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S4E13: Law Day Special – Alternative Dispute Resolution, with ABA President Deborah Enix-Ross
13 Plays1 year ago
On Law Day 2023, Deborah Enix-Ross, Senior Advisor to the International Dispute Resolution Group of Debovoise & Plimpton, joins Co-Dean Kim Mutcherson to talk about her role as the American Bar Association President and the importance of alternative dispute resolution (ADR).
The Power of Attorney is produced by Rutgers Law School. With two locations minutes from Philadelphia and New York City, Rutgers Law offers the prestige and reputation of a large, nationally known university combined with a personal, small campus experience. Learn more by visiting law.rutgers.edu.
Production Manager: Shanida Carter
Series Producer & Editor: Nate Nakao
--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/rutgerslaw/messageRecommended
Transcript
Introduction to Guests and Series
00:00:09
Speaker
My name is Kim Mutterson. I am the co-dean of Rutgers Law School on the Camden campus, and this is the power of attorney. So we have started a little bit of a tradition here on the power of attorney, which is that we try to have an episode with the ABA president every year. And once again, the ABA president for this year has been kind enough to accept our invitation to join us. And so my guest today is Deborah Enix Ross. Thank you so much and welcome to the podcast.
00:00:38
Speaker
Thank you so much, Dean. It is really an honor to be asked, and it's an honor to participate. Wonderful. I'm very, very much looking forward to our conversation.
Deborah's Inspiration and Law Pursuit
00:00:49
Speaker
And I want to start that conversation in the way that I do with everybody who comes on the podcast, which is asking you your origin story. There are so many things that you could have done with your life, and yet you decided to become a lawyer. So what was it that drew you to the law?
00:01:04
Speaker
Well, you're very generous to say there are so many other things we could do. I think for me, because I was, I am first generation everything. When I say that, I mean the first to graduate from high school and then college and then law school in my family. My cousins and I were kind of that first generation. For me, I always had a desire to help people.
00:01:32
Speaker
And they used to call me the peacemaker, the family. So I think when I look at those attributes, and then frankly it was going to a sixth grade field trip. And you know when you're in sixth grade how excited you are to get outside of the classroom. And I went to New York City Public Schools, so we went down to the courts. And we visited a courtroom.
00:01:57
Speaker
And this was part of our civics education. And I saw this man, because those days, most judges were men, sitting in a black robe up high, who seemed to be so wise and so kind
00:02:15
Speaker
and thoughtful and respectful of everyone that came before him. And I was like, well, who's that? And my teacher said, that's a judge. And I said, what do you have to do to be a judge? And she said, well, you have to go to law school. And so I think that that was where the notion of going to law school was first, that's where that first seed was planted.
Focus on First-Generation Students
00:02:38
Speaker
And then as I went to college, I was a journalism major and I thought I was going to be Oprah before Oprah. So I went off and I went to journalism school and I had an internship at a local news station. And this is before the Me Too movement. And I say this because it's part of the story of how I got here.
00:03:00
Speaker
And I noticed that the women reporters that were given the best assignments were a little friendly, the station manager. And I thought, I don't want that kind of pressure and those sort of options. So what else can I do? And I think I hearkened back to my desire to be a lawyer. And I thought, I'll go to law school and become a First Amendment lawyer, which will combine the journalism
00:03:26
Speaker
background with the law. And so really, I think it was those two kind of defining moments, right? The exposure to the law and then the idea of I want to have some independence and a career that focuses more on my abilities than perhaps other attributes.
Community Support and Giving Back
00:03:42
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:03:44
Speaker
That's a great story and I wanna peel off some layers of it if that's okay. So one of the things that I absolutely adore about being at Rutgers Law School is that we educate a lot of first gen students, first gen college, first gen law school. And it's always really interesting to talk to those folks for a whole range of reasons. One is very often they'll say,
00:04:10
Speaker
particularly the students of color. I never saw a lawyer who looked like me until I got to law school. But then they also sort of talk about that transition both into law school and into the profession by virtue of not having anybody in their family who had taken that path before. So I'd love to hear a little bit more from you about what it was like. I mean, you said first-gen high school, first-gen college,
00:04:34
Speaker
and first gen law school. So can you just talk a little bit about that journey and what it was like to be the first in your family to have all of these really formative and important experiences? Absolutely. And I will say although, as I said, first gen and all of that, the encouragement that I received along the way, mostly from the members of Salem United Methodist Church in Harlem, I have to shout out my home church,
00:05:03
Speaker
But it was at a time when the whole community got behind you. So the church itself, we have scholarships, there was the notion that
00:05:19
Speaker
for all of us, my peers, we were all going to go to college. And we had scholarships, we had college prep courses, we had all the tools that we could provide through my church. And that also instilled in me the desire to come back
00:05:38
Speaker
once I achieved that law degree and help in my community.
