Swimming in Small Ponds: Relationships

“And where are you from?”

It’s the inevitable question I’m asked whenever I meet a new client.  Although I grew up in a small town in central Kentucky, I never developed much of an accent.  My last name isn’t recognizable.  I suppose I dress rather different too.  Therefore, people are curious where I come from and how I ended up out here. 

Origins are important, the geographical and personal connections which define us.  There are a particular set of experiences, beliefs and values that bind together a community, and that sense of culture is the reference point in not only understanding others but ourselves.  Granted, moving to a small town certainly has its share of culture shock for those accustomed to more hustle and bustle, but it’s more than just a change of pace that makes small town life different from life in a larger community.

Ask Miranda Pennoyer: of Fashion Felonies & the Cheerful Jedi

It’s time once again for “Ask Miranda Pennoyer,” the column that has strives for equal justice under law, as long as it’s in our favor. This column has the distinction of being described by ABC Members with Bags Over Their Heads as “a collection of vowels and consonants, usually.”

Our first question is one that’s on the mind of many 1Ls—or at least it would be, if they would ever stop using Facebook in class.

Q. The law seems very concerned with mens rea. Why does nobody ever mention womens rea?

A. Roughly translated, “mens rea” is Latin for men’s wear. It refers to the attire, otherwise known as a “law suit,” that attorneys must wear when they appear in court. Because women wear law suits too, their clothing is subsumed under the category of mens rea.

Q. What about actus reus?

A. This is Latin for active wear. These are the clothes lawyers wear when they are golfing with clients, right down to their legal briefs. Once again, this term rarely applies to women.

Q. Why? It seems gender-neutral.

A. Yes, but women have enough taste to realize that they look like idiots in actus reus, so they don’t wear it. If a women does wear actus reus, her paralegal will set fire to her polyester pants. This is what’s called an “attendant circumstance.”

Q. But isn’t that sexist too?

A. No. Men and women have an equal right to commit fashion felonies.

Running from the Law: Why You Should Play a Team Sport

I remember, as a third-grade student, standing on the soccer field, absolutely still, hoping the ball would come nowhere near me. I remember playing basketball and ducking out of the way. In softball, I would watch the entire field move in when I came up to bat. When the ball was passed or kicked to me, I would inevitably embarrass myself. It was safer to not try. When the ultimate humiliation happened and my classmates chose teams, I was always standing there alone at the end.

Couture-At-Law: Exquisite Wardrobe Essentials

Now that you have successfully landed the job - thanks in part to your outstanding choice of interview attire- it is time to put thought into building a professional, polished, and sophisticated work wardrobe that will reflect your sound judgment and ESQuisite personal taste. Whether you are a seasoned professional or a law student intern, the key to creating a work wardrobe is to build a foundation using classic, versatile, and functional pieces that will convey the desired image for your workplace.

First to consider is dress code appropriateness. Appropriate attire depends on client interaction and the responsibilities at hand. Take a look around the office to assess the situation. Is the environment über professional or is it business (casual) as usual? If you aren’t quite sure, the rule of thumb is dress up, not down. It is much better to be dressed very professionally, than too casually.

Forget the Linen Closet: When mother and father reverse their traditional gender roles

Role reversals confuse people.

My husband is a "stay-at-home dad" to our three sons; I head to work each day to advance my legal career and support our family. We decided to raise our children without daycare long before we had any, and we stuck by that decision, for better and for worse. Although it may have been financially easier to have both of us working, we have managed to scrape by on one income since the beginning.

Many people on the outside have a difficult time understanding why we made this decision -- even our own families have questioned it. The important thing is that we made the decision on purpose, we value what we are doing, and we are not afraid to talk about it with other people or reassess our situation to make sure it is still working for us.

I could write paragraph after paragraph of the discourteous things people have said to us because we are not fulfilling their expectations. However, my husband and I are completely satisfied with the decisions we have made and will not change them to fit someone else's idea of what the world should look like.

Instead, we take different approaches toward educating people, since the general population probably does not realize how gender-biased they actually are. They probably don't realize they are incorrect when they assume it is the man that is working, the woman who is staying at home with these three squirmy boys, and it is the man who makes all the decisions without the woman's input.

Networking Events

We have attended various lawyer networking events together. Sometimes we take steps to make it obvious that I am the lawyer in the family. For example, my husband will purposely where casual slacks (or nice jeans) and a polo shirt, while I will dress in a formal, black lawyer suit.

