Shaun Illingworth: This begins the second interview session with Linda Dale Hoffa, on April 28, 2022, with Shaun Illingworth, for the Rutgers Oral History Archives' Pioneering Women of the Rutgers College Class of 1976 Oral History Project. Thank you very much for joining me again today. To begin, I want to ask a little bit more about your law school experience at Rutgers-Newark. First, could you tell me a little bit about your process of looking for a law school, what you were looking for, what the process was like, were there any obstacles, things like that?
Linda Hoffa: It's over forty years ago, so it's difficult to remember. It was a little daunting because the LSATs were so important. They didn't have or at least I wasn't aware that they had any kind of review or preparation for them, and so my experience was that I just took them cold. [laughter] I don't remember that very pleasantly. I also went straight from college to law school, and I do remember, when I got to law school and I went to Rutgers, that I was somewhat intimidated because so many members of the class were older, by at least five years or something, and had a lot of worldly experience. They had worked before, things like that. Law school is a professional school. It's a practical school, where you learn skills that you're going to use in the workplace, and I had never had a professional job. I had only lifeguarded and been a camp counselor and things like that for summer jobs, so this was all very daunting to me. Finances were a real concern for me. I was very fortunate, as I mentioned in an earlier interview, that I had gotten what was called a Presidential Scholarship at Rutgers College, and it paid for everything. I didn't have any money to go to law school, and the wonderful thing about Rutgers Law School in Newark, I think, for a semester there, maybe tuition was 750 dollars. I found a rental, where I lived in a house in East Orange [NJ] with a bunch of medical students, and I had an attic room and my rent was fifty-five dollars a month. With the help of a loan from an aunt and from some school loans, I was able to go to Rutgers [Law School], and I think I only came out with seven thousand dollars in debt, which is just remarkable to hear about that. Once again, Rutgers provided tremendous value and provided me an opportunity that other schools didn't present.
I had applied to transfer out of Rutgers Law School because I was hoping to perhaps go to a more highly-rated school. I did get into Georgetown Law, but I just couldn't imagine that I would be able to afford that. Now, I could have gotten loans, but I didn't think that I could afford it. I just didn't really have a sense that that was possible, and so I stayed and finished and graduated from Rutgers. It ended up being incredibly fortunate for me, because I got a great job out of law school.
It was a federal clerkship, and that was an opportunity that Rutgers Law gave me, because when I was in my third year of law school, I interned for a federal judge, Curtis Meanor. He was just terrific, and he introduced me to an individual who had just been nominated by President Carter to be a judge. Through Judge Meanor's recommendation, I was hired by Dickinson Debevoise to be his first law clerk. That was just an opportunity that I just would not have gotten had I gone down to D.C. Now, I don't know what opportunities I would have gotten in D.C., but that was a tremendous opportunity because people who are in the legal profession know a federal clerkship is an extremely prestigious thing to get. Judge Debevoise was simply one of the greatest judges, one of the greatest individuals I ever met in the legal profession. He was brilliant, he was kind, he was a great gentleman, and he was quietly a very progressive social activist. He was very caring about individuals and the rights of individuals, and to have that opportunity to clerk for him for two years just put me on a special path in the legal profession. [Editor's Note: Henry Curtis Meanor served as a judge of the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey from 1974 to 1983. Dickinson R. Debevoise served as a judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey from 1979 to 1994. From 1994 to 2015, Debevoise served as Senior Judge of the district court.]
SI: Yes, he is certainly a legendary jurist, and his name comes up so much in our research. Before we get to the clerkships, did you have an idea of what you wanted to do in the law, or at that time, was there any kind of specialization in law school?
LH: Well, I was very interested in women's rights, and so I quickly signed up and participated in the Women's Rights Litigation Clinic that was run by a professor by the name of Nadine Taub. That was a wonderful experience. That litigation clinic brought the first case that found sex harassment to be a cause of action under Title VII, which was an absolutely radical, groundbreaking thought back then. Now, it's a matter of course, people accept it, but back in the '70s, that was really out-of-the-box thinking. I got to argue in federal court, just in my first year in law school, which is an extraordinary opportunity to have. You asked me if people specialized. Perhaps they did, but I think from being in the litigation clinic, very early on, I only saw my role and my interest in being involved in litigation. I wasn't interested in corporate practice or other areas like tax or specializing in securities. I didn't think along that line. I just thought, generally, that I wanted to do litigation. [Editor's Note: Nadine Taub served as a professor at Rutgers Law School-Newark from 1973 to 2010. Taub founded the Women's Rights Litigation Clinic (WRC), a legal clinic at Rutgers Law School that was the first of its kind.]