Law School Challenges and Diversity
00:05:44
Speaker
So I did a lot of work on behalf of my church, on behalf of the members of the church. I became everyone's lawyer. And it was an honor and a privilege to do that. But it really was because they had so much confidence and faith in me, even though there weren't any lawyers in the congregation. And I certainly didn't see any lawyer. I grew up in Harlem. I didn't know any lawyers growing up.
00:06:08
Speaker
But I had this sense of community behind me that kept saying, you can do this. So when it was difficult, and I'm not going to say that there weren't difficult days, I relied on that faith and that prayer and that community to see me through. And I really feel that that is a tremendous part of my success. And that is also a part of
00:06:34
Speaker
What does it mean to be a professional? I didn't know any lawyer so I had to kind of figure that out but they instilled in me the the I think the core values of
00:06:44
Speaker
the legal profession, which without even knowing that that's what it was, which is you are you take on clients. You must do your best for them. You you act in a certain way. You present in a certain you treat them with dignity. All the kinds of things that they were teaching me as a part of that community is what I took on as being a professional and being a lawyer. I love that. I love that so much. So once you were in law school,
00:07:13
Speaker
And there's something very interesting always about asking people what their law school experience was like, because it tends to be either love, love, love, love, loved it, or it was the worst thing in the world, right? There's not a lot of middle ground. So I'm curious what it was like for you. I mean, were you one of those people who went into law school and thought, wow, I have found my people and I have found my place, or was it more of a little bit of a rough transition?
Career Path and International Law
00:07:39
Speaker
I think I'm going to fall somewhere in the middle, and it's for these reasons. So I went to law school in 1978. I went to the University of Miami, both undergraduate and law school, go canes. And my law school class had 309 students.
00:08:03
Speaker
divided into three sections, so 100 and some odd in each section. 309, there were nine African-American students. And only two of us were African-American women. So 309, nine of us, and actually of the nine, five were day students and four were evening students, so really,
00:08:30
Speaker
There were five of us. So we had all of the normal trials and tribulations of law school, which is a difficult, can be difficult. It's like I tell people the reason for some, the reason it's difficult is you're like learning a new language. Law is a new language. And once you learn the language, it becomes easier, but it's hard in the beginning.
00:08:51
Speaker
So there's those things. There's the pressure of everyone in law school has been at the top of their class in undergraduates. So you have all these people that are used to being number one, you put them all together and someone's guess what? You're not going to have 309 number ones. Right. So there's that pressure. But we have the also had the added pressure.
00:09:12
Speaker
of going to law school at the time of the Bakke decision on affirmative action. And so yes, I had classmates who looked at me and said, you're only here because of affirmative action. And I responded, that's okay, I'm not taking the affirmative action bar exam.
00:09:32
Speaker
You know, which is my, now I'm a New Yorker, so it's like don't come for me, you know, like I can say. So, you know, but why should you have to have that kind of environment? Law school shouldn't have to be that way. And I hope it is better. And I spend a lot of my time as president, as the privilege of being ABA president, one of the great joys is talking to law students and trying to demystify what that law school experience
00:10:02
Speaker
was and what it can be. And in some ways, I think it's better. There's certainly more. We've come a long way from the days of two black women in my class. So in that sense, we've made a lot of progress. But I think the same competitive pressures will always be there in law school. And people need to remember the same
00:10:26
Speaker
tenacity and skills and desire that brought you to law school will see you through. Absolutely. Yeah. I often will say to students, you know, that you need to
00:10:39
Speaker
To the extent that you can find those experiences that remind you why you came to law school Because that's what kind of holds you steady Remind you why you came and remember the end goal. Yeah, right and if you do that and and again the same kinds of attributes that got you this far and
00:11:00
Speaker
is what's going to take you through. So another thing I tell students, don't change your study habits when you get to law school. People study the way what's best for them. And when I went to law school, besides it being learning a new language, they also tried to get me to study in a different way. And I was like, that does not work for me. And that's where I think if you're trying to take on other people's attributes and methods,
00:11:30
Speaker
that's where you can get confused. So you might need to tweak the way that you study, but I wouldn't say law school is the time to fundamentally change everything that you do. You've
Eclectic Career Journey
00:11:42
Speaker
got to go with what works for you and be confident in that. Yeah. Yeah. One thing that I do say to students is if you were one of those people who made it through high school and college doing everything at the last minute and getting caught up on the reading, that's a bad idea in law school.