The Prosecution Rests: Jackie Lacey

It is not easy being third in command of one of the largest district attorney offices in the country, but to those who know her, Jacquelyn Lacey makes it seem effortless. Jackie has been a prosecutor for nearly 24 years in the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office, an office of about 1,056 deputy district attorneys most notably known for the prosecutions of O.J. Simpson, Michael Jackson, and - ironically - the doctor accused of causing Michael Jackson’s death. As Assistant District Attorney of Line Operations, Jackie oversees the Bureau of Central Operations and the Bureaus of Branch and Area Operations Regions I and II. These bureaus contain about 500 prosecutors who handle the majority of cases for the LADA. Jackie has nine years of executive management experience, and is a member of District Attorney Steve Cooley’s executive staff. As a deputy district attorney, Jackie tried over 60 felony jury trials, including eleven murder trials. She sought and received a death verdict in People v. Richard Browne, a case in which the defendant Richard Browne was convicted of a string of violent crimes, including the callous murders of a gas station employee and a liquor store owner, and was sentenced to death, and she obtained the first “hate-crime” murder conviction in Los Angeles County.

I had a chance to interview Jackie Sunday afternoon sitting across the table in her kitchen banging away on my laptop and hoping the tape recorder captured everything she said because it was very informative. I hope you enjoy the interview. May the prosecution call its witness!

What is your educational and legal background?

I went to Dorsey High School in Los Angeles, so I am a Los Angeles native. I went to undergraduate at U.C. Irvine and majored in psychology, and I earned my J.D. from USC law school. I decided to apply to law school in my junior year when I took a class called the Introduction to the Study of Law. The class had guest speakers and one of the speakers was a young African-American lawyer named Irma Brown, who is now a judge. Listening to her speak about how exciting it was being in a courtroom was a major reason why I decided to apply to law school.

What was it about the excitement that made you think about becoming a lawyer?

Irma expressed such enthusiasm in the way she talked about her courtroom victories. It is hard for me to explain, but looking at her, at how young she was, maybe five or six years older than me, I thought if she could be successful at being a lawyer, then so could I. I listened to her talk about the thrill and excitement of being in the courtroom, and actually sat in a courtroom in Santa Ana and observed cases as part of the course. I remember thinking I felt very comfortable in a courtroom, very at home there, and was interested in everything that went on. It was almost like watching a theater, if you will. Each person who addressed the judge changed the atmosphere in the courtroom. And I thought, this is something I can be good at.

What led you to want to become a prosecutor?

I would love to say it was some big calling, but I ended up in the DA’s office really just following a friend.

The Prosecution Rests: Jackie Lacey

It is not easy being third in command of one of the largest district attorney offices in the country, but to those who know her, Jacquelyn Lacey makes it seem effortless.  Jackie has been a prosecutor for nearly 24 years in the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office, an office of about 1,056 deputy district attorneys most notably known for the prosecutions of O.J. Simpson, Michael Jackson, and - ironically - the doctor accused of causing Michael Jackson’s death.  As Assistant District Attorney of Line Operations, Jackie oversees the Bureau of Central Operations and the Bureaus of Branch and Area Operations Regions I and II.  These bureaus contain about 500 prosecutors who handle the majority of cases for the LADA.  Jackie has nine years of executive management experience, and is a member of District Attorney Steve Cooley’s executive staff.  As a deputy district attorney, Jackie tried over 60 felony jury trials, including eleven murder trials.  She sought and received a death verdict in People v. Richard Browne, a case in which the defendant Richard Browne was convicted of a string of violent crimes, including the callous murders of a gas station employee and a liquor store owner, and was sentenced to death, and she obtained the first “hate-crime” murder conviction in Los Angeles County.

I had a chance to interview Jackie Sunday afternoon sitting across the table in her kitchen banging away on my laptop and hoping the tape recorder captured everything she said because it was very informative.  I hope you enjoy the interview.  May the prosecution call its witness!

What is your educational and legal background?

I went to Dorsey High School in Los Angeles, so I am a Los Angeles native.  I went to undergraduate at U.C. Irvine and majored in psychology, and I earned my J.D. from USC law school.  I decided to apply to law school in my junior year when I took a class called the Introduction to the Study of Law.  The class had guest speakers and one of the speakers was a young African-American lawyer named Irma Brown, who is now a judge.  Listening to her speak about how exciting it was being in a courtroom was a major reason why I decided to apply to law school.

What was it about the excitement that made you think about becoming a lawyer?

Irma expressed such enthusiasm in the way she talked about her courtroom victories.  It is hard for me to explain, but looking at her, at how young she was, maybe five or six years older than me, I thought if she could be successful at being a lawyer, then so could I.  I listened to her talk about the thrill and excitement of being in the courtroom, and actually sat in a courtroom in Santa Ana and observed cases as part of the course.  I remember thinking I felt very comfortable in a courtroom, very at home there, and was interested in everything that went on. It was almost like watching a theater, if you will.  Each person who addressed the judge changed the atmosphere in the courtroom.  And I thought, this is something I can be good at.

What led you to want to become a prosecutor?

I would love to say it was some big calling, but I ended up in the DA’s office really just following a friend.