SI: What professors stand out in your memory? I think, obviously, Professor Taub would be one, but are there any others that stand out?
LH: [I] think there was a Professor [Heckel]. I think I had him for "Family Law." He had been the dean. He was a very caring individual who had devoted his life to teaching. We had a big personality professor, his name was Professor [Robert A.] Carter, for "Torts." I certainly remember him. I think there was a Professor Axelrod maybe for "Secured Transactions." He was such a gifted teacher. I hope I got his name right. He was such a gifted teacher. He could take all these complex ideas and make sure you understood them. [Editor's Note: Willard C. Heckel joined the faculty of Rutgers Law School in 1946 and served as the school's dean from 1963 to 1970 and 1973 to 1974. Allan Axelrod taught at Rutgers Law from 1960 to 1988, and after his retirement, he continued teaching until he passed away in 2008.]
There were great people that worked in the clinics. Rutgers had a great clinical program. I think there was the Urban Law Clinic, and I got involved in that. You met real clients and handled real matters for them. That was great. Rutgers was a very dynamic, active school that really wanted to give people real-world experience, and I think that that's important in the profession of law. Back then, they did not have trial advocacy, which is something that I have taught for many, many years. They didn't prepare you for when you went into the courtroom. They had clinics that would get you in a courtroom, but they didn't have a class that taught you how to do a cross-examination, or a direct examination, an opening statement, and things like that. I'm sure they do now, many of the law schools do, but back then, they didn't do that in the school.
SI: Like you said, you got that kind of experience through the clinics. Were there other clinical opportunities to have courtroom experience?
LH: I mentioned the time that I got to argue in federal district court, and I think I was just a first-year student, and Professor Taub allowed me to do that. It was a very standard kind of motion. It was saying that the answers to the interrogatories weren't clear enough, and you need more specific answers to their interrogatories. In New Jersey, back then, they had a motion practice where everybody, if you had a motion, you went to court every week--I don't know if it was a Friday or Monday, whatever it was--and everybody sat in the courtroom. Then, they got up, and the judge would rule on their motion. Where I practiced later, in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, everything would get decided on the papers. They didn't have that kind of motion practice, and I don't know if they still do in New Jersey, but it was wonderful. It would get people on their feet, get them in the courtroom, and get decisions right away.
In any event, I had to argue in front of Judge Herbert Stern, who was like a wunderkind. He got on the bench in his early thirties. He was absolutely brilliant, and he was very, very tough on litigants. He had little patience for people that did not have his high level of intelligence. I had to argue in front of him right after the Third Circuit had reversed him on what's called a 12(b)(6) motion, and that was that sexual harassment is a cause of action. He denied it and said Title VII doesn't cover it. The Third Circuit--this is before it got decided by the Supreme Court ultimately--in the Third Circuit, they said, for the first time, "Yes, it is a cause of action." Now, I had to go in front of Judge Stern, who had just been reversed, and tell him, "Oh, we want all this discovery, and all their answers are inadequate." I just thought I was going to throw up. I was so nervous. I was so scared. My knees were knocking together, and I sincerely looked at the professor, as I was watching everyone argue and I'm watching the judge give everybody a very hard time, and I said to the professor, "I can't. I can't. I can't do this. I can't. You're going to have to do this. I can't do it." [laughter] The professor said, "Look around in this courtroom. Everyone is nervous. You're not the only one." [Editor's Note: Herbert Jay Stern served as a judge of the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey from 1973 until 1987. The decision in Tomkins v. Public Service Elec. & Gas Co., 568 F.2d 1044 (3rd Cir. 1977), held that sexual harassment violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, thus protecting women in the workplace.]