00:11:59
Speaker
Now, I will agree with that. I will definitely agree with that. You need to allow a bit more time, especially in that first year, because it's learning a new language. It really is. So you've got that on top of concepts and on top of all of the reading and then the reading comprehension. So it is not the time to be a last minute person. And I say that as someone
00:12:25
Speaker
has been known to be a bit of a procrastinate. But that changed for me in law school. Got it. So I want to go back a little bit because you said that you were a journalism major in college, and then once you decided to go to law school, you sort of thought, oh, I'll become a First Amendment lawyer. And I think a lot of us go into law school with a vision of what we're going to do
00:12:47
Speaker
and not necessarily with a sense of what that actually looks like, right? What does a First Amendment lawyer do? But as it happens, that's not where you ended up at all. And you've had this incredibly interesting and eclectic career, and I'd love to talk about that. And part of why I want to talk about it is,
00:13:04
Speaker
I think we often say to law students or to people who are thinking about law school, the great thing about a law degree is that you can do all of these different sorts of things with it and be in all these different kinds of spaces. And then they come to law school and we're like, you can be a law firm lawyer. There you go. That's the thing that's on the table. But you've really had an opportunity to do several things. So starting off in the nonprofit sector, starting off in legal services,
00:13:31
Speaker
Yes. Yeah. So how did that come to be? And then how did you transition from there into big firm life? Yes. So as I said, I did think I would go to law school and become a First Amendment lawyer. And this is a bit of a confession about myself and where I was at that stage when I went to law school in my first year.
00:13:53
Speaker
I was not as mature as some of the students that I see now. And let me demonstrate how that maturity or lack of maturity showed up. So I go, I think I'm going to be a First Amendment lawyer. I take constitutional law, which is one of the prerequisites for first-year students. And I'm sitting in class, and we get to studying the cases that led to the abolishment of slavery.
00:14:23
Speaker
And I was so disappointed that the argument that ruled the day was an interstate commerce clause argument instead of a moral argument. Now, here's the immaturity, right? Because it was so outrageous to me. Well, why couldn't you prevail on a more like it's morally wrong?
00:14:50
Speaker
And if I have been more mature and also probably more interested in constitutional law, I would have said how clever were those lawyers that they were able to take an interstate commerce clause
00:15:03
Speaker
argument and use that to get to the results that we know were the right results, the abolishment of slavery. But that's not where my head was. And so I thought, this is not for me. And I began to look around and think about what else would I be interested in? And from the time I was a child, I was always interested in traveling and other people and other cultures and language. So I said, aha, international law.
00:15:32
Speaker
But not having a clue, what does that mean? Right. So I set out, I changed my focus. You know, I took all of the requisite courses, but I tried to take sort of electives and international. One of the smartest things I did, which is also probably at the time
00:15:50
Speaker
one of the most unorthodox things I did was after my first year of law school, instead of trying to find a job in big law, I went and studied international law at the London School of Economics. Everyone said, are you crazy? You need to be looking for yet that first
00:16:09
Speaker
job in a law firm because if you get it after your first year and they'll invite you back for your second year and then your third year and you're all set and I thought that's not what I want to do so off I went I studied in London and then I traveled around Europe you know the backpacking student because I had missed out on doing that in college and I've always wanted to do it
00:16:29
Speaker
And in the end, it was a terrific grounding for me in international law. But it also took me seven years to get my first job in international law. I started, as you noted, as a legal services lawyer. So that's because in my second year, after my second year, I did an internship at a legal services office in Brooklyn and back in New York City.
00:16:57
Speaker
And after I graduated, they made me an offer. And so I began working in legal services. Now, I graduated in 1981, which at the time was the worst recession we'd ever seen. So no one was hiring a lawyer. So I was very grateful to have the job at legal services. I also loved it because when you tell students, remember why you wanted to go to law school.
