Panel Presentation by Columbia Law Women's Association, March 29, 2004


WOMEN TAKING THE LEAD IN LAW AND
LAW FIRMS

PANEL PRESENTATION BY COLUMBIA LAW
WOMEN'S ASSOCIATION, MARCH29, 2004*

INTRODUCTION BY TONG LI:

Thank you for coming and thank you to all the members of
Columbia Law Women's Association and thank you to our sponsor,
Kasowitz Benson Torres & Friedman. Today, we are very proud to have
such preeminent leaders in the legal profession to come to us. Their
achievements have shown and have proven that women are indeed taking
the lead in law and law firms. But how did they get to where they are
today? That requires some insight, very interesting insight. The first half of
our session will be the presentations by the six speakers. The rest of the
time will be open to the students. For more information on their
backgrounds, please read their brochures and let me just give you brief
introductions of our guests.

In alphabetical order, we have Dana Freyer. She is head of the
Arbitration and Alternative Dispute Resolution and Corporate Compliance
Program practice at Skadden. She is recognized as a leader in dispute
resolution and international arbitration. She has been named one of the top
fifty women litigators in America by the National Law Journal.

Marcia Goldstein. She is a senior partner at Weil Gotshal and co-
chair of the Business Finance and Restructuring Department. She has been
named in numerous publications of best lawyers in the restructuring and
bankruptcy area.

Cathy Kaplan. She is co-head of Sidley Austin Brown & Wood's
New York Securitization practice group and a member of the firm's
Executive Committee. Ms. Kaplan was named one of the Dealmakers of the
Year, 1999, by the American Lawyer.

Yukako Kawata. She is co-head of investment management and the
PIE funds group at Davis Polk. Ms. Kawata was the chair of Specialized

* Special thanks to Columbia Law Women's Association's Career Chair Tong Li,
who single-handedly recruited the speakers, organized and publicized this panel, and
suggested that the Journal of Gender and Law record and publish the speakers' remarks.
Thanks also to the firm of Kasowitz, Benson, Torres & Friedman for sponsoring the event.



Women Taking the Lead

Investment Funds, the Committee of the International Bar Association from
2001-2003.

Judge Leslie Crocker Snyder. She is a partner at Kasowitz Benson
Torres & Friedman. She was a former justice of the New York State
Supreme Court, Criminal Term. She was a founder and chief of the Sex
Crimes Prosecution Bureau, co-author of New York's rape shield
legislation. Judge Snyder was the first woman to try felony and homicide
cases in New York County.

Judith Thoyer. She is co-head of the Mergers & Acquisitions group
at Paul Weiss and a member of the firm's Management Committee. She
was the recipient of the 2003 Medal for Excellence Award from Columbia
Law School.

Please join me in welcoming all these distinguished leaders in law
and law firms.

DANA FREYER:

I think I'm supposed to go first. I'm Dana Freyer. I wanted to start
out and give you two of the basic, I think, cardinal principles that have
impacted my career and where I am today, none of which would have been
predictable when I entered Columbia Law School in 1968. The first guiding
principle that has stood me in good stead is to follow your passions and
your interests, all along the way. The second guiding principle is to
remember that the most interesting paths have curves and hills and ups and
downs. It's the by-ways that are the most interesting, it's not the highways,
the character-less highways we travel, at least in my experience, that we
want to necessarily stay on, but it's all the detours and the little side roads
that you take along the way and the challenge ... It is a great challenge.

I'm just going to very briefly tell you how I got to where I am and
what I did along the way and I think it will illustrate why these principles
really have formed my career and direction and much of my life. When I
entered Columbia Law School in 1968, which, of course, was the height of
the Vietnam War, I wanted to be an international lawyer. I came here from
the School of International Affairs. Louis Henkin said to me, "Go get a law
degree. You can do more with that than a Master's in International Affairs."
So I said okay. I took the LSAT a week later and I found out in August that
I was admitted. Columbia was the only school I applied to, probably very
different from a lot of the thought processes that went into your decision to
go to law school.

I emerged from Columbia Law School at the end of the three years
wanting to be a legal services lawyer. So, my first career was as a legal
services lawyer for my first year. I did that for a year and then my husband
and I decided to take off, put our furniture in storage, drive from Europe to
Afghanistan, and see the world for a year, which we did. I mention

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Afghanistan because you'll see how life comes full circle. It's sort of what
my current passion is.

Came back, moved to Chicago, followed my husband. I had a child
at this point, a baby, [and] I wanted to work four days a week for a legal
services or pro bono organization. Couldn't get a job for four days a week,
so I went to went to work for a law firm, because that was the only firm, a
corporate law firm, that would hire me four days a week. I did that for a few
years, moved to New York. I interviewed with law firms and with legal
services organizations. I wound up at Skadden Arps in 1977 because it was
the only place that would hire me four days a week, and by this time I had
two children. That's where I stayed, to this day.

