of the capital markets practice. Pretty quickly, I latched onto that and decided if I'm going to pick this, I'm going to be good at it, which requires committing to it and focusing on it. That helped me get to a point where I was running deals as a third-year, faster than others because I knew right out of the gate that this was the match for me.
On growth opportunities.
I've always been an observer of people. People watcher as they say. I definitely had certain partners I worked the most with, but I tried to work with a wide array as a young lawyer so that I could observe different styles. I could observe things I wanted to pick up and things I realized I did not want to pick up. You still learn from seeing those as well. I have been very thoughtful about what skills I want to emulate. I can't say there's one lawyer in particular. Back to the mother-daughter thing you introduced at the beginning, watching my mother carry herself as a strong female transactional lawyer at a time when she had no female peers at all.
Doing that with class and grace and playing that long game, that's definitely been something I've emulated. There are other women lawyers in town that certainly I have looked up to and sought out, taking them to lunch, asking for their thoughts, and male lawyers I've taken to lunch and asked for their perspective, how did they get to where they are? What skills do they find most valuable? It's both watching and emulating but also seeking out information from them directly. No one person in particular. I enjoy pulling on traits from everyone I see.
In my practice, when I have to present to boards of directors, as an example, these complex concepts in a way that is concise and with clear, competent advice that is well-informed but presented in a very efficient way, as you would present to a governing body. I've emulated some skills I see from others, like professors or politicians. There are lots of places where you can develop skills that you can use effectively in your law practice. This is a long game. No matter what city, market, law firm, or whatever you're sitting in, it's a small world. Keep that in mind at all times, which plays both ways in terms of getting and giving opportunities.
The second thing you're saying is about resilience and persistence. Especially as women, sometimes, depending on what market you're sitting in or what the situation is, we have to be more persistent than men. They're off too. Yet we are raised in our society to not be as persistent with career-related things. The asking needs to be transactional. Ask because you will add value to the situation. You, on your own merit, deserve this opportunity. It doesn't have to be because you're going to do something for them. That's what you're going to do for them is an intimidating lawyer. That persistence is important. You don't ask once. You get that again, and it's all a long-term relationship, so those two dovetails.
Persistence is important. You don't just ask once. You ask again. It's all a long-term relationship.
The third thing is recognizing when there's an opportunity in the failure or opportunity in the loss. I pitch a lot. I interview for opportunities all the time because a lot of transactions are in the higher counsel based on the particular transaction. Competitive interviews all the time, or a company has decided to replace the outside corporate lawyer that they've had for twenty years. They'll do a very competitive, robust RFP process, and we'll go through that. I have learned in all of those, the ones that I don't win, which I'll say it's the minority, but the ones I don't win, that's a learning opportunity. That's still a win for me long-term because I will learn something valuable from why that didn't work out. It only works this way.
Paula Hinton - Winston & Strawn
Paula Hinton, a partner at Winston and Strawn, on becoming a trial lawyer.
The story is true that I had no free will as to whether I would be a lawyer and where I would go to law school. I was told very early by my father, who was a general practitioner lawyer in Northeast, Alabama, in our hometown of Gadsden, that I would be a lawyer. From the time I was little, I was following him around to the jails, to visit clients on Sunday mornings, sitting in the laps of judges while he tried cases. I knew it was what I wanted to be and what he told me I would be. That was what I was at. I was going to be a trial lawyer.
You had a lot of pre-law training there. You don't realize that type of thing, but you can soak that up in a way by seeing the cases be tried, seeing things like that at a very young age and being in that environment. I would think it would give you a real comfort level with it.
That's absolutely true. While he did a lot of criminal work and you saw the human tragedies and the people could get themselves into, he had a very general practice. It was primarily men in my hometown who were the lawyers and the judges. They were such honorable people in the civility they displayed too. They could be fighting out in court during the week in front of the gentleman who was the judge who was in my living room on the weekend, but they treated each other with such respect. It was amazing to see the true advocacy of the positions taken.
