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Volume 14, Number 4 March/April 2005
They broke through the ceiling
A tale of three women glass cutters
By Beth Finke
Every year after the Business Law Section's Spring luncheon, they sneak off to
the hotel bar. Sipping martinis and giving toasts, this gaggle of spunky women
has a lot to celebrate.
They're the Glass Cutters.
The Jean Allard Glass Cutter Award is presented annually to a woman business
lawyer who has made significant contributions to the profession and to the
Section of Business Law. The award is named for Jean Allard, the first woman to
chair the Section and the first to be given the Glass Cutter Award back in 1993.
Martini Invitations are sent only to Glass Cutter recipients, not extended to family
and friends. "That way the 10 or whatever number it is of us get to meet every
year and really get to know each other better," explains Linda C. Hayman, the
2002 winner. "It doesn't matter if you drink a martini or not — it's just kick-back
time. You know, we don't want anything too stuffy!"
The way fellow Glass Cutter winner Elizabeth Stong sees it, this particular group
of women is not in jeopardy of becoming overly formal. "It's a tremendously
inspiring and energetic group," says Stong, a U.S. bankruptcy judge for the
Eastern District of New York. "They're fun. And funny, too."
The Glass Cutters are women she has looked up to and admired for years, she
says, still recalling her surprise at receiving the award in 2003. "To this day, it
makes me smile to think of it. It was a big surprise and a great honor."
CALENDAR
No stranger to honors and awards, Judge Elizabeth S. Stong chaired the Section's
Business and Corporate Litigation Committee from 2000 to 2003, is now the vicechair of the Rules subcommittee of the Business Bankruptcy Committee, serves on
the Advisory Committee of President Robert Grey's American Jury Project and is a
member of the ABA's House of Delegates.
After serving as liaison to the ABA's Commission on Women in the Profession,
Stong now finds herself dealing with similar concerns in her role as president of
the Harvard Law School Association. Women were not among Harvard Law's
graduates until 1953, says Stong. "But now women make up nearly half of its
students. We are working hard to engage all graduates of the school — including
women — in the school's activities."
The mother of a 4-year-old, Stong appreciates the challenges that come with
balancing a fulfilling family and professional life. "I know that Margaret calls me
'the mommy judge,'" she says, laughing to think about her daughter's response to
a recent request to quit jumping on the couch. "She said, 'Mommy, you're the
only judge who does that!' It may be true, in its own way."
Stong points out that men in the profession face the same challenges women do
when balancing home and work. "You know, men become parents, too," she says.
"But I think family issues are much more demographically on the front burner
because of the wonderful number of women entering the profession."
Taking time to find just the right word to describe the issue at hand, Stong
ponders for a moment. "The word is not 'accommodate,'" she finally says.
"Because I think it's important not to think of it as a special accommodation."
Another pause, and she's got it. "The question is how to facilitate lawyers having
rich and full practice lives, while also having rich and full outside lives. Including
family lives."
The second of four children, Stong grew up in Marin County, California, until
leaving for the East Coast and Harvard, where she graduated magna cum laude in
1978 with an A.B. in history and science. "I got my first job when I was about 16,
then worked my way through college — with the help of some very generous
scholarship aid." Looking back, Stong knows she learned something from every
job she had back then. "Including waiting tables and cleaning bathrooms!" she
says with a laugh.
After receiving a J.D. from Harvard Law in 1982, Stong served as a law clerk to
Judge A. David Mazzone of the U.S. District Court for the District of
Massachusetts. An associate with the law firm of Cravath, Swaine & Moore in New
York City from 1983 until 1987, Stong then became an associate and a partner
with the law firm of Willkie Farr & Gallagher in New York City. Her practice
concentrated in complex federal and state civil litigation, regulatory inquiries as
well as arbitrations — including securities, corporate, employment and ERISA
disputes.
Appointed as a federal bankruptcy judge on Sept. 2, 2003, Stong is ebullient when
describing her job on the bench. "It's intellectually and personally satisfying every
single day," she says. "Your client is the justice system, and your job is to get it
right. And you spend the time it takes to do that."
Working regularly in a court gives her the opportunity to work with dedicated
professionals and terrific lawyers, she says, adding that her own experience as a
lawyer helps her understand what the lawyers in her court are dealing with. "For
me, having been in private practice is some of the best possible preparation I
ever could have had to be a judge."
With a long list of editorial positions and publications already under her belt,
Stong enjoys the writing involved in her work. "You apply the law to the facts,
and you get to write and think about how a matter will be resolved," she explains.
"It's a very different job than making the best possible argument for your client —
that was my old job."
Having always enjoyed her work in law firms, Stong guesses she'd be in private
practice the next 20 years if not for the judicial appointment. "I truly love my
work with the court — I loved private practice, but I never knew a job could be so
personally and professionally satisfying."