I started out at Skadden in litigation and worked four days a week
for about six years, and then was encouraged to move to full-time. Did
general litigation for those years, but also became very interested in
alternative dispute resolution, prompted by a case that I was involved in. It
was an English muffin trade secret case. Yeah, there are supposedly trade
secrets in the manufacture of English muffins, but that's a whole other
story. Our adversary's counsel encouraged us to try to resolve this dispute
through a mini-trial, which was almost unheard of in those days. We
utilized that ADR proceeding and I became very interested in the whole
ADR movement. Within a year or two, I had convinced my firm that we
should really institutionalize our alternative dispute resolution practice and
that I should head up that effort. I wasn't a partner at the time, I was a
special counsel. They supported me and we did that. From that practice, I
really evolved into focusing on international arbitration. As I saw and the
firm saw, that with globalization and the increase in international
transactions, more and more disputes were going to be resolved through
international arbitration, which in fact has become the case.

My practice today principally is international arbitration. The other
piece of my practice is corporate compliance and again, this was sort of an
entrepreneurial effort on both the firm's part and mine. In the early 90s and
91, when the U.S. Sentencing Commission came down with very tough new
sentencing guidelines for corporations (this was of course pre-Sarbanes-
Oxley and pre- all these changes in governance and requirements for ethics
programs that have just been implemented this past year) there were
incentives for companies nonetheless to have effective compliance
programs, codes of conduct, and codes of ethics. So I was tapped at the firm
to again organize a corporate compliance program practice whereby we
could deliver these services to clients of the firm. I have to tell you when I
was asked to do this, I didn't know anything about this area. I said okay,
happy to do it, we did, and it's become a very successful component of our
practice.

I guess the message from both the development of the ADR
arbitration practice and the corporate compliance program practice is that
these were not areas that I envisioned or anticipated or went to law school

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for or even went to Skadden Arps for, but it's a question of seizing
opportunity and then being willing to say, "I'm smart, I've got a good
education, I can deal with this, and I see an opportunity for growth."

It's interesting that I started out in legal services although I
originally wanted to do international work. I'm now doing international
work, traveling all over the world, handling arbitrations in many foreign
countries under legal systems that are civil law legal systems in which I was
not trained, and many of these cases have no U.S. connection or component.
So, I've come full circle in that regard and I'm very gratified to be doing
that. The other way I've come full circle is more of the, I think we all have
a personal side, certain passions and interests that we're interested in
pursuing, even with the parameters of our career. I've had a longstanding
interest in Afghanistan, since I started out, before I went to law school, I
was the assistant to the Afghan ambassador to the United Nations. After
9/11, my husband and I and a group of Afghan-American colleagues
formed a not-for-profit, the Global Partnership for Afghanistan. We're
helping rural Afghan farmers rehabilitate their orchards and vineyards into
farmland. It's become very much a full-time passion of mine and again, has
brought back that longstanding interest full circle.

My advice, and you'll hear many different approaches to how we
all got to where we are and there are, of course, many different models and
all of them work, but I think the important thing is not to feel as you're
sitting here right now that you're necessarily going to be taking a direct
line. Leave yourself open to the sideways movements that I think will really
enlighten your career and enable you to fulfill the interests that you really
hold dear.

MARCIA GOLDSTEIN:

I'm going to follow that with a somewhat different path to my
career success. I was in college when Dana was starting law school and I
say that because you're going to see a four-year difference in our
graduation, and I think it did make a difference somewhat in our career path
following law school. When I was in college, I was a political science major
at Cornell University. I really did not have any vision when I started college
about becoming a lawyer. In fact, I really didn't know what I wanted to do.
I think circumstances and times have changed, and no one encouraged me
to become a lawyer or encouraged me to do anything in particular. So I was
somewhat floundering on my own and did not have a vision to do anything,
such as international affairs.

In my junior year, I was confronted with having to think about
things, and this is where I would agree about following your instincts, I
knew I didn't want to just go and fimd a job after college. I didn't think that
would be enough for me. I needed to have a direction. My then boyfriend,
who is now my husband, knew from the minute he got into college that he

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was going to apply to law school. I knew he was going to law school., and
also around that time my college had announced that they were going to
revitalize a program they hadn't had in years, where certain students might
be admitted to the law school after their junior year. I was also thinking
about, "Well, how could I save some money?" I helped my parents by
working while I was in college on the university campus, so money was
important in terms of funding my education. I said, "Gee, saving a year
might be a nice thing to do." I went to see my advisor and I said, "Do you
think that I could do that, go into law school after my junior year?" And he
said, "I've signed you up for the LSAT, which will be this Saturday." So,
there I saw a parallel to Dana. Before I knew it, I was accepted to Cornell
Law School. I did not go through the angst that you all went through either,
about getting into Columbia Law School.