Of course, it was a courtroom full of men. There were no women. I look at all of them, and they look like nervous wrecks. They all look scared to be in front of the judge. I said, "All right, you know, suck it up Linda. Just do it." I went in and I stood up, and he [the Judge] was not listening to me. He was just sitting there, he had papers, he had his head down, and he was not listening. I had one thought in my head, and the one thought in my head is, "I can't win this motion if he doesn't listen to me. He has to listen to me. I don't know what to do; he has to listen to me." I threw my arms up in the air. I literally threw my arms up in the air, I just went like this [puts arms up in the air], and as I argued, I slowly, slowly, slowly dropped my arms down. He stopped everything that he was doing, and he just stared at me. I slowly, slowly, slowly brought my arms down. Now, later, I thought, "Oh, my God, what was I, out of my mind? This was insane."
Later, at a young lawyer party, I meet his law clerk, and she said, "Oh, I know you. I saw you in court. I know exactly who you are." I was so mortified, and I said, "Oh, it was so embarrassing. I don't know why I threw my arms up." She looked at me, and she said, "You won your motion, didn't you?" [laughter] I went, "Yes. Yes, I did win that motion. Thank you." [laughter] I don't know, it was probably a little crazy that I did that, but it was a little moment of drama and I won my first motion. That's how I remember my very first time in court. [laughter] In the forty years I've practiced, I've never seen anyone do anything like that ever, and I hope I never see anyone do that. [laughter] It was a little strange.
SI: I have heard from other women in the law that courtroom practice could be very difficult for women to break into. They were not exactly barred but heavily discouraged or discriminated against in terms of going into court and arguing. One, was that still true at the time that you were going into the law, and did you find that was common?
LH: What was common, for the two years that I clerked, I never saw a woman as lead trial counsel or lead counsel arguing. I mean, maybe there was one civil Assistant U.S. Attorney, but otherwise it was all men that I watched in the Trenton federal courthouse for two years. Then, when I went into practice, I went and started at a big law firm, and I got some trial experience right away, only through my connections of being a law clerk. I got to do some trials right away in federal court for indigent individuals, where the court appointed me. Again, this just went on for years. I would be the only woman in the courtroom. I would be the only woman. There would be no women judges. That was very typical.
But there was an advantage. The advantage was that you would get everyone's attention. I didn't have to throw my arms up anymore to get attention, because you're the only woman in the room, then you don't look like everybody. Everybody else is in gray suits. Everyone's in a navy blue suit, but there I am in a red suit, or I'm in a dress, and I'm over six feet tall. That was also a tremendous advantage to be in a courtroom, but you want everyone looking at you in the courtroom. Why? Because if they're paying attention to you, then they're listening to you, and if they're listening to you, then you have a better chance of winning your position. I'm sure I had men try to intimidate me all the time. One attorney once literally backed me against a wall, stuck a finger in my face, and said, "The judge doesn't like you," which was pretty funny because he was shorter than I was, so he sort of had to stand up on his toes and then stick his finger up in my face. He did that to intimidate me on a very contentious argument that we were having. He did that outside the presence of the judge. My response to him was very simple, "So what, so what. That's your opinion. I'm still going to push for my position." It's not about whether somebody likes me or not. It's whether or not they listen to me and whether or not they decide that my argument has merit.
Recently, I had a trial, after all these years of experience, and I was in federal court. I felt and my male colleague and my co-counsel, the lawyer representing the other defendant, also felt that I was treated in a very sexist manner by the prosecution. I was a defense attorney at that time. And I would always get very disrespectful responses. During one break, I told him to knock it off, and that I wasn't taking it anymore, and he'd better start acting like a gentleman. Did I raise it with the court? No. I always handled these things on my own when they would happen. Over time, things have gotten better. There are a lot of women now, but when I graduated law school in the '70s--I went to law school from '76 to '79--it was very, very different. There were very few women practicing in the courtroom.
SI: Tell me a little bit more about the first clerkship, what that entailed and what you think you learned most from it.