I finished law school in ‘79 and clerked for a federal judge and studied in Europe International Comparative Law. I came back and moved from Alabama immediately into a big law firm, which did not have in the section that I joined another woman trial lawyer. When I joined this section in 1981, I was the only female trial lawyer in the general litigation group. There was not anything else. There were women in the Antitrust and Security Section, a handful, but not in the general commercial lit. They were not there.
People get surprised as I say, “My success and my career have not been a straight line.” A door may close and a window may open, but let's look at some of the most successful people, men and women in professions, law or business. If you look and read about them, their paths have not been straight. They have had sideways moves and then up and down. The year I was up for partner, I had my son back in 1988. I did not make partner that year. I could have sat around in another year or two, but I felt I deserved to be a partner. I left the firm I love and went to another firm who offered me a full partnership at that point in time.
That was my choice, but it was a setback and a terrible, painful disappointment, but I had to say, “I know what the path for me is,” and there's this other opportunity. It is painful and hard, but more of us have not had a straight path and I don't think you and I know many people who have had a straight path. You need to tell that story to the young men and women that it may not be a straight path, but that does not mean you are not going to be extremely successful and fulfilled in this profession.
Thriving in BigLaw: It may not be a straight path, but that doesn't mean you're not going to be extremely successful and fulfilled in this profession.
I went to the small office of a big firm where I had much more opportunities to be the lead trial lawyer for thirteen years. I handled matters that would likely have been handled by someone more senior than me in the mothership office. Serendipitously, it turned out if that had not happened, I would not have had the opportunity to try the cases and do what I did over that period because I was in a smaller place.
Some people go to the US Attorney's Office to get that experience. You never know what that next opportunity is going to be that leads to growth. Keep moving forward. Maybe it's three steps backward and four steps forward, but you may hit rock bottom. What's the old country music song? “You have two ways to go sideways or straight up.”
Cindy Chang - Duane Morris
Cyndie Chang, Office Managing partner at Duane Morris on finding the law.
I had a conversation with my dad who was a big influence in my life. We talked about my career. For whatever reason, and maybe because it is a cultural thing because Chinese parents love lawyers and doctors, he did want me to go to law school. He saw the signs more than I did that I had this interest in debate and Political Science. That was my undergraduate degree. He said, “Go to law school. See how it is. It’s a degree that you could use. If you still want to do journalism, you can meld the two.”
I ended up going to law school not because I knew I wanted to be there. It was more because I was still finding myself in law school. I eventually ended up falling into somewhat of a traditional role which is you go and you interview, then you get hired by whichever law firm gives you an offer. For me, there were not many options. I took the offer that was first given to me and I started at a small law firm. I ended up going from a small to mid-sized firm. Now, I’m at a large law firm, which is where I spent the majority of my career.
On thriving in big law and leading bar associations.
I ended up thriving in a large law firm. One of the benefits of being in big law firms is that there are a lot of resources. We have women’s initiative type programs, diversity inclusion programs, and a little bit more accountability. You get a formal mentor and all of that. I benefited from the diversity and women’s programs at a large law firm.
With that said, a lot of people don’t want to work at big law firms or they are working at other firms. The ultimate point is that wherever you’re at, small, big or medium, it has to be a place that supports you. You have a trajectory there and you can see yourself being promoted, and the people care about your professional development.
Wherever you're at - small, big, or medium - it has to be a place that supports you.
That’s what I found at my firm in Duane Morris. I’ve been here for many years. There were great people that saw something in me and pulled me to the side. They sometimes would tell me things that maybe I wouldn’t know unless I was a partner and took me to lunch. That made a big difference in my career. Even when I was more senior and was going to be a partner, I remember one mentor sharing origination credit with me for a particular client. It’s not gifting it to me but saying, “You develop this client with me over a number of years. They like you. It’s fair and right that we shared this client together.”
That’s a big thing for a partner to do because I know that partners are stressed and trying to bring as much business under their name. To have someone to say, “I want to look out for the next generation and share because that’s the right thing to do,” is a big thing. The other places that I've found mentors are not necessarily just in my firm because I did find that. I found a plethora of mentors outside of the law firm. Sometimes it’s even better to have those kinds of mentors because you could be a little bit more open with talking to someone that’s not your law firm and not in the bubble that they are in. They can give you an objective perspective.