00:17:23
Speaker
It was all about everything I wanted to do. I was helping people and at that time I was working on a project, this is a little bit of history, Ronald Reagan was president and he had decided one way that we could reduce the
00:17:38
Speaker
federal spending was to essentially cut people off from their Social Security SSI benefits right and forced them to go on to Welfare and so we have this whole unit that was designed to restore people's Social Security benefits and I was part of that and it was some of the most challenging and rewarding work that I've ever done and
00:18:01
Speaker
And part of me was like an employed lawyer is better than an unemployed lawyer. And the skills that you learn in one environment can be transferred. That is the reason why I have had the, as you lovely put it, the eclectic career, because I said to myself, what will I learn from this job, this next experience? And how does it get me closer to my ultimate goal of doing international law?
00:18:29
Speaker
And sometimes the line was direct and sometimes it was indirect.
Role of Bar Associations in Career
00:18:33
Speaker
But in the end, that cumulative experience over seven years led to my first position in international law, which was as the American representative for the ICC Court of International Arbitration. Once I landed that role, it really pulled together all of the elements
00:18:53
Speaker
over the last seven years, because I had done jobs for legal services, so there was litigation there. I had been involved with the Better Business Bureau advertising division, and so I was doing arbitration of advertising disputes, and I ended up, as you may know, both at the ICC, and then I lived for five years in Geneva, working for the World Intellectual Property Organization, focused on arbitration of intellectual property disputes.
00:19:22
Speaker
So, you know, it all carries through. Now, I'm not going to say I had enough foresight to know that that's how I would be connecting and building, but I did have enough foresight to know that I was going to gain skills that eventually would be useful and no matter what setting I was at. So flexibility really is important. And it is true that as lawyers, we either know
00:19:50
Speaker
an area of law or we know how to access areas of law. Absolutely. And I love what you said that you said that as you thought about new jobs and new experiences that you sort of asked yourself two questions. What will I learn? And then how does it move me toward my ultimate goal? And that just seems like such a such a good way to think about one's career. Right. The other thing I say to students all the time is
00:20:18
Speaker
The job you get coming right out of law school is not necessarily where you're going to be in five years or 10 years or 15 years.
00:20:24
Speaker
I am so glad you say that because I say to students all the time, do not think that if you don't get your dream job right out of law school, your career is over. You are going to practice law on average. For me, it's been 40 years, right? I graduated in 81. I was admitted in 82. And here we are more than 40 years later, and I've had a number of experiences.
00:20:48
Speaker
So it is not fatal if you don't get the job that you want. What can you learn and what can you take with you?
Mentorship and Career Development
00:20:59
Speaker
And obviously as president of the ABA, I could not talk to you without talking about how important being involved in the Bar Association was for me because it gave me access to people that were doing the kinds of work that I wanted to do.
00:21:16
Speaker
So I was able to learn from them and get exposure and volunteer. And in the end, you know, almost all of my jobs after my first or second one were through connections with the Bar Association. I'm not saying join the bar and you'll find people will give you jobs, but I am saying you'll be around those people that are involved in the areas that either you want to practice or maybe in your day job, you're not able to do it, but you have an interest.
00:21:45
Speaker
in areas. And so for me, that was also a part of that story of moving forward. Yeah. It also makes me think a lot about because I think often younger folks don't really think about what it means to build a career. Right. And what that looks like over time. But one of the things that a message that people constantly get bombarded with is you need to particularly as women, you need to have your mentors, you need to have your champions, you need to have the people who are
00:22:14
Speaker
who are saying good things about you, you know, when you're not in the room. And I'll assume that like most of us, you have those people and some of them were folks that you identified and some of them were folks who identified you. So can you just talk a little bit about the importance of mentorship in your life as you were building your career? And then maybe on the other side of it, as somebody who's now been in this field for 40 years, you know, what you look for for somebody who's going to be a mentee.
00:22:44
Speaker
for you, what do you want from them sort of as the exchange for what you give to them with the years of experience you have as a mentor? Yeah, so I think this is a really important conversation about mentors and mentees and what that looks like. And I also wanna remind us that for me, I think of different categories. There's a mentor who is somebody who speaks with you, there's a coach
00:23:11
Speaker
That's somebody who speaks to you right tells you and then there's a sponsor And that's the one you're talking about that speaks about you whether you're in the room or not And sometimes it's the same person and sometimes it's three different people and you may need them the mentor the culture the sponsor at different phases in your life and I've been fortunate to have had all three and continue to have all three and I try to be in turn
00:23:40
Speaker
you know, to play that role for people. And I won't say just young lawyers. I mean, I think we need to continue that. And especially as women, we need to continue that throughout our careers. And even as we transition, you know, for some of us now, we're getting to this stage where we, some of our friends call it retire. And I look at them and I'm like, you're not really retired, you're rewired, right? You're doing different things. But yes, I have had mentors.