LH: It was a fabulous experience, it was extraordinary, because you get to see how judges make decisions. You get to see what a judge needs to make a decision. You see what convinces a judge or doesn't convince a judge, but most importantly, you learn to hone your writing skills and your research skills and your analytical skills, and it is just terrific. Also, it's a wonderful first job because you're part of the courtroom. You're treated with great respect by everybody. Oh, I loved that. [laughter] I thought that was just great. Most importantly, as I had mentioned earlier, Dickinson Debevoise was a brilliant jurist and a kind, considerate but savvy human being, just savvy. He could cut through and know what was going on. There wasn't anything that was getting by him. To just watch him operate, and he was so devoted and so hard working and so disciplined, that it just set the bar very, very high for me, what I expected of myself as an attorney. Many of the former law clerks--and one is now the Chief Justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court, another one is the Chief Judge in the United States District Court in the D.C. Circuit--they would say to me that throughout their careers, and as judges, they think to themselves, "What would Debevoise do? What would Debevoise do in a situation like this? Be impartial, be fair, be kind, be respectful, and get the work done." [Editor's Note: Chief Justice Stuart Rabner has served as the Chief Justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court since 2007. He was a law clerk to Judge Dickinson R. Debevoise from 1985 to 1986. Chief Judge Beryl A. Howell has served as a judge of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia since 2010 and as Chief Judge since 2016. She was a law clerk for Judge Debevoise from 1983 to 1984.]
SI: In terms of the nuts and bolts of how things work, when it came to writing briefs, would he just have you do research on them? Would you ever suggest sections or anything like that? How would things like that work?
LH: Most of our work was involved with the motion practice, and as I said, we had a cycle. I can't remember if it was every week or every other week. I can't remember now, but all the motions would come in and we would review them. Then, we would write up a memo or a draft opinion for the judge that he could read from the bench, or he could publish if he wanted to. We had lunch with him every day, and he was accessible all the time. We could go in and, "I'm having problems with this issue or that issue. What do you think?" Of course, he was much more experienced than I was, and so he could give guidance on that. Back then, we didn't have computers. I did get an IBM Selectric typewriter, and since I could type, I could type out my work product. But we would literally cut and paste. Maybe we would handwrite. You couldn't write like you can on a computer now and cut out and move around and rearrange, so literally we were cutting and pasting with scissors and tape, and then we could rearrange how we wanted something to be written. Then, we would give it to the judge, and he would review it and either say he wanted it changed, or he agreed with it, or he would just make the changes on it himself. When I could see how he edited my work, that was helping me become a better writer.
I do remember, maybe at some point in the second year of my career there with him, I went in and I said to him, "I really need some feedback. I really do." I said, "If you were to grade me, how am I doing? How am I doing?" He said, "Great." I said, "Yes, like an A, B, C, D." He looked at me like, "Why do you need …" and he looked at me and said, "I'd give you an A." It just meant the world to me to hear that. We all worked very, very hard, because no one worked harder than he did. You could not be a slouch for him, because, as I said, the bar was very high.
We didn't have computers. We couldn't Google things. We couldn't go into Westlaw. It didn't exist. There was maybe a Lexis that existed, but we didn't have it in the court system. I worked in a huge library, and we would get the books down, Wright and Miller on federal procedure. We would take these reference materials down, and we would find the cases. We would read the cases that would be cited to us in the filed motions, and then we would do our own research to see if maybe there was better precedent for the court to follow.
SI: Can you tell me a little bit about the process of going through the bar exam, of what that was like then?
LH: Horrible. It was terrible. That was horrible, just terrible. They have these bar review classes. It's extremely structured, and you go there for the lecture. Then, you'd make up your notecards or your outline or whatever, and they would give you a book. You'd just plow through it. Then, you'd walk around the room, and you'd just try to memorize it and cram as much as you can in your head. Now, luckily, you're much younger, and you can cram a lot into your head. You have this fabulous short-term memory ability [when you are young], and then you take these practice exams and things like that. It's not fun, and it was extremely stressful. In New Jersey, when I passed the bar, the bar passing rate was forty-seven percent. More people failed than passed. When the results came out, I was just an absolute nervous wreck about the whole thing. I think my husband, then boyfriend, remembers that I couldn't eat. He would take me out every day, and the only thing I could eat was a milkshake. He would take me to the ice cream store in Highland Park, New Jersey, and I would get a big milkshake. That was like keeping me alive for the next six weeks. I must have lost so much weight when I was studying for the bar exam. I don't think you have to be that nutty, but I sadly was. It was stressful, and I passed. [laughter]
SI: You said after the second clerkship, you went into a law firm before going to the Department of Justice.