Once in law school, I was once again an unguided missile, not
knowing anything about what would lie ahead of me. To demonstrate how
you must add to passion and instinct, luck and happenstance, because as
you all do or will do, I thought about and went through the interviewing
process for law firms at the time. I would say it was fairly happenstance-
you would hear from friends. You have much more information at your
fingertips than we did, in terms of the Class of '75 from the law school. But
it was all mostly word of mouth and you looked at reports about the
different law firms. My husband had signed up to interview at Weil Gotshal
and he could not make the interview because he was going to go visit a
different law firm on that day back in New York City. And there was a
punishment to be had at the law school if you didn't show for an interview,
which was you'd be banned from the process for some period of time. I
said, "Don't worry about it," because he is Mark Goldstein and I'm Marcia
Goldstein (I had taken his name when we got married after my first year)
and I said, "They won't know the difference." So I thought. Anyway, I went
to the woman at the law school who ran the recruiting and I asked her to
substitute our resumes, which she failed to do. So when I went to my
interview on campus for Weil, Gotshal & Manges, the interviewer was
expecting Mark Goldstein, and in fact knew some of his references. I don't
know if he was disappointed or maybe not that I showed up, but I had my
resume with me and I saved the half hour.

Then, instinct led me further. I accepted the invite back to the law
firm. And that day was the typical Ithaca day. It was snowing and it was
horrible. My plane was four hours late. So I said, "Well, I could scratch this
law firm." But, as it turned out, instincts led me to accept their offer. I think,
when you think about law firms, compile all the information, when you get
down to your firm, there's an instinct you'll feel about the law firm and that
has to weigh into your selection.

The other instinct, which was totally uneducated, and the decision
that I made, which was, as I say, horribly uneducated, was what practice
area to go into. I was very torn. When you come out of law school, I think

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it's very difficult to know what you would like to do when you're practicing
law. Do you want to become a litigator? Do you want to be a transactional
lawyer? For god's sake, do you want to be a specialist, as I am, in
bankruptcy and reorganization? I was very, very torn and I asked to see
different people in the firm. Finally, I spoke to a friend of mine who was in
the firm and he had been asked to work in what they called their creditor's
rights practice, which was a smaller practice in the firm, one of the few, it
wasn't that big a firm then, a firm of even its size then that had that size
practice. He said, "You know, this is really very interesting because I do
litigation, but there's also a business side to it. Maybe you'll like it. I like
the people. Why don't you try that?" I didn't know that it was a good
recruiting ploy because they needed someone in the department. But I did
and that was pure luck for me, because this turned out to be an area of law
that absolutely boomed thereafter.

The Bankruptcy Code that I practice under was enacted in 1978 and
I started practicing law in 1975. I had an early opportunity to become an
expert in a substantive area that would have a boom in law firms starting in
1978. I was well positioned to become a leader in my practice area. I can't
say that I made any intelligent, reasoned decisions that got me to that
position where I could become a leader in the field. I don't know what you
can take away from that and maybe it's the sideways. Let things happen to
you. I think that's a theme that Dana was presenting as well. You really
have to let things happen to you. I went right from law school to the
practice I practice in now, to the law firm that I practice in now. By the time
I became a partner in 1983, I had become a well-established member of that
practice area. I think that that certainly has helped me become the co-leader
of my practice today, co-chair of our practice today, and it is a preeminent
practice in terms of global restructuring. I was fortunate to be retained to
represent WorldCom in its Chapter 11 restructuring, the largest Chapter 11
restructuring in history and the largest corporate fraud in history. My
colleagues and I, several of whom are here, and I know this is a discussion
of leadership in firms, but it is the Columbia Law Women's Association,
this is a case where the two lead partners on restructuring, myself and one
of my colleagues, are women, [in addition to] a change in the general
counsel during the case-a very impressive woman. Our team was a mix of
men and women with, I think, for a change, women being in the majority,
and we've had a great time working on it.

I think the only point I make here is that, and we'll go back to
questions later, take your opportunities. There are opportunities free of
gender bias if you look for them. I think that you will have an excellent
opportunity to become a leader as well.