00:24:08
Speaker
Some of them I sought, others who sought me. My journey in the ABA, for example, I started in the international law section, no surprise, thinking I want to be an international lawyer. And I began working on a committee, as you do, and just sort of enjoying that work and trying to do the best work, trying to be the professional. If I volunteered for a task, making sure that I completed it to the best of my ability,
00:24:39
Speaker
And one day, a woman who ended up being the first woman to chair our international section, tapped me on the shoulder and said, you know, you could chair the section one day. And I'm thinking, what about me that says, I never wanted that? But she saw something in me that I didn't see in myself, that kind of leadership. And I certainly wasn't ready to do it that day. But once she planted that idea in my head, I started thinking about it.
00:25:08
Speaker
and saying why not? And what do I need to do in order to place myself on the ladder or whatever it might be to chair that section? And I will tell you that was one of the most valuable experiences I had in leadership because one of the things it taught me
00:25:27
Speaker
was that I wasn't going to be the same leader as the man in front of me or the man behind me. And they had different, they were really smart and they had certain skills and some of the skills I have but didn't have. And that's okay.
00:25:42
Speaker
because your leadership is your leadership. Now there are some, you know, one day we'll talk a different podcast about leadership and the elements and all of that. But for me, it was important to recognize I can be Deborah and I can be Deborah as the chair of the international section in my own way and with my own abilities, right?
00:26:04
Speaker
that was reaffirming for me. So yes, what I try to do is now be the kind of mentor or coach or sponsor
00:26:17
Speaker
that I've appreciated having. And especially, you know, it's not so surprising. I have a heart for first gens. You know, first gens do struggle. And there's that whole, am I doing it right? You know, these other people, everyone always looks like they know exactly what they're doing, but I have a little hint for people. They don't. That's right. And in fact, I started
00:26:44
Speaker
two women's groups. One was the Women's Interest Network in the ABA, and one was the Women's Interest Group in the International Bar Association. And they both came about for the same reasons. When I would go to these international law section meetings, there would be a sea of men
00:27:02
Speaker
And they all look like they knew each other. And then it'd be me and maybe one other woman. And we didn't know anyone. Now, it turns out, you know, a lot of guys probably didn't know each other either. But we didn't know that. When you look at it, it looks like they all know each other. So we started this women's group. And it was really for us to
00:27:21
Speaker
Talk to each other about anything from substantive areas of law to how do you pack? How do you use technology? Because we don't want to admit that we don't know how to use that what was then the new technology. Now all of us are really tech savvy or have to be right. But it was those kinds of experiences.
00:27:41
Speaker
So as when I say, you can be a mentor to someone who's younger than you, to someone who's older than you, and to your peers. But it doesn't matter. What matters is that you're doing that, and that you are giving the kind of advice that will help people pursue their goals and be their best selves.
Authenticity and Diversity in Leadership
00:28:06
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:28:07
Speaker
And I agree with you. I love to have conversations about leadership. I just think that it's such a fascinating space. And one of the things that you just said that I really love was sort of talking about being yourself while being a leader. Lani Guinier many, many years ago wrote a paper, an article about law school, and the title was something like On Becoming Gentlemen.
00:28:34
Speaker
And she was sort of talking about the ways in which law school tries to sort of fit everybody into a particular box and that for a very long time that box was sort of, this is how white men are and so you should pattern yourself after that. And one of the things that I have just seen that is so powerful is watching women of color
00:28:54
Speaker
come into these leadership positions as so authentically themselves, which I just think is so incredibly powerful. But it can also be something that makes other people uncomfortable. And I wonder if you have
00:29:10
Speaker
Um, you know not necessarily experiences that you want to share about that But you know, how do you how do you kind of deal with those circumstances where you kind of walk into a room? Um And and you feel like you have to continually prove yourself Um because people don't expect the aba president to look like you. Yes. Yes. Uh, well i've certainly had experiences, um
00:29:33
Speaker
And, you know, the idea of making other people comfortable is one that, unfortunately, we I think if you're especially if you're African-American, male or female, you have experience with that. And so the question is, how do you do it or do you feel like doing it or when do you do it? And I think that that's part of what I talk about being authentic sometimes.