LH: Yes. What happened is I went to Montgomery McCracken Walker & Rhoads in Philadelphia. Initially, I was going to practice law in New Jersey, and I think it broke Judge Debevoise's heart a little bit that I did not go and practice in New Jersey and I always intended to. I had grown up in New Jersey. I went to school in New Jersey. I only took the New Jersey Bar, but my significant other, ultimate husband, Jerry, had just gotten a job at Bryn Mawr College. I thought it would be great fun for us to live in the city. At that time, Trenton, Camden, and Newark were the big cities. I really wanted to live in a city and work in a city, and Philadelphia offered that. I said, "Well, I'll go live in Philadelphia." We had great fun doing that, and I had great fun at that law firm, where I stayed for about three years.
SI: What kind of law or cases would you handle there?
LH: I handled mostly, as private firms do, civil litigation. The lawyers there were very bright and very smart, and the partners were very demanding. Again, it just built upon that traditional training that I pursued for two years working with Judge Debevoise, because they demanded an excellent written product. It was not just, "Get it done and get it out the door," and that was terrific. I did get some wonderful opportunities there. Then, I had to take the bar a second time because I never thought I was going to Pennsylvania, so I had to take the Pennsylvania Bar. I'm telling you right now, taking it a second time was not fun again, but I passed again. Then, I said, "That's it. I'm never taking another bar exam again." I got some marvelous opportunities. Because I was barred in New Jersey, the firm had a small New Jersey office, and I got the opportunity to handle a trial--two trials. No, one--how many trials? Anyway, there was one trial that I got to handle over there in their equity court, and that was a great deal of fun. I got to try that in Burlington County, and they would never do that for a first or second-year associate. We'd never get to try a case, but it was New Jersey, the firm didn't have very many lawyers over there. I always said, "Oh, I'll take it. I'll try it," and I got to do a civil trial.
The other thing I got to do is I got to handle a three-week federal criminal trial because of my clerkship. The guys in the clerks' office--it was before they had a formal list of approved people called the Criminal Justice Act list. They didn't have that [at the time], so the judges could just pick people that they knew. The deputy clerk recommended me to a judge. I got a three-week jury trial, where I represented the president of a union in Newark, New Jersey. That's where the union was, but the trial was in Trenton. I think Debevoise, by that time, had gone to Newark. In any event, I got to try that case with a wonderful colleague. He was a federal defender. He knew what he was doing. He had experience. His name was John Hughes; he ultimately became the U.S. Magistrate Judge and is now retired. [Editor's Note: John J. Hughes served as a United States Magistrate Judge for the District of New Jersey from 1991 to 2009. Prior to that, Hughes served as the Assistant-in-Charge of the Camden-Trenton Region in the Federal Public Defender's Office, from 1976 to 1991.]
The government had videos of my client. My client had gone to the grand jury uncounseled--that means without a lawyer--and testified in the grand jury for two days, not one day, two days, a very bad thing to do. They had an undercover agent. They had a cooperator. It wasn't only on video. Back then, in the '80s, they had color video, and the FBI is paying him cash payments. I said, "Well, let's take this to trial," and my client says, "Great, let's take this to trial." I think anybody else would have probably pled the case out, and we took it to trial.
It was the scariest experience of my life, and it was the most terrific experience of my life. I worked day and night, and when you're young and you don't know what you're doing, you spin your wheels a lot, but it was such a fabulous experience. To say that I was scared when I went into court, yes. Did I throw my arms up in the air? No. I just loved being in front of a jury, and that's when I knew what I wanted to do more than anything was to be a trial lawyer. People say they're litigators and they never go to court, or maybe they argue motions in court, but they're not in front of juries and they're not in front cross-examining witnesses. I was completely smitten by it. My client was acquitted--by the grace of God--my client was acquitted of three of the four counts. The fourth count, when he got on the stand and testified, he had to acknowledge the five-hundred-dollar payment because they could trace that money into his rent. He only was convicted of the five-hundred dollars and not the three two-thousand-dollar payments. He was sentenced to three months in prison. At the sentencing, when the judge said that he was going to be sentenced to prison, I thought I was going to be sentenced to prison. It was such an emotion experience for me. [laughter] I was like, "Oh."
Anyway, I took it all the way up to the Supreme Court. I got an oral argument in the Third Circuit. I got an oral argument in the Third Circuit, lost in the Third Circuit, took it up to the Supreme Court, on a petition for cert, and while the petition for certiorari was pending, my client died. He never did a day in jail, and in the defense community, we say that's a win. [laughter] It was a wild, wild experience. [Editor's Note: A petition for certiorari to the Supreme Court asks the court to grant a writ of certiorari, which orders a lower court to deliver its record in a case so that the higher court may review it.]