CATHY KAPLAN:

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It's kind of fun going after a few people because the stories are as
interesting probably to me as to you, because we've spent a lot of time
internally at the firm-and I'm partner at Sidley Austin Brown & Wood-
just chatting about what it takes to be successful, what it takes, perhaps, for
a woman to be successful that may be different than it would for a male.
One of the things that is different, at least particularly for the generation
ahead of where you are, is that when most of us started at firms, the ratios
of men to women were just completely different. In fact, I made partner in
'84 and I was the first woman to make partner at the firm. What you are
facing when you came in has changed and certainly later, if anybody wants
some anecdotes, I have some great ones from those early years of just what
it was like to be a woman at the firm.

What is fascinating to me is, I think, some of the general principles
that I'm going to at least start with, to my mind, apply equally to men and
women in career and really are the same things that you've heard from the
two speakers so far. First, be very flexible. Because I think, particularly if
you're practicing in a firm, which is a business and based on market and
what's going on in the world, you really don't know what you're going to
be, the parameters of your practice from year to year, things change with
markets, things change with world events. I will go through, sort of as
everybody has, my own experience which will illustrate how you do need to
be flexible.

I do also think you need to have, it helps to have, some general
goals. By that, I only mean, particularly these days, law firms offer a
tremendous number of options for sort of, how to progress your career. It
used to be when people started out, that it was the old up and out. You
started in a law firm straight out of law school. You spent seven years. You
either made partner or you didn't make partner. If you didn't make partner,
you found another job. You might leave before, you might not. Law firms
have changed in the last twenty years tremendously. There are lots of
options and lots of ways to be successful. One of the things that we talk
about continuously within our firm, particularly for people who spend time,
take time off, raising families, is that success may not be a linear path,
which we've also heard. You don't necessarily spend seven years, be
partner, then become a senior partner, then get on the management or
executive committee, and just work straight-line. It depends on how you
want to progress things. There are times where people will be part-time in
their career. You can take various options. You can take time off. You can
teach. Firms are tremendously more flexible than they've been. But it helps
to, at certain points, just decide what you want to do, because the kinds of
efforts you put into the different things may vary. You may, in the
beginning of your career, say, "I want to make partner in the shortest time,
and I'm going to work 3,000 hours a year, and be the most aggressive at
taking things on, because this is what I want to do at this time." And you
may say, "No, I want to do things part-time for a while, I want to see where

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my career leads me, then I may . . .." You adapt what you're doing, what
you may end up with, which may be a very satisfying career in one niche or
another niche, may vary.

Another thing that I think, to me, is the overriding principle is
conduct your practice in a manner you're proud of. By that, I mean, and I
think this is true of most everybody I know who is truly successful, the way
you conduct your practice really, I hope, is no different than the way you
conduct your life. You respect your colleagues, you respect your clients,
you respect the people you work with. You really try to do it in a way that
you can look back and say, "Hey, I have practiced in a manner I'm proud
of. I've done things that satisfy me, are good; it's the best work I can
possibly do." That's really the kind of thing that gives you tremendous
satisfaction.

And finally, and I say this particularly to the women because there
still is a feeling that women don't speak up. We've had a lot of discussions
among the women partners in my firm. Do women sort of speak up for
themselves in the same way that men do? I think probably the answer is a
little bit less-still. But I do think it's really important to speak up for what
you want. Firms are very large. Our firm has 1,500 lawyers around the
world. You can, however, direct your career. You can take on the kinds of
work you want to take on. Really, at times, you can just say, "Hey, I don't
think I'm being given the assignments. I don't think I'm being treated the
way I'd like [to be]." But you have to speak up for yourself. In large
organizations, if you don't, it's not clear that anybody else will. It's
wonderful to have a mentor, but having goals and giving voice to them is
very important.

In terms of how one gets to where one got, my path was probably
more directed, but less willing than the two other speakers. I am the child of
two lawyers. My dad was a classic case of the immigrant who went to law
school at night. It fascinates me now how much more open the firms are
because he had gone to Fordham Law School at night, was Law Review,
had wonderful credentials, and none of the firms would hire him because
they said anybody who went to law school at night was just not their style
of person. Law Review or not, they weren't interested. He went through
various things and ended up working at a small corporate firm. Really, just
was rabid, loved the law, loved the practice. I thought what he did was so
colossally boring I couldn't believe it. He would bring home these stacks of
papers and just sit there, all night, marking them up. And I thought, "Oh my
God, I am never going to do this in a million years." My mother is a 1946
graduate of Columbia Law School. She went a different path. She graduated
from law school and tried to get a job, and of course, found just the
combination of everything totally against her. She would interview for jobs,
and she was married at the time. She still tells the story of one major firm
where they said, "Look. We really are not going to hire you because
spending money training a married woman is a waste of our time because

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she is going to have kids and that's the last we'll see of her." So she, too,
took a smaller job and eventually she practiced for a while and eventually
she drifted into education and is still, at eighty-two, working at City
University actually. Part of my view of the law, it's funny, it was an
interesting mix of shaping because he loved it and she really is
tremendously resentful at the career opportunities she didn't have. But both
of them felt very strongly that I should go to law school. And I felt very
strongly that this was about the last thing I wanted to do.