00:29:59
Speaker
you're not going to want to do that. Or someone may have answered differently when faced with the person as I had in law school who said you're only here for affirmative action, someone else might have been
00:30:15
Speaker
responded in a different way, but that was my way of responding, which is to say, I'm not dealing with you. I know why I'm here, and we'll see in the end. And I think that that's really important that you figure out what is your response. You cannot take on every battle, and everything should not be a battle, because that's exhausting.
00:30:39
Speaker
So you have to decide when you're going to let something go, when you're going to speak up, and when you speak up how you're going to do it. But always keep in mind, what is my goal here? Sometimes your goal might be to feel better, you know, if someone says something to you that you really don't like. I mean, if you think it's offensive and inappropriate, that's going to be one way of behaving. If it's ignorance,
00:31:08
Speaker
you might say, today is the day I'm going to educate you. Or you might say, today is the day you get to wallow in your ignorance. I'm ignoring you. You'll figure that out. And unfortunately, it is a part of life. And it is something that we think about. We have to make adjustments and think about how we will respond day in and day out. And I don't say that it's just
00:31:33
Speaker
for people of color. I mean, women have this sometimes, depending on your origin and where you are, it can happen to you. When you talk about when I walk into the room, I will tell you two of the best conversations that I've had about diversity have happened outside of the US. One was I went to the, there was a meeting of women leaders in Copenhagen,
00:32:01
Speaker
And the reporter who interviewed me was a woman of color. And we talked about diversity. And then I said, so how's it for you? You're in Denmark. And your family came from, I won't say where they came from, but she's clearly a woman of color. So we talked about what that looks like.
00:32:22
Speaker
and what that feels like and how it shows up. And not surprisingly, it's similar experiences than I would have had. And so I was able to tell her this is how I deal with it. And these are things that I do. And it was a great conversation. And I was in Japan last month.
00:32:39
Speaker
The number one topic I was meeting with Bar Association leaders from Osaka and Tokyo and the Japan Federation The number one topic they want to talk about was diversity. Hmm now for them. It's gender diversity Okay, but what does it what are we doing? How do we handle it? So I think you know people now
00:33:02
Speaker
or having those kinds of conversations. And maybe it won't be so surprising the next time a Black woman walks in and they're president of the ABA. Usually the response is very positive, like, oh, you're the president. And that's fine. But I am blessed that the first African-American president
00:33:25
Speaker
Paulette Brown from New Jersey broke down a lot of barriers. And because of her, again, I get to be the kind of leader that I want to be and not have that pressure of being the first and having people put on to me what they think
00:33:43
Speaker
an ABA president should be if she's a black woman because now we've got this experience. And so I always give a shout out to Paulette and thank her and recognize that because of her, I'm able to walk into rooms and there's a presumption of competence and intelligence
Progress in Legal Diversity
00:34:04
Speaker
and class, you know, plus Paulette is all of those things. And so I just try to step in her shoes and then add my own flavor as they say to it. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'm so glad that Paulette's name came up because if you hadn't brought it up, I would have brought it up because again, she's Jersey. So we have to give props. I want to walk down this path that you started walking down, which is sort of, it was just talking about diversity.
00:34:31
Speaker
when I say diversity, I really mean diversity writ large, right? So race, gender, sexual orientation, disability, right? I mean, there's a whole range of different ways that we could think about what it means to be diverse. But we're also at this sort of interesting moment, right? So we're at a moment where
00:34:49
Speaker
You know, women have been about 50 percent of law school classes, frankly, for decades now. And yet as soon as you get into the sort of upper echelons of kind of power within our profession, women have kind of disappeared. We still have very few people of color in the profession in general, let alone in positions of power. And we've really only started very recently having conversations about, you know, people with disabilities or people who identify as LGBTQ
00:35:18
Speaker
So it feels like there's an enormous amount of work that's still to be done in our profession. And I'd love to hear you, one, as somebody who's been a lawyer for 40 plus years, but also somebody who is really a sort of peak profession, right? I mean, you're head of the ABA right now. How do you think about diversity in our profession and how do you think about
00:35:44
Speaker
how we sort of transform ourselves right into a place where lots of people can be successful and where people don't leave constantly and where people feel valued. Yeah so I think for me I always start by saying
00:36:02
Speaker
you can go back and remember where we were. And when you compare where we were to where we are now, there's been a lot of progress. And even in the ABA, if you look at the number of women presidents that we have had, it's been accelerated over the last decade. So what that says to me is that the work that we've done
00:36:25
Speaker
to lay the foundation to have people be able to come into leadership is beginning to take hold. Now, is it fast enough? No, but it's there. And what we've got to do is continue on, it's like on both sides. On the one hand, we've got to continue that pipeline of diverse lawyers or diverse law students who then
00:36:52
Speaker
become diverse lawyers. So we've got to make sure that we are continuing to have that pipeline. And then I think we have to take a really hard look at our profession. Are there systemic impediments for people of color in particular to succeed? Because we're getting, as you say, you know, in the law school classes, we're seeing women come in.