There was one point when the co-defendant was up on the stand testifying. He would look at the judge, and he would call him, "Your royal highness," or something. [laughter] They had gone in the grand jury and they had lied, and so we said, "Well, you've got to tell the truth when you're on the stand, and you've got to acknowledge these things and explain them." He would not only get on the stand and say, "Oh, yes, I lied there. Oh yes, yes, yes, I lied, and I shouldn't have," and, "Oh, let me show you another lie that I had." He would go through the transcript volunteering all his lies and misrepresentations. My co-counsel John said, "You have to object. You have to object," because it was like wild, someone on the stand admitting, "I lied, and I lied, and I lied." I stood up and I said, "Objection, Your Honor. Objection, Your Honor," and the judge and everyone stops in the courtroom. I lean down, and I say to John, "What's the basis of my objection?" John says, "Expletive if I know. Somebody has to stop this freight train." [laughter] I'm standing there in front of the judge, and I'm so new, I can't make up an objection. I can't. The judge looked at me and said, "Well, perhaps it was to the form of the question." "Yes, Your Honor. Yes, Your Honor. It was to the form of the question." Then, the judge said, "Very well. Objection sustained. Rephrase your question." [laughter]
I taught trial advocacy for many, many years at Villanova Law School, and I taught it at Tsinghua University in China. I would say to my students, "There is only one way to learn to be a trial lawyer, and that is to get up and to do it. It's like dance. You can watch all the tapes you want of Mikhai Baryshnikov dancing. You have to, have to, get on that floor, and you have to do it yourself. That's the only way to learn to do it. Sometimes, it's not going to be very pretty."
SI: It seems like a real trial by fire but also learning as you go. You said that really convinced you that that is what you wanted to do, but what else did you learn from that experience that you took forward in your career?
LH: John was tough on me, my co-counsel. My cross-examination, I worked so hard on and it wasn't very effective, and he was pretty honest about that. John also said to me something that gave me great confidence. He said to me that I had a presence in the courtroom, and he said, "You either have it or you don't." It doesn't mean that people without it can't be trial lawyers and that they'll be okay, but it's sort of that presence that's needed to stand out. That's what I was talking to you about earlier, that it was okay to be the only woman in the courtroom. I want everyone looking at me. I want everyone paying attention. I want everyone interested in what I have to say, and I felt that. I think it would be like being an actress and doing live theater and realizing, "That's what I want to do." As painful as the rehearsals are, as nerve wracking as it is when that curtain goes up and then you think you're going to puke, once you're in that moment, once that curtain goes up and it's your show, it's excitement. That's what I learned from that first jury trial. I learned that this is my milieu. This is where I want to be, and I want to perfect my skills. I want to work on my skills. I want to be better. I want to know how to do this really, really well, as opposed to, "I just want to get through this." I wanted to do it as best as humanly possible. It was a craft, and it is something that I have worked on my entire life. I never take it for granted at all. It's something that you can always get better at. I think actors feel that way, actors that think about, always, what is it they're doing, what they did well, how they could do it better, and that's how I approach it. That's what I learned from that trial. That's what I learned, and you can make a difference, I think, in what the result will be, or at least you hope that you can make a difference in what that ultimate verdict will be.
SI: After three years, you left that firm. Was that when you went to the Department of Justice, or was there anything in between?
LH: Right. You're never going to get into a courtroom working at a large law firm. I applied to the [Federal Public] Defender's [Office], and I applied to the U.S. Attorney's Office. The Defender's is this much smaller office, so it's harder to get into when they have an opening. I also applied to the U.S. Attorney's Office. Now, here is something interesting. I got an offer first from the U.S. Attorney's Office in New Jersey, and I had tried that case [in New Jersey] against the AUSA. [I] think his name was Michael Gilberti, but I'm not sure. Anyway, he recommended me. He was my adversary, and really I beat him in that courtroom. He should have gotten guilty verdicts on all those accounts; they had videotape of my client taking the money. He was a terrific opponent, he was a real gentleman, and he strongly recommended me to the office, and I got hired. I had also applied to the U.S. Attorney's Office in Philadelphia. Once I got the offer in New Jersey, my contacts at the U.S. Attorney's Office in Philadelphia, I let them know, "Oh, I got an offer in Jersey," and, oh, that made me so attractive now. Philadelphia realized they could steal me from New Jersey, that if Jersey wanted me, then I must be really good--so, I think, literally, my resumé went from the bottom of the stack to the top of the stack at that point, and then they gave me an offer also.