I got involved with local bar associations and found a lot of people that we had an affinity with because we had things in common. For example, I joined Asian American Bar Associations in my area. I became the president of a local bar association in Los Angeles called The Southern California Chinese Lawyers Association. It has a very long history as one of the older Asian American bars. Because of the sense of community and all of the great benefits that I received from being involved in the local bars, I wanted to continue that. I ended up getting involved in national bar work. From that, I stepped into leadership in the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association. The acronym is NAPABA.
I ended up becoming President of NAPABA. I did a lot of work there in pushing the agenda for women and minority rights, the advancement of women of color. After my presidency, I still wanted to continue that work because there are a lot of needs such as yourself, where you’re trying to address a need for young women. We’re like in mind in that. There’s a lot of need for the development of women. I wish that things like this and the stories that we’re talking about now were told to us earlier in our careers.
After my NAPABA presidency, I wanted to continue the work. I got involved in the National Association of Women Lawyers, NAWL. You and I both serve on the board. I also do work for the ABA Commission on Women, serving as commissioner there. It’s what I’m passionate about and what you’re passionate about. It’s what brings us together and how you and I have crossed paths multiple times. I do it not only because it’s important, but we were all there and we know that we have to be in this together. That mentorship, sponsorship and support of a fellow woman are critical to success in this profession.
Robin Crowther - Steptoe
Robyn Crowther, California Regional Managing Partner, Steptoe.
I worked as a paralegal for two years between undergrad and law school then I went to law school at Georgetown. I was paying for it myself so I had giant student loans. I also was funneled through the career services path of on-campus interviews. That only led to a big law. When I summered at a firm, I ran into an amazing woman partner who told me, “You must clerk.” This was when I was coming out of law school. By the second-year summer, all of the clerkships were almost all done.
“I ran into an amazing woman partner who told me, “You absolutely must clerk.” I'm grateful every single day for that advice.”
Most of those interviews happened in the fall, but I was lucky that a judge that she highly recommended, Gary Taylor in Orange County hired out of the third year. I ended up deciding to take that job. I’m grateful every single day for that advice. Sometimes that will always be the best job that I ever had. I loved it.
While I was clerking, I had every intention of going and joining Gibson Dunn, but happened to have the combination of a small environment where you had access to the person who knew what they were doing all of the time. That was super appealing. The firm that I later joined appeared in front of us and they were great lawyers with excellent clients, and all of a sudden there was this option that I had never thought about before.
When I decided to go, I had been working at Gibson for slightly less than a year. I had some small cases where I got to have a cool role. I was working on some cool cases where my role wasn’t so cool. I was several layers below the cool part. Looking then at the people who had made partner, their lives were the hardest. They were so stressed, working so hard, and had so many demands. If that was the brass ring, I wasn’t sure it was for me.
At the same time, I was pregnant with my first child and thinking, “Am I going to be able to do the cool stuff and be the parent that I’m hoping to be in this environment?” What I ended up concluding was that at a smaller firm, while the cases might be smaller and maybe not always on the front page of the Wall Street Journal, the things that I would do, learn, and the way that I would contribute would be more fulfilling. This was a firm that put an emphasis on life outside of the office. A lot of that means family, but they also had political things or community things that they did, and it wasn’t all work all the time.
We had an interest from Boies Schiller which was the reputation of the firm was fantastic as litigators. Our politics lined up with the types of things that David Boies had done. It seemed like it was a great opportunity to be the base of their LA operations. It was a heartbreaking decision to make because we had been fiercely independent before then and proud of the people who had joined us and promised them, frankly, an experience that was different from a big law experience.
We thought that we would be able to maintain some of the things that were most important about the firm, including staying together. That offer was bringing everybody in, all of our work, and some financial security while being part of the Boies Schiller’s environment. I was surprised that my own business transitioned to Boies Schiller pretty well. I was able to step up the types of matters I was doing that could fit into a rate structure that was at big law. It was time for me to make that jump.