Dedicated as she is to her work, Stong says her first love is still her family. "The
best thing I do is spend time with my daughter Margaret and my husband John,"
she says. "There is no doubt in my mind that being a parent made me a better
lawyer, and makes me a better judge. I hope it's also true that being a lawyer —
and a judge — makes me a better parent."
Glass Cutter Barbara Mendel Mayden hopes Stong is right about the benefits of
combining parenting and practicing law. "I'm juggling my family — three kids and
a husband — with chairing the Section of Business Law," she says, a southern
accent betraying her Chattanooga upbringing. As if an afterthought, she
nonchalantly adds, "I'm dabbling in some legal work, too."
Mayden was with the law firm of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP in
New York City before moving to Nashville in 1995. After taking time off work
altogether, she accepted an adjunct position teaching law at Vanderbilt. From
there she settled in with the law firm of Bass, Berry & Sims, PLC, in their Nashville
office. "I went from full time at a wonderful law firm to part time at a wonderful
law firm," she says. "All while juggling the aforementioned three kids!" Fourteenyear-old Samantha, 13-year-old Genny and 10-year-old Talia keep Mayden and
her husband Ted pretty busy, she says. "Most of our free time is spent driving to
soccer and track meets."
Winning the Glass Cutter Award was particularly significant to Mayden, who
remembers having very few female role models when she began her law career at
Atlanta's King and Spalding in 1976. "It was unusual for a woman to go into any
type of law. Everything was just so new back then," she explains. "There really
were no paradigms for what women did. Or what they didn't do."
She laughs now to think of starting her first job as a lawyer and having no clue as
to what to wear to work. "There was nobody to look at to find out!" she exclaims.
"I mean, I was wayyyy casual, and nobody said anything. They just assumed
that's what women wore."
Despite the lack of role models, Mayden always knew she wanted to go into law. "I
knew I wanted to support myself," she explains. "It was back in a time when, if I
were to go work for a bank, I would have been put in a teller's cage." After
receiving an undergrad degree from Indiana University, Mayden received a J.D.
from the University of Georgia. "I just figured that you really set a floor by having
your J.D. degree," she says, the southern drawl noticeably strong as she quips,
"There was only so low they could put you!"
She focused on business law, realizing it could be less confrontational than other
specialties. "It's people working together to build a business, get a deal done,"
she explains. "You're trying to get to win-win. It's just much less of a contentious
environment then other areas of law."
Glass Cutter Linda Hayman agrees. "A good business lawyer is trying very hard to
plan in advance in order to avoid litigation," says Hayman, a partner in the firm of
Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP, in New York City.
Hayman's path to corporate law wasn't as direct as some of the other Glass
Cutter recipients. After receiving her undergraduate degree from Ohio State
University in 1969, she worked two years as an elementary school teacher. "I'm a
control freak," she admits with a laugh. "Teaching second grade didn't' work."
Hayman attended grad school at University of Colorado in Colorado Springs, where
her daughter Amanda was born. "I got my master's in psychology. I had to decide
whether I wanted to pursue a doctorate in that field or begin a new career." A
divorce helped sway her decision, she says. "I knew I was going to have to
support a family. I ended up going to law school."
A native of Ohio, Hayman enrolled at the Capital University School of Law in
Columbus and received a J.D. in 1979.
"When I graduated from law school, there weren't many women lawyers," she
says. "And not many of them practiced in large corporate law firms."
Bucking the trend, Hayman began her career as a lawyer with Vorys, Sater,
Seymour and Pease LLP in Columbus, Ohio. "Law firms are large, they deal with
complex matters, and, I think, they're quite a meritocracy," she says. "They were
such bottom-line places to work that women did fairly well in them."
Running manicured fingers through her hair, Hayman conjures up an example to
illustrate her point. "I mean, if you have to get a bunch of documents out by a
certain time and they all have to be right — it wasn't so much whether you were
clever at golf," she says, her infectious laughter flowing down the hallways at
Skadden. "Let's say you were a partner. You were under the gun. You had to get
a deal done. You had a choice of three people, and you knew the one who was a
woman was a workhorse. You wanted her!"
Large transaction-oriented firms were very good places for women to gain
acceptance on an equal footing with men, Hayman says. Still, she acknowledges
working in a law firm is no walk in the park. "I mean, they're a very hard place to
work. The hours are long and the pressure is there. But I think business law is a
great career choice."
Amanda McGovern obviously listens to her mother. After years staying up late
waiting for her mom to come home from work, Hayman's daughter Amanda is
now an associate in the firm of Simpson, Thacher, and Bartlett in New York City,
just down the street from Hayman at Skadden.