I went to college, I majored in English, did a huge amount of
writing, did a curatorial internship at the Metropolitan Museum and had got
to graduation, got into Columbia [School of] Journalism, had a job offer at
the New Yorker, and really, the last thing I wanted to do was law. My father
said, "If you don't go now and you change your mind, I'm not going to pay
for you." So I applied to a few schools, and I hoped I wouldn't get in, on the
theory that if I didn't get in, I could go to Columbia Journalism, go work at
the New Yorker, and maybe he'd forget about it. And maybe if I didn't like
it later, he'd relent and pay for me. But I got in. So I went and really
thought that I was going to go to law school and use it to be a great political
journalist and again, would not have to deal with practicing at all. One of
the questions Tong asked was, "Did law school change me?" Not hugely. I
found a lot of it completely useless. But I did do a few things I liked
tremendously. I was shocked at how much I enjoyed things like corporate
tax, which I would've thought would be about the last thing I would ever
have any interest in. But I found the sort of problem-solving kind of
interesting. And I spent two, really two and a half, years here working with
Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The first summer, because again, it was harder to get
jobs in firms, I worked for the ACLU Women's Rights Project. I worked on
a lot of constitutional litigation. I worked with Ruth for the next two years
and really just loved it, and thought, "Maybe, maybe, there was a possibility
that I could make a career of this."

So I'm graduating, but again, being practical, I decided I would try
a law firm first. Do litigation, spend two years at the firm, and then go on,
U.S. Attorney's office, government, Justice Department; I had sort of a
whole plan, none of which I, of course, have done. I started working at a
firm and again, it shows you can't plan things, really disliked the firm I had
chosen. Spent about a year and a half there and said, "Okay." In those days,
it was much less easy to move around firms. I said, "I am going to try one
more move and if I still dislike it, I'm out of here. Back to journalism. I'm
just not going to do this stuff." So I went, at that time, to the old Brown &
Wood, which merged a couple of years ago with Sidley Austin. I did enjoy
doing the transactional practice. I liked structuring deals; I liked to be
interactive. I liked it for many good reasons and many just visceral reasons.
I liked the business side of it. I liked structuring things; I liked working with
people. I liked seeing things get done, financing a hospital, financing
something. I started actually in the area doing municipals because I wanted

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to do healthcare and I spent six years doing a lot of financing for healthcare
institutions, enormously happy and enormously pleased doing it. Then the
laws changed and that practice area dried up. At that point, this is where I
do think you have to sort of take things into your own hands. I looked
around and said, "What else would be a useful practice?" I saw that
securitization and financing of all sorts of projects was a very booming
area. I was already a partner. I made partner quite early. I just literally
started doing the work. I asked people for work. I said, "I'll do anything. I'll
do the junk work even though I'm a partner. I couldn't care less. I want to
build a practice." It was a booming area, same thing [Marcia] had, it was
brand new, where you could really rise to the top as a fairly young partner.
Found I enjoyed it enormously, and later on when we have more time, I
could talk about some of the types of transactions I've done, but found it
tremendously enjoyable and satisfying and really was able to build lots of
clients and a lot of work in the area partially because it was so new and
booming. With that, I'll turn it over.

YUKAKO KAWATA:
Listening to Dana, Marcia and Cathy is fascinating because so

many of the things that they have touched upon really do resonate with me
personally in terms of just sitting and thinking about how I ended up sitting
up here with all these very distinguished people. In any event, I do think to
myself that-in the car coming up, I was thinking to myself-"Well, what
am I going to say?" in terms of the question of, "How do you get where you
get?" I do think that luck plays an enormous amount, plays a big role in it. I
can say that, like Marcia, I was probably an unguided missile when I was in
law school. There was just no question about it. In fact, I'll just tell one
short story about that. Once I had been at Davis Polk for about two or three
years, the senior associate I was working with said, "Oh, you must know so
and so," because she was the wife of a partner and also the woman (I went
to NYU) who was the administrator of the NYU Law Review and I was on
the Law Review. Apparently, she ran into Laura during one of those parties
or something and she said to Laura, "You must have known Yukako. She
was on the Law Review. It wasn't that long ago." And Laura sat there and
thought and thought and thought, and then she said, "Oh my God. That's
the leather-jacketed radical." And then [the senior associate] came back to
me and said, "You were a leather-jacketed radical?" I said, "Well, I
wouldn't quite go that far," but in any event, I was pretty much that
unguided missile.

