Quiet Force for Change in a Male-Dominated Era (?)
From today's New York Times (Mods:if this is too similar to past discussions, feel free to delete)
By LYNETTE CLEMETSON and JONATHAN D. GLATER
WASHINGTON, Oct. 5 - Lynne Liberato, a Houston appellate lawyer, had just announced that she was running for president of the city's bar association in 1992 when she got a telephone call out of the blue from Harriet E. Miers, a well-known Dallas lawyer who had just become the first woman elected president of the State Bar of Texas.
The two women had never met or spoken. But Ms. Liberato, the first woman to run for the Houston office, said Ms. Miers offered her encouragement as well as some hard facts of life: No matter how much she talked about her vision for the bar association, people would want to talk only about her being a woman. No matter what she accomplished in her career, she said, she would always be known primarily as a female first. Accept it, Ms. Miers told her, but do not dwell on it.
It is a philosophy that has worked exceedingly well over the years for Ms. Miers, the unassuming Dallas native whom President Bush chose this week to succeed Justice Sandra Day O'Connor on the Supreme Court. She never wanted to be known as a trailblazer, yet she has forged a path as a quiet, often unlikely pioneer.
"In those times you didn't want to make a big deal about it. You wanted to be one of the guys," said Ms. Liberato, 51, a Democrat who said she had maintained a professional friendship with Ms. Miers over the years. "It was her style. But it was also the style of the times."
When Ms. Miers, now 60, began pursuing a legal career, the times were downright hostile. In 1967, the year she started law school at Southern Methodist University, married women in Texas had just won the legal right to control property, bank accounts and business contracts without their husbands' consent. Older male professors openly criticized female students for taking men's places in the law school. And law firms rarely granted interviews to graduates who were women, let alone offered them jobs.
Ms. Miers, a disarmingly soft-spoken woman who, friends say, fancies Texas step dancing and makes mean brisket and candied sweet potatoes, was never one to rage against the system, said several former classmates and contemporaries. Instead, she quietly but determinedly found ways to change the chilly environment that surrounded her.
Joe Norton, now a professor at the Dedman School of Law at Southern Methodist, joined the law firm Locke Purnell Boren Laney & Neely a day after Ms. Miers in September 1973. The two later made partner at the same time in 1978. Mr. Norton had come to Dallas from the University of Michigan, touting radical liberalism. "But Harriet would always say to me, 'You need to work through the system, to influence systems from within, to open them up,' " he said.
When Ms. Miers was denied access to Dallas's major business clubs, which did not admit women at the time she joined the firm, she forged networks through the bar associations, which Mr. Norton said were only marginally more welcoming back then.
When the association of female law students at Southern Methodist filed a class-action discrimination lawsuit against Dallas firms in 1975, Ms. Miers, who earned her law degree there in 1970, stayed out of the public controversy. But in the years the case was being settled, she recruited women to her firm.
"If a door wasn't open, she wouldn't drive a truck through," said Judge Barbara Lynn, a district judge in Dallas, who started law school at Southern Methodist in 1973. "But she would find a diplomatic way to get the door open."
Beth Thornburg joined Locke Purnell in 1980, after Ms. Miers floated her name among staff. She became the first woman at the firm to return to work after having a baby, and it was Ms. Miers, she said, who helped her negotiate maternity leave and reduced hours upon her return.
"A number of well-meaning colleagues came and suggested that if I wanted to stay at home with my baby, they would certainly understand," said Ms. Thornburg, 51, now a law professor at Southern Methodist "If I had wanted to resign, Harriet wasn't the type to give me some feminist speech. But when I wanted to stay, she wanted to make it possible. She just said, 'Let's figure out a way to make it work.' "
Like the seven other women who graduated with her from a class of 97, Ms. Miers learned the hard way how to make things work.
"We were taking up a man's place in their minds. I had one professor who actually told me that," said Lynda Zimmerman, a Dallas lawyer and a classmate of Ms. Miers. Ms. Zimmerman was divorced and raising a 3-year-old son with no family support when she started law school.