00:37:20
Speaker
but we're also seeing them leave. And it's not enough to say, oh, because they have children and they leave. It's not that. It's not solely that. I mean, that may be one element, but it is not the entire reason. Are there structural barriers, structural impediments in the way that this system has been set up that produces these results?
00:37:48
Speaker
And let's face it, even going back to my naive days with the con law and the interstate commerce clause, even if you don't think morally, there's something wrong with having a system that shows you where people fall off, economically it doesn't make sense. You get people who are really at the peak of their career and their learning and their experience, and then they walk away.
00:38:18
Speaker
If there were any other investment that you had where you say, oh, we're going to build and build and build. And then just when the investment is about to pay off, we're going to take it away from you. You wouldn't tolerate that. And we are in the ABA. We are like a lot of bar associations really trying to dig into what are some of the systemic changes that we might need to make, the structural changes that we might need to make in order to retain
00:38:48
Speaker
these lawyers that are at their peak or coming into their peak. So, you know, I don't say I have the answer now, but I think we are at an inflection point where we know we can't continue the way we have been. And some of that has been hastened by the pandemic and some of the learnings from the pandemic and some of the learnings coming out. I guess we're coming out of the pandemic, hopefully, God bless you.
00:39:16
Speaker
And what does that look like? And of course, we're seeing, we've already seen the shifts and coming into the office and working hybrid. Five years ago, people would have said you're insane. That's right. No, that's not going to happen. And now it is the new norm. And so this is really the moment where we say, OK, we've looked at that. Now, what else can we look at?
00:39:40
Speaker
that will help us make these changes that will make our legal profession more equitable and more reflective of society.
Diverse Perspectives in Law and Trust
00:39:51
Speaker
And it's really important that we have that representation because we know that confidence in the legal systems, in the judicial systems, and in the courts themselves is declining. And that decline is for a variety of reasons, but
00:40:09
Speaker
You know, it's hard to trust a legal system or judicial system where you don't see yourself reflected. Yep. Yep. Absolutely. And, you know, one of the points that you made as you were just speaking was about the importance of pipelines as well. And we're sort of sitting on the precipice of the Supreme Court making a decision
00:40:35
Speaker
that almost certainly is gonna have an impact on pipelines into higher education and then obviously into law school as well. And we're certainly sort of thinking about what does that look like in a law school context and other people are thinking about it in their particular context as well. But it almost feels in some ways, and sort of the question here is whether you kind of agree
00:41:01
Speaker
It feels like we're moving backwards in some ways right now. And as you said, that there's this sort of sense of disconnect and distrust with our courts, particularly our Supreme Court. And I had to have a bunch of conversations with law students last year about why they should stay in law school and why all this matters.
00:41:24
Speaker
And I wonder what you would say to that, right? When a law student says, you know, it's all politics and, you know, it doesn't matter what your arguments are. They already know what they're going to decide. And, you know, so why am I spending my time doing my three or four years in law school when law doesn't need anything? Yeah. So I would say that's exactly the opposite of why you should be involved. Right. You need we need diverse perspectives.
00:41:54
Speaker
We need to have lawyers that come in who then train and become judges, and we need them at every level. And not only do we need law students and law students of color, in particular, we need you to be prosecutors, we need you to be defense attorneys, we need you to be legal services lawyers, because we need to instill confidence in our systems. And the only way we're going to have that
00:42:25
Speaker
is if people see, yes, you might have some decisions that feel like they're being made on a political basis, but let's not forget that that is a very small number of cases. And most people are gonna be affected day in and day out by the cases that go under the radar.