I think when I went to Davis Polk-in fact, now I head up the
private investment funds practice at the firm, it's a group within the
corporate department, and I co-head the investment management private
funds group-let me tell you, that group did not exist when I started at the
firm in 1982. In fact, this thing didn't exist until it began to form-in its
current incarnation-it really came into being in the 90s. When I was

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growing up in the corporate department, I ended up in the corporate
department almost again, by accident. I happened to ask to work on a
corporate transaction and ended up working on a deal with a very senior
banking partner, who in fact, I think, decided that it was enjoyable to have
somebody who was as completely clueless as I was to be working for him.
I'm the sort of person who he would say ... He gave me, it was a credit
agreement, it was one of these banking transactions, and I must have looked
completely terrified in his office. I had been at the firm for all of three
months. Finally he decided-I must've looked so down-he finally said,
"Cheer up. It's really not that bad. This could have been a much more
complicated deal. This could have been a triple option agreement." I looked
at him. I said, "Triple option. That suggests that you have a choice among
three options, but what could that mean?" And he said, "Oh, that means that
the borrower can select from three different kinds of interest rates." I said,
"Oh my God. I didn't know there were three different kinds of interest
rates. I thought there was only one kind of interest rate." He looked at me
then, and I said to myself, "Hmm, can I just sink down, maybe? Will this
chair just sink through the floor and give me a graceful exit out of this
room?"

In any event, what started off as something like that ... I think
what I will say is that, here I am a corporate lawyer, and you say to
yourself, "How does this all happen?" One of the things to keep in mind is
that you will learn on the job. In fact, if I have one suggestion to give to you
when you all start out, whatever it is that you decide to do, is be engaged
with what you do. You may start off not having an inkling of anything. If
somebody said to me, "What is the Dow?" when I first started at Davis
Polk, I would've said, "Well, it has something to do with the stock
exchange." But that was about all I knew. The Wall Street Journal, the
Business section of the New York Times was the section I always threw out
without reading. When I went to Davis Polk and I saw my officemate who
looked very clued in-he was a very clued in person-and I said to myself,
"He knows what he's doing. So let me just emulate everything he does."
Among other things, what he would do, he'd always have a Wall Street
Journal. I said to myself, "That is a newspaper I have never read." Nor did I
have any desire to read it. I'd look at it, front page, and I'd go, "Yuck,
okay." But then I said to myself, "Well maybe I should have a
subscription." I ordered a subscription to the Wall Street Journal and in
fact, I still get it every day. Now I do read it and I do understand what's
going on. It's experiences like that.

There is nothing as bizarre as going into a conference room filled
with people, sitting down. Everybody's talking, and you say to yourself,
"This is very strange. They are all speaking in English but I do not
understand a word of what they are saying." That's the other part. In any
kind of practice, whether you're in litigation, you're in M&A, you're in
capital markets. If you weren't in capital markets, you might not know what

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a green shoe is. If you're not in M&A, how would you know what a bear
hug letter is? I went in and the partner said, "Here. We're going to do a bear
hug letter." I said, "A bear hug letter. Okay." He said, "Well this is more
like a teddy bear hug letter." I said, "Okay, I have the vision of a stuffed
animal." But what this letter was going to say was something completely
beyond me.

All of which is to say okay, fine, so you go into a situation, you're
completely clueless, you learn on the job. Why do you become good at
what you do? I think, as something that Dana said that really struck a chord,
you have to go where your passions and your interests lead you. I think
what you find is that when you finally do actually encounter the area or the
thing that captures your imagination, you then say to yourself, "Gee, I like
this. This works for me. Let me figure out more about it." You can really
get into it. I think in some ways, the place where luck plays into this is in
your having that opportunity to find that area that does capture your
imagination. But I think that if you're keeping your eyes open, trying
different things, being flexible-and finding ultimately that "yeah, here's
something that I like to do. Let's start learning more about it. Let's start
getting into it," which is essentially what I did.

Like I said, when I started at the firm, there was no such thing as a
private funds practice. LBO funds really took off in the 80s. When I did my
very first fund in 1987, that was a fund that we did for Morgan Stanley
when Morgan Stanley raised a $21 billion LBO fund. That was the first big
fund that was set up by one of the investment banks. There was the KKR,
there was the Forstmann Little. Then, all of a sudden, Morgan Stanley
makes a big splash by coming in with $21/ billion. People, their eyes
opened up and they said, "Wow, look at that." But that was when the stuff
started to boom. If I had been thinking, "Oh, this is what I want to do," and
been very narrow about it, I would never have found that opportunity. I just
ended up doing it because the deal came around. I liked working on
complicated structures. It seemed like an interesting thing to do. It went
from there. It went from private equity-which now people talk about
private equity all the time. Back then, if you said in the early 90s or the late
80s "private equity," people would look at you like, "What exactly is that?"
In the past couple of years, we have actually been focusing on the hedge
fund side of things. You'll find yourself constantly reinventing yourself and
it's, in a way, just looking for those opportunities, I think, and being
flexible and going with the flow.