I wanted to be a first-chair lawyer. With the support of the firm, God bless them, a lot of different types of smaller cases let me get that first chair experience so then I could translate that to the bigger matters. The Boies’ platform helped me complete that transition for myself. Everybody knows how the story ends. There’s nobody who was part of Caldwell Leslie who’s still at Boies Schiller now and that was true by March 2020.
Part of the calculus was there was not an obvious leadership role for me within Boies Schiller. I thought about, “Maybe I’ll be a working lawyer, focus on my practice, and that’ll be fine.” It turned out I missed it. When there was an opportunity at Steptoe to come and be part of the strategy of building out first the Los Angeles office and now California within a litigation-based firm, I felt like I had the confidence that my practice would translate at the same time that I could play that role. It was too good to pass up.
Anne-Marie Seibel - ABA Litigation Section
Anne Marie Seibel, a partner at Bradley and Chair of ABA Section of Litigation on finding law.
I have no lawyers in my family at all, mostly teachers. I had one family friend growing up who was like a grandfather who had always said since I was little that I should be a lawyer. I fought against that for years without even knowing what it meant. I didn't want to be a lawyer. I didn't know anything about it. I was in college and did an internship at the state department because I had an interest in foreign affairs.
My job for the summer was working on the question and answers for the press briefing every day. I would help write it. I would go desk to desk from country to country, and get approval, but you'd always have to make a stop at the legal desk. I was able to see that they were able to influence what was being communicated to the public about these interesting world events that were happening. That was after my second year, maybe in college, and started thinking, “That might be a path that opens up more than the foreign service to me.”
I became interested in looking at what law schools were involved, thinking about the LSAT, and decided to take that path in order to see what it would open up. I wasn't one of those people that had wanted to be a lawyer since I was little. I wasn't sure exactly what I was going to do with it. I just knew that I would like that method of learning and to see what doors opened up from there.
I had a professor in law school who took me under his wing. My mom called him my guardian angel whom I didn't even realize was watching out for me. I found out later that he had picked me out during an interview for a scholarship. When I showed up in class, he kept an eye on me. He would call on me in class with some challenging questions to see how I did. After I got through the first semester, he sat down with me to look at options for the summer.
He got a gut feeling that I would want to be a litigator and set me up to intern with a federal judge in Washington, DC for part of the summer, then he told me to try out Alabama. I was from Maryland. I had never been to Alabama. I had no connection, but he said it was important to healthcare, which it was at that point in time. That meant that a lot of excellent plaintiffs, lawyers, and excellent defense lawyers had developed practices there. He is the one that suggested I go to Birmingham and interview. That's where both the idea of being a litigator was in the back of my mind and being somewhere where I could use that set of skills that he'd recognized in me.
On thriving in big law.
When I walked in the door here, I was doing what a third or fourth-year associate was doing in DC. We were paired together, but I had more judgment given to me than they did. That's the way the firm was structured. I was at a place where we were planning to make everyone that came in partners as long as they were qualified when they got there.
From day one, I don't need to look at that again. I trust you to make a judgment as to what you can say to a judge. I can remember a specific incident where my national council wanted to put something in, I asked to change it, and they said, “I've got to run it by the partner.” I said, “We don't have time to run it by the partner. We've got to fix it. It's got to go to the judge,” where that difference in learning to think on your feet and having responsibility for the decision that is invaluable when I look back on how quickly I was able to progress and learn to have that judgment for clients.
Thriving in BigLaw: Wherever you're practicing, it is important to have a network that's outside of that law firm, government agency, or wherever you are.
Wherever you're practicing it is important to have a group of confidants or network that's outside of that law firm, government agency, or wherever you are. Having that personal board of directors that's in a bunch of different places, the bar allows you to do that. There are the plaintiff's lawyers, defense, in-house counsel, and judges.
Anything that you're interested in doing, you can get that perspective. It's important to be able to take some time that is for you outside of what you're doing for your clients and even your own firm to nurture that because you don't know where you're going to end up. I've certainly seen my group of colleagues through bar service who have had life emergencies or had a change in jobs, and they rely on that bar group to help them chart the paths forward.