From the Desk of the Working Mom -- Happy Toes

I have recently come to the realization—somewhat to my relief—that so-called “life balance” is impossible to achieve. In fact, striving for this mythical state of well-being was quite stressing me out. There are entire websites devoted to “work-life balance” or finding your “inner balance”. Each of these sites advocates finding ways to reduce your workload, to relax, and to enjoy life more. It sounds lovely in concept, like sitting under a cabana on an exotic beach somewhere, the gentle sea breeze cooling your face, while the attractive waiter who can actually pull off a pair of short shorts brings you a pina colada with a little umbrella in it.

Instead of a cool ocean breeze, however, all I was feeling was like quite the failure—promising myself each week that I would try to come home earlier, sleep more, and eat healthier—but never quite making it stick. Its not that I was a total failure—I did come home early last week when the school called and told me my daughter was sick and needed picked up. And I managed to sleep through an entire night without interruption. Unfortunately, it was in my two-year old’s bed and I walked slightly bent over the entire next day. And I did clean up my desk into organized piles, but in the process created a two and one half page list of “to dos” for each of my clients. I then left work so stressed out that I came in on Sunday just to eliminate that sense of foreboding in the pit of my stomach that I was somehow about to commit serious malpractice.

Confessions of a Non-Networker: Layoffs

My post this month does not cover the topic I planned to write about. You may remember that one of my proposed networking goals last month was to return to my law school for a two-day event. I did that in mid-February, and really enjoyed catching up with my friends who practice near the law school. It was interesting to talk about our practices and realize that "big city" law firms have many of the same issues for associates as firms in smaller cities – finding mentors, how to stay active when work is slow, developing client relationships, etc.

However, while I was away visiting something happened at my firm that caused me to think about networking in a quite different light. Actually, when these events unfolded I was not thinking about "networking" at all.

February's (Unplanned) Networking Resolution: Learn How to Respond to Layoffs.

This month, a group of paralegals were fired from our office.

That may not sound like an astounding event in today’s economy, but it astounded me. Our office did not lay off any attorneys or groups of staff in 2008, and things are busier now than they were in 2008. So the layoffs came out of the blue. My secretary came into my office when I returned from my trip to tell me about it. She did not know any details, only that all of the after hours paralegal staff had been laid off the evening I left for my trip.

This group of people- six in all - worked on proofreading, cite-checking, and any other night time needs to support the firm. Each of these staff persons had been with the firm for literally decades. Many times I had talked about their work and the magical way things appeared on my desk – flawless and ready to file - after a night with these paralegals. I bragged about our after hours staff to my friends at other firms, who had nothing similar. If you ever read "The Tailor of Gloucester" as a child – a story where little mice come in the night and magically finish sewing a new coat for the mayor because the tailor is sick - that is how I felt about the after hours staff. If you were on trial, they would take care of overnight exhibits and proofread trial motions. If you were compiling an appellate brief with edits from nine different people, they would make sure it was flawless. Not only that, but after working with these paralegals on more than one all-nighter, I never once heard them complain or lose patience.

Who Do You Talk To?

When my secretary told me the news, I could not process the information. I was busy catching up from my absence. There were calls to make and questions from partners that needed answers. But when I was home later that evening, talking to my spouse, it hit me that I was incredibly sad for these six people - suddenly unemployed in a tough economy after all those years with the firm. I was upset by how it had been handled. I decided that I would call my practice group leader the next day to find out more information.

Although the head of our office staff handled the firings, I don’t know him at all. I do know my practice group leader, and I assumed she was part of the decision-making process. Though I am normally nervous about meeting with our practice group leader, it did not occur to me to be nervous about this because I wanted to talk to someone.

Mommy Law: Watch Those Corners!

“I arrived exactly on time and went inside.  Within minutes, a nanny came running in as another nanny went running out.  It was probably time for a shift change.  I entered the house and headed to the music room.  Three of the daughters came bounding in to show me their guinea pig, and I could hear the youngest daughter singing upstairs.  Since the parents didn't come to greet me, I knew they were still at work.  I began the piano lessons as usual.”

This was my life before law school.  I ran a piano studio.  I taught oodles of lessons each week, mostly from my home studio.  Occasionally I also played "ambassador of music" and travelled to my students’ homes to teach on their pianos.  In the process I came into contact with dozens of different families.  I watched, listened, and learned as they struggled with the same issues of balancing that I struggle with today.

With four girls, two ambitious parents, and guinea pigs, the family I just described was one of the busiest.  Some weeks when I arrived for our regular appointment the family wouldn't even be there.  Usually this meant that they had made other plans and forgotten to tell me.  This family was happy.  The children were well taken care of.  Both parents had ambitious careers.  In order for all of these things to happen, they were comfortable cutting corners on some of the details of home life.  And sometimes things fell through the cracks.