Amanda's decision to go to law school surprised her mother. "After all those late
nights, and everything that I didn't get home for as a mother — I just assumed
that it would be her last choice," she says. "But maybe our children are more
forgiving of our shortcomings than we are."
Watching her daughter's career path, Hayman is especially keen to issues facing
younger women in business law these days. "It was an oddity being a woman in
the profession when I started practicing," she says. "Now women are going to law
school and joining firms and corporations in equal numbers with men."
Entry into business law is no longer a problem, Hayman says. "The challenge for
us today is to keep women in the profession. Women just aren't staying in the
same numbers as men."
Acknowledging the biological clock's role, Hayman ticks off the timeline out loud:
Women graduate from college at 21 or 22, return to law school at 25 or 26, and
might not graduate from law school until 29 or 30. "I watch so many women come
here to New York City hoping to get married, have children and establish a career
— all before they turn 35," she says. "That's a lot of living to compact into only
five or six years — not much time to accomplish so many important things."
So while she touts the meritocracy aspec of private practice, Hayman
acknowledges that the travel, long hours and inevitable stress involved can be the
undoing for some women business lawyers. "Well, yeah, you can have them send
you to London and Hong Kong and work late and go to printers and then, you
know . . ." Hayman's voice trails off a bit, her contagious laugh completely absent
now. Finally she adds, "When you're 36, the odds of having children drop
precipitously."
Men are not to blame for the low number of females advancing in corporate law,
Hayman insists. "Men have been tremendously valuable to me in my career, very
supportive," she says. "For most women my age, their only mentors were men."
Hayman worried she might be leaving that kind of career support behind when she
moved from her Columbus firm in 1981 to Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton in
New York City. "Of course that wasn't true — there was another group of equally
supportive mentors at the New York firm, and again at my present firm," says
Hayman, at Skadden since 1988. "I just don't think it's men sitting up there who
don't let you in."
Like it or not, Hayman never had to make the family decisions facing many young
female business lawyers today. "I was divorced, I desperately needed the money,
and I already had Amanda. It was an easier choice for me to say, 'Of course I am
going to work. I need the money.' It was a burden, and a gift."
Asked about the option to begin a career once children are grown, Hayman says,
"There are some wonderful examples of people who did that. But it's tough to
start in at 45. Or 40 or whatever."
The most frustrating thing about all this, says Hayman, is that she doesn't have
an answer. "You can say, well, let's just have women do a little less, and it just
ends up on that mommy track thing," she says. "You know, there is some value in
doing these deals in Hong Kong and whatever. A guy who's not on the mommy
track, he's racing along doing three deals while the woman does one. There's a
point at which, face it, he's more valuable."
That glass ceiling still exists, Hayman concedes. "Come time to make partners in
the law firm, or pick the general counsel in a private company, or whatever the
big steps are, there are just so few women who are left in tenure."
That, says Hayman, must be the goal for women in corporate law today. "Not just
to be a lawyer. Not just to go to law school. Or to get an entry-level position as a
lawyer.
"But to break that ceiling. To move up through the ranks."
Hayman delights in the number of talented, articulate and smart women
graduating from law school these days. "They are such a resource; they're terrific
women. Just fabulous," she says. "I wish I had a magic wand to make it so they
could have it all."
"I think it's a big issue," agrees Elizabeth Stong. "You know, not to feel like it's an
'either-or.' It's an issue for the profession. For all of its members, not just
women."
Judge Stong says she learned a tremendous amount from parenting a preschooler while simultaneously switching from private practice to the bench.
"Something I've said to any number of lawyers: You can do more than one terrific
thing in a career."
In lieu of that elusive magic wand Hayman wishes for, fellow Glass Cutter Barbara
Mayden uses an age-old adage for guidance. "To everything there is a season,"
she says. "A time to bust it, and a time to recognize that other demands may
have priority." The trick, says Mayden: "Make sure you recognize which times are
which."
The roster of Glas Cutters
Presented annually during the Spring Meeting Business Law Section
Luncheon, the Jean Allard Glass Cutter Award recognizes women who have
"broken through the glass ceiling" and have worked to advance opportunities
for other women in the profession and the Section.
Past honorees:
2004 Linda C. Quinn
2003 Elizabeth S. Stong
2002 Linda C. Hayman
2001 Mary Beth Clary
2000 Renie H. Grohl
1999 Mary Ann Hynes
1998 Barbara M. Mayden
1997 Lizabeth A. Moody
1996 Corinne Cooper
1995 Amy Boss
1994 Fe Morales Marks
1993 Jean Allard
Finke is a Chicago freelance writer and a commentator for the "Morning
Edition" on National Public Radio. Her book, "Long Time No See," was
published by the University of Illinois Press. Her e-mail is
[email protected].
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