JUDGE LESLIE CROCKER SNYDER:
Just to bring the level of conversation way down. In 1970, I

prosecuted my first double rape and sodomy case as a young Assistant
District Attorney in the Manhattan District Attorney's office. What I found
out then was shocking and allowed me to pursue my passion, which had
been to be a criminal lawyer since I was age five. What I found was that

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Columbia Journal of Gender and Law

women were treated as inferiors, that they needed quadruple the amount of
evidence in this area from any other person, that they needed far more
evidence, corroborating evidence, in sex crimes cases, than they did in
robbery, in assault, any other kind of case. So, in the burgeoning days of
women's groups, we got together and we changed the law. It took us
several years, it was an uphill fight, but it was exciting, it was challenging.
If you had known this case, in which two women were brutally sodomized
and raped, and all those charges were thrown out, and if they hadn't been
robbed as an afterthought, the person who committed these vicious crimes
wouldn't have been convicted of anything because the only reason that the
sex crime charges were thrown out was because a woman's word was not
enough.

I'm not here to proselytize for women, but I am here to talk about
following your passion. Mine was criminal law; it still is. It was truly
exciting to participate in something that you cared about. I didn't know
either that I would ever get involved in this particular stuff, this specialty of
criminal law. But I did go on with one other woman to write the rape shield
law in New York. While this is like ancient history, for those of you who
have been following Kobe Bryant, when you see the issues involved in
things like the rape shield law, which we thought we had basically dealt
with thirty some odd years ago, are still very much an issue today, an issue
that we still obviously need to be very much concerned about in terms of
victims. Then I feel that I pursued my passion to a real purpose although we
still have a lot of work to do. Pursuing your passions-yes.

Why am I here on this panel since we're talking about firms?
Before I pursued my passions, everyone said, "Go with a firm." So I went
with a well-known law firm in New York and I found it boring. Went down
to the United States Attorney's office in New York, in about 1968, and
entered an application for the Criminal Division. They laughed. "We don't
take women in the Criminal Division." Went on down the street to Frank
Hogan's office, the legendary D.A. and about three women were there. This
is all ancient history but I think this will amuse you, I still recall that after I
finally established myself and founded the first sex crimes bureau in the
country, I wanted to go to the homicide bureau, which was the ultimate
male bastion in the office. Everyone wanted to go there. It's the most
serious cases, etc., etc. Mr. Hogan, after several failed interviews in which
he told me simply, "No," finally said, "Well, if you bring me a letter of
permission from your husband, I'll consider it." I never knew if he was
serious and I think my husband was dying to write the letter just to tweak
him a little bit, but he never did.

In any event, I had tried practice and I spent most of my career in
public service and I'm very proud of doing that. The thing that I want to say
is that it is possible to go back and forth from the public to the private area.
I'm now with a great firm. As of October, I left the bench after twenty
years, having been a prosecutor for many years before that and a defense

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Women Taking the Lead

attorney for a couple years. It's a firm that encourages people to come from
different backgrounds. They have a number of A.U.S.A.'s and A.D.A.'s.
Although they don't have a criminal practice per se, a number of their cases
do border on white collar crime and they involve potential white collar
crime. It's a complex litigation, civil litigation firm with an incredible
number of bright people and they do welcome people going back and forth
from the public area. I think that's true of a lot of good firms. I know I hope
to go back to the public area eventually. I think, particularly for women, this
is something to think about if you have any interest in it. I can't talk
because I haven't been there as long as a partner at a law firm. I don't know
as much about it as the obviously highly gifted and motivated women who
have spent most of their career at major firms.

What I can say is that I would like to see young people, young
lawyers, think more about going back and forth from public to private,
private to public. Many of you have to go to large firms because you need
to pay off your loans. One sad part I found myself, from mentoring a
number of young women, is that many people hate going to the work they
do at large firms. I certainly hope that won't be true of all of you, but it will
be true of some of you. You should be enjoying your career. One way to do
that, and I think to ultimately end up in a firm, if that's what you want to do
or need to do financially, doing an area that interests you, is to go into the
public area and do something which you care about. In my instance, it was
criminal law and women's rights and victim's rights. Really victim's rights
much more than just women's rights. A lot of victims of sex crimes were
children, a number of gay people, and then domestic violence. These were
the things that I cared about deeply. But it could be anything in the public
area. It could be international, it could be civil rights, it could be anything.
If you have a passion for it, I hope at some point, you will find a way to
leave what you may find interesting or not in a large firm, go do it and then,
you'll find, I think, that many firms are highly receptive to your returning,
and often returning at a probably higher level. The ultimate thing is do
something that means something to you, do something that you're going to
enjoy. Too many lawyers that I've gotten to know, young lawyers, really
hate what they're doing. It's sad to spend as many hours as you're going to
be forced to, doing something you don't like.