David Sudbury, also a classmate and now vice president and general counsel with a metal company based in Dallas, said, "The women generally had to be a cut above most other law students to do well."
Ms. Miers built her private practice around commercial litigation, handling often costly disputes between large companies, contract disputes and, a few times, class-action lawsuits. Her commercial experience is an unlikely launching pad to the Supreme Court because her cases generally did not involve questions of constitutional law and were often settled out of court, leaving little in the way of public records.
Rather the qualities that Ms. Miers is known for are quiet, tenacious determination; attention to detail; and a genteel manner, lawyers who have worked with her and those who have opposed her said.
"Very precise and disciplined," said Darrell E. Jordan, managing partner of Godwin Gruber, a Dallas law firm. "And she would, I think, work hard not to exaggerate or to tell you something she couldn't absolutely back up."
Jerry K. Clements, a partner at Ms. Miers's old law firm, offered a more colorful description of her in action: "She will work through details and be very nice about it while she is ripping your heart out on cross-examination," Ms. Clements said, "and you don't even know it's happened."
Ms. Miers rose to managing partner of the law firm Locke Purnell Rain Harrell in 1996. She preferred to govern by consensus, lawyers at the firm said. When the firm's partners weighed whether to merge with another firm, a combination that took place in 1999, she organized meetings to discuss the pros and cons, leading the discussion but letting her colleagues talk, Ms. Clements said.
From the time she joined her firm, Ms. Miers advocated for her colleagues to take pro bono cases and meet the needs of indigent clients. As president of the Dallas Bar Association, she appointed a young man named Will Pryor to head a committee on providing such legal services.
Mr. Pryor, now a mediator, said he litigated against Ms. Miers only once. The two sides to the commercial dispute spent all night negotiating a possible settlement. Trial was set for the next morning.
When the parties showed up at the courthouse, everybody, said Mr. Pryor, showed signs of wear and tear. But not Ms. Miers. "Harriet looked like a million bucks and was ready to roll," he said. She had long before learned to roll with the punches.
Jonathan D. Glater reported from Irving, Tex., for this article.
from: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/06/politics/politicsspecial1/06miers.html?pagewanted=all
By LYNETTE CLEMETSON and JONATHAN D. GLATER
WASHINGTON, Oct. 5 - Lynne Liberato, a Houston appellate lawyer, had just announced that she was running for president of the city's bar association in 1992 when she got a telephone call out of the blue from Harriet E. Miers, a well-known Dallas lawyer who had just become the first woman elected president of the State Bar of Texas.
The two women had never met or spoken. But Ms. Liberato, the first woman to run for the Houston office, said Ms. Miers offered her encouragement as well as some hard facts of life: No matter how much she talked about her vision for the bar association, people would want to talk only about her being a woman. No matter what she accomplished in her career, she said, she would always be known primarily as a female first. Accept it, Ms. Miers told her, but do not dwell on it.
It is a philosophy that has worked exceedingly well over the years for Ms. Miers, the unassuming Dallas native whom President Bush chose this week to succeed Justice Sandra Day O'Connor on the Supreme Court. She never wanted to be known as a trailblazer, yet she has forged a path as a quiet, often unlikely pioneer.
"In those times you didn't want to make a big deal about it. You wanted to be one of the guys," said Ms. Liberato, 51, a Democrat who said she had maintained a professional friendship with Ms. Miers over the years. "It was her style. But it was also the style of the times."
When Ms. Miers, now 60, began pursuing a legal career, the times were downright hostile. In 1967, the year she started law school at Southern Methodist University, married women in Texas had just won the legal right to control property, bank accounts and business contracts without their husbands' consent. Older male professors openly criticized female students for taking men's places in the law school. And law firms rarely granted interviews to graduates who were women, let alone offered them jobs.
Ms. Miers, a disarmingly soft-spoken woman who, friends say, fancies Texas step dancing and makes mean brisket and candied sweet potatoes, was never one to rage against the system, said several former classmates and contemporaries. Instead, she quietly but determinedly found ways to change the chilly environment that surrounded her.
