The Mentor Who Saved My Career as a Lawyer

Salvador Dali

I went to law school in the early 1970s, at a time when women were just beginning to attend law school in any number. There were 33 women in my entering class of 300, and that was considered a big group. There were very few female professors or female lawyers on which to model ourselves; the legal world was still adjusting to the idea that women lawyers could engage in a legal practice that was not family law or probate law or, indeed, that they could be good lawyers at all. My uncle, the first lawyer to set up a practice in Lancaster, PA back in the 1950s told me straight out when I was in law school that he didn’t think women could ever make good lawyers. That sentiment was present everywhere, either covertly or overtly, at the time I started practicing. However, I was luckier than many other women lawyers of that era in that I had a wonderful mentor early in my career who was both my advocate and a huge resource for me as I navigated a male-dominated world – someone who may have saved me from abandoning the law altogether.

Early on in my career, I joined a large San Francisco law firm and was assigned to a young partner in the antitrust practice, the area of law in which I wanted to specialize. I worked with him for four years, during which time he became a great mentor to me. Although I don’t recall that we ever discussed it explicitly, I know that he was one of the lawyers in the firm who fully supported the concept of women lawyers. He was part of the younger generation of male lawyers in the 1970s who saw that women lawyers were there to stay and who thought it was a good thing. This was in sometimes stark contrast to other older members of the firm who either openly or silently opposed the presence of women lawyers and, in particular, women litigators.

During the time that I worked with him, my mentor freely shared his knowledge and his skills in the area of antitrust and other complex litigation matters with me. I was able to observe him in many different contexts: in court, in depositions, meeting with clients. That first hand observance taught me a tremendous amount. Even better, during brief writing, we worked together on the drafting, and since he was an exceptional writer, my writing skills became much more finely honed.

He also gave me more responsibility as the years progressed, although always with careful supervision. To an extent, this supervision limited my confidence because he was always there to advise, to check, to review. That was the one disadvantage of our close working relationship – that I never was totally on my own – but he made up for that in several significant ways:

First, he considered me as an individual, observing, developing and supporting my particular legal skills. He wisely counseled me, after several years of working with me, not to follow the trend of other women litigators of developing a more aggressive style, a style that was really not my own. He counseled me to keep my own personal style, which was more low key and perhaps more conciliatory and pointed out that it would serve me well in discovery and settlement negotiations. (This advice to be low key and conciliatory did not extend to brief writing!) His advice was a godsend and a relief; it freed me to practice law in a way that worked for me and to think of it as a positive. Indeed, this advice probably saved my career, since I am certain that I would have hated practicing law if I had tried to imitate the aggressive style of the stereotypical litigator.

Second, he saw what was best for my overall development as a lawyer. It was at his urging that I left the law firm after four years and took an in house position at a railroad, doing all the company’s antitrust work. I hesitated to leave the firm at first, because I had developed the typical mindset of the young associate thinking that making partner was the only mark of success in the legal world. But his confidence that this move was the best thing for me was a key factor in making my decision, and he was proven to be absolutely correct: it was the best thing that could have happened to me at that point in my career. I grew rapidly as a lawyer in both knowledge and confidence, and I loved being in-house counsel, a role that I enthusiastically played for the rest of my legal career. His support for this move was a selfless one; by encouraging me to make a career decision that would be best for me personally, he put aside his own interests and the firm’s interests.

I am now retired, but in the last 20 years of practice, I have done a fair amount of informal mentoring. Somewhat to my initial surprise, a great deal of the mentoring I’ve provided has been on the business side of things rather than the legal side. Because I spent 30 years working in the transportation industry, I have been able to help younger business colleagues, both men and women, understand the intricacies of our industry. I have been particularly eager to help the women since our industry has very few, and I have found this extremely satisfying. Mentoring also has shown me how much I have learned simply by experience; there is nothing to substitute for experience, I am afraid!

I have also mentored the younger lawyers in our department, both men and women, sometimes on a more formal basis and sometimes informally.  Training the younger lawyers and helping them through projects has been very fulfilling for much the same reasons – I feel that my years of practice are worth something beyond my own experience and that my knowledge has value beyond my own use of it in my legal practice. Mentoring, which is to say sharing my acquired knowledge with younger folks who are beginning their careers, has been a great deal of fun. Now that I am retired, that is actually one of the things that I miss the most! Sharing one’s knowledge is such a positive experience. I think it answers the age old urge to be needed and valued.

Ann is an attorney. She retired in 2013.

Image: Yoga Desk (Salvador Dali)

2 Comments

  1. Meredith Watts

    That was terrific. As a friend of Ann’s, I have watched her and admired her as she grew. Always an outstanding professional, she was successful at growing into an indispensable player in the businesses she served, all while being a first-rate working mother. (Read her other post, if you haven’t, on that topic.) What a role model!!!

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