So, mine is a totally different route. It will remain a fluid route, and
that is a different route than anyone else here has discussed. I hope it will be
helpful to you in your thinking. I don't think I have too much more time,
but one other point. I think it's easier in the public area for the period of
time in which you may be trying to do it all, which means having your
family and your children for those of you who want to do that. I think
public service is more amenable to it. Law firms are far more flexible these
days but there is a certain amount of flexibility in the public area for that
part of your life that may not exist in the private area as meaningfully.

Pursue that passion. Thank you.

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Columbia Journal of Gender and Law

JUDITH THOYER:
Having been at Paul Weiss my whole career, I hate to follow

somebody who thinks that life in a law firm is horrible. It really isn't.
(Snyder: I only said for some people.) I have to say I've always really
loved it and I'm probably an example of one of the straight-line people that
went right to practice, went right from college to law school. Did take a
little time to go to Africa for about a year and a half, then finished law
school, and then came to Paul Weiss. I was amused by one of the things that
I think Cathy had said, that her father wanted to pay for law school. I guess
I was the opposite. My father had never heard of a woman going to law
school. I'm really the senior on this panel. He just had never heard of it and
he certainly wasn't going to pay for it. I've always been very grateful to
Columbia. Columbia gave me a full scholarship and, hopefully, over the
years I've paid it back many times over. Certainly, in those days, I could
not have afforded law school without a Columbia scholarship.

In preparation for this, I've kept all my speeches over the years.
I've done a lot of speaking, being the first woman partner at Paul Weiss and
having graduated as early as I did. I went to my women's file and I found
something I had written. I became a partner in 1975 and I was asked to
address the associates on what it was like to be a woman in a large law firm.
In 1975, I guess a speech of that sort was considered okay. It was even
politically correct, I guess. But what I wrote then, and I think it's
interesting, it will give you some insight into my career, which is, as I said,
a pretty straight-line one and very focused and dedicated to the corporate
area.

I wrote then to the group, "I have to define what I mean by equality
and it's obviously not just equal pay for equal work. It's really the
opportunity for equal work. Now, by that I mean the same chance to get
experience, perform valuable work-interesting work, to meet clients; as
anybody else who would have the comparable experience and intellectual
ability. It also has another side," and this is an insight into how I practice,
"it's the right, and I use this seriously, to be given unpleasant tasks, to have
to work long hours. One of the things that occurred to me as I thought back
was the presence of attitude on the part of certain men of protection towards
women. With so-called friends of that type, you don't need enemies. It's the
type of male who had a certain pre-conceived notion of what a female
would want to do and then acted on that by trying to shield her from
unpleasant tasks or long hours. Such a person is devastating for a woman
attorney." Later on, I again said, "I didn't feel I had to work harder than
anyone else. I think it's apparent that most lawyers here," that was at Paul
Weiss in 1975, "are hard workers. But I do believe I had to work harder for
the right work, that is, the good deals, the ones that were interesting and
complicated, in other words, the ones that could show what I could do."

[Vol. 13:2



Women Taking the Lead

I think, I don't know, maybe things have changed a bit but I wonder
if, listening to the other women, that one of the pieces of advice was that
you do have to speak up and you have to make sure that you do get on the
interesting and exciting deals in the office.

One other thought, and then we'll go back to questions because
time is getting late. I predicted the future. Again, this is over a quarter of a
century ago, "Another thought that occurred to me is that over the years,
with more and more women attorneys coming to Paul Weiss, as well as
other firms, every woman attorney is benefited, and probably every male
attorney as well. For the more women there are, the more apparent it
becomes that they are lawyers like anyone else. Some are good, some are
bad, some work hard, some don't, some travel, some don't, some are tough,
some aren't, whatever. The more women that come into the field, the less
likely it is that there will be stereotyped views held." I think that's true, but
there are still some. I think we've heard a little bit about that. I think the
most valuable thing I've heard is that you have got to speak up. If you're in
a law firm, you really have to speak up.

Editor's Note: The speakers on the panel generously spent nearly
two hours answering questions from the audience about numerous topics
including the importance of finding mentors, balancing work and family,
the continuing existence of gender bias in the workplace, and the unique
opportunities they have had as pioneers in their respective fields. Over 150
students attended the panel and many stayed to talk to the speakers
individually at the close of the official event.

2004]