00:42:45
Speaker
by the cases that affect them personally, whether it's family law, domestic abuse, whether it's I wanna start a business and I need to make sure that I have some representation or whether it's I have a business and I'm not getting paid and what do I do?
Commitment to Alternative Dispute Resolution
00:43:02
Speaker
Those are the cases that affect the vast majority of people day in and day out and that's where we need lawyers who are smart and competent and ethical
00:43:13
Speaker
and passionate and are able to represent their clients in a way that displays dignity and civility and an understanding of the grounding of our legal system and the rule of law.
00:43:31
Speaker
So I want to, we've had these sort of very high level conversations and I want to bring it down just a little bit because so much of your work has been in alternative dispute resolution and arbitration. And oftentimes when people think of lawyers, they just think of lawyers, you know,
00:43:50
Speaker
in a courtroom, yelling at each other across the tables. And yet there are other ways to fix things. So I'm curious if you could talk a little bit about, and I feel like there was a moment where we were much more focused on ADR and we've kind of lost sight of that a little bit. So I'd love for you to talk about one, how you got interested in that kind of work, and then two, what you see as sort of the future of alternative dispute resolution.
00:44:17
Speaker
Yes, so for me, it harkens back to my legal services days and as a litigator, but also looking for other ways that I could help my clients resolve their disputes.
00:44:31
Speaker
And that's where I was first introduced to negotiation and mediation and arbitration, sort of the ADR, alternative dispute resolution. And for me, I found that I really thought that it was a great way, a great alternative to being in the courtroom. Now an international arbitration in particular, some of the reasons that parties selected is that they want to have
00:45:01
Speaker
arbitrators that have specific experience with their types of disputes as opposed to judges who may not have that experience. Also, it's confidential, so it protects business relationships and business secrets. So there are reasons why. And then the third reason is, well, not just the third, but another reason is especially in international arbitration, there are treaties for enforcement of arbitration awards as opposed to
00:45:29
Speaker
Now I have this court judgment that I have to go around and try and figure out how to enforce. So those are some specific reasons about international arbitration. But your broader question is a really good one because we have a statistic that we've seen in the ABA, our civics survey, our 2022 civics survey. The new one hasn't come out yet. But in 2022, when asked the question, do you believe that there's racial bias
00:45:59
Speaker
built into the judicial system, more than half of the respondents said yes. Now, in the breakdown, young people ages 18 to 36, more than 60% of them believe that. There is a racial divide, 48% of white people agree with the statement, 54% of Hispanics,
00:46:25
Speaker
But 75% of Black people believe that there's racial bias built into the judicial system. When I talk about that with my non-lawyer friends, the first thing they say is, well, who would a 25%? No believe. But in all seriousness, that means we have a crisis of confidence. And one of the things we can use is alternative dispute resolution.
00:46:54
Speaker
to get people to resolve their disputes in a peaceful way. Because let's face it, people that don't have confidence in the judicial system, it's not like they don't have legal problems. Yeah, that's right. And what are they gonna do? If you don't have, you're gonna figure out some other kind of way, and sometimes maybe not a very productive way of expressing that anger, right? You still have the legal need, you need redress,
00:47:20
Speaker
But if you think there's bias built into the system, it's very hard to get you to access it. So with ADR, we can set up systems. We know how to do set up mechanisms in communities. It can be people that you know and you trust. It's kind of going back to the elder models in communities. But that's a way of having equity and having your voice heard. And if you feel that
00:47:50
Speaker
even though you lost the case, you were fairly treated, that will go a long way to restore the confidence that we need to see. So I do think that ADR, whether it's arbitration or mediation or negotiation or even facilitation, whatever the tools we have, can be a really powerful way of restoring that confidence.
00:48:16
Speaker
I love that.
Conclusion and Invitation to Join ABA
00:48:17
Speaker
And it also feels like a good place to end because it's ending on a high note. High note, yes. High note. And I like that. So thank you so much. I mean, this was just an absolute delight to get to speak with you. And I am just so impressed by the career that you have had, by the work that you were doing at the ABA. And I'm excited to see what you do next.
00:48:44
Speaker
Well, I really appreciate it. Thank you for this opportunity. And for everyone listening, I would just say, please look at the ABA, join the ABA. There's tons of possibilities and opportunities, and we need you. We need your voice. We need your representation. Thank you. Absolutely. Thank you.
00:49:05
Speaker
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