Joe Norton, now a professor at the Dedman School of Law at Southern Methodist, joined the law firm Locke Purnell Boren Laney & Neely a day after Ms. Miers in September 1973. The two later made partner at the same time in 1978. Mr. Norton had come to Dallas from the University of Michigan, touting radical liberalism. "But Harriet would always say to me, 'You need to work through the system, to influence systems from within, to open them up,' " he said.
When Ms. Miers was denied access to Dallas's major business clubs, which did not admit women at the time she joined the firm, she forged networks through the bar associations, which Mr. Norton said were only marginally more welcoming back then.
When the association of female law students at Southern Methodist filed a class-action discrimination lawsuit against Dallas firms in 1975, Ms. Miers, who earned her law degree there in 1970, stayed out of the public controversy. But in the years the case was being settled, she recruited women to her firm.
"If a door wasn't open, she wouldn't drive a truck through," said Judge Barbara Lynn, a district judge in Dallas, who started law school at Southern Methodist in 1973. "But she would find a diplomatic way to get the door open."
Beth Thornburg joined Locke Purnell in 1980, after Ms. Miers floated her name among staff. She became the first woman at the firm to return to work after having a baby, and it was Ms. Miers, she said, who helped her negotiate maternity leave and reduced hours upon her return.
"A number of well-meaning colleagues came and suggested that if I wanted to stay at home with my baby, they would certainly understand," said Ms. Thornburg, 51, now a law professor at Southern Methodist "If I had wanted to resign, Harriet wasn't the type to give me some feminist speech. But when I wanted to stay, she wanted to make it possible. She just said, 'Let's figure out a way to make it work.' "
Like the seven other women who graduated with her from a class of 97, Ms. Miers learned the hard way how to make things work.
"We were taking up a man's place in their minds. I had one professor who actually told me that," said Lynda Zimmerman, a Dallas lawyer and a classmate of Ms. Miers. Ms. Zimmerman was divorced and raising a 3-year-old son with no family support when she started law school.
David Sudbury, also a classmate and now vice president and general counsel with a metal company based in Dallas, said, "The women generally had to be a cut above most other law students to do well."
Ms. Miers built her private practice around commercial litigation, handling often costly disputes between large companies, contract disputes and, a few times, class-action lawsuits. Her commercial experience is an unlikely launching pad to the Supreme Court because her cases generally did not involve questions of constitutional law and were often settled out of court, leaving little in the way of public records.
Rather the qualities that Ms. Miers is known for are quiet, tenacious determination; attention to detail; and a genteel manner, lawyers who have worked with her and those who have opposed her said.
"Very precise and disciplined," said Darrell E. Jordan, managing partner of Godwin Gruber, a Dallas law firm. "And she would, I think, work hard not to exaggerate or to tell you something she couldn't absolutely back up."
Jerry K. Clements, a partner at Ms. Miers's old law firm, offered a more colorful description of her in action: "She will work through details and be very nice about it while she is ripping your heart out on cross-examination," Ms. Clements said, "and you don't even know it's happened."
Ms. Miers rose to managing partner of the law firm Locke Purnell Rain Harrell in 1996. She preferred to govern by consensus, lawyers at the firm said. When the firm's partners weighed whether to merge with another firm, a combination that took place in 1999, she organized meetings to discuss the pros and cons, leading the discussion but letting her colleagues talk, Ms. Clements said.
From the time she joined her firm, Ms. Miers advocated for her colleagues to take pro bono cases and meet the needs of indigent clients. As president of the Dallas Bar Association, she appointed a young man named Will Pryor to head a committee on providing such legal services.
Mr. Pryor, now a mediator, said he litigated against Ms. Miers only once. The two sides to the commercial dispute spent all night negotiating a possible settlement. Trial was set for the next morning.
When the parties showed up at the courthouse, everybody, said Mr. Pryor, showed signs of wear and tear. But not Ms. Miers. "Harriet looked like a million bucks and was ready to roll," he said. She had long before learned to roll with the punches.
Jonathan D. Glater reported from Irving, Tex., for this article.
from: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/06/politics/politicsspecial1/06miers.html?pagewanted=all