I talked to Judge Debevoise about what I should do. I was enjoying very much working in Philadelphia, but I had a real kinship with New Jersey. I worried, "What are we going to do? Jerry was working at Bryn Mawr College. I'll be all the way up in Newark. That's not good." Were we married? Yes, I think we were married by that time. Now, New Jersey had an office in Camden, but it was a small office and I worried that that's not where the decision-makers will be and where you'll get noticed or whatever. You want to be in the thick of things, so I thought I really had to be in the Newark office. In any event, Judge Debevoise introduced me to Judge Barry, who is President Trump's sister. At that time, she had been at the U.S. Attorney's Office in New Jersey. She was a very respected federal judge in New Jersey, and Judge Debevoise thought a great deal of her. She very kindly met with me for over an hour and talked to me about how I should make my decision. The bottom line she said to me is, "They're both great offices. You'll do well in either office, and it's going to be a great job for you," and she was very encouraging and very kind. Jersey was wonderful. The Jersey office said, "You can live in Philly and work in Camden. That's not a problem." Ultimately, I made a decision to go to Philadelphia because I thought that that's the big office, and I wanted to be in a bigger office, not a small satellite office. I made that decision. [Editor's Note: Maryanne Trump Barry served as a judge of the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey from 1983 to 1999. From 1999 to 2011, Judge Barry served as a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. From 2011 to 2019, she then served as the Senior Judge of the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.]
SI: Were you in the Criminal Division right away?
LH: Yes, I didn't want to go to the Civil Division. I wanted to go to the Criminal Division because criminal trials, that's what goes to court. Criminal defendants go to trial because there's an awful lot at risk. If you go to the Civil Division, you're not going to have any trials or very few trials. That's what I wanted to do, and I was really smitten from that trial that I had. The criminal case was so much more fun than the civil trials that I had, and so I went to the Criminal Division right away. I went up and down the hallway, and I said to everybody, "You have a trial for me? I'll take your trial," and people are happy to give you a trial, especially if they're dog trials. I was walking a lot of people's dogs, as they say, but I had about ten trials that first year. They didn't have any training back then, and I'm reading the transcripts of other people's trials to find out, "Oh, you can sequester witnesses. Oh, I didn't know that. You're supposed to sequester witnesses, okay." I'm learning about objections and things like that by reading some transcripts, going into the courtroom, watching other people. The office was like, "Great, you want to try cases? Go at it. Do it. This is terrific. Have a good time." I loved it, just loved it. I knew I had made the right decision.
SI: Can you give me maybe an example of what a dog case would be, what people were throwing your way during those early years?
LH: Oh, sure. A dog case would be like a hand-to-hand drug buy. One of the first trials I got, it was two brothers. It was Ellis Walker and Sonny Walker. I remember their names. Maybe it was a four or five-count indictment, one conspiracy count and then various distributions. The reason why it's a dog case is it was like a taskforce case. It was Philadelphia Police officers who worked the case, and they would be on a taskforce working with DEA [Drug Enforcement Agency]. It's really not a DEA agent that's running the case or anything like that. Here's the dog case. It's a dog case because it's put together as a conspiracy. What do I know about conspiracy? I know nothing about conspiracy at that time. A conspiracy is an agreement by two or more people to commit an unlawful act, something in violation of federal law. Federal law would include drug dealing.
I'm in front of Judge Louis Bechtle, and the jury is picked. The jury is already picked, and I'm ready. Then, the jury's out, and the judge says, "You know, I am going to reconsider that motion for severance, and I'm granting it. And I'm dismissing the conspiracy count." Well, I hadn't argued any of the motions at all. I hadn't argued any of them, so I didn't even know what they were. That meant that I had a jury, and I had to stand there and I had an opening in my head, little bullet points written out. Instead of a two defendant, five-count indictment, I now had to not argue the conspiracy. I had to argue the drug transactions only. It's not a big deal, except it was a big deal, because I had to pivot and I didn't have any sea legs. I had no experience in pivoting and saying, "Oh, half my case is gone, and here, let me go argue that other case." I'm arguing with the judge on why it was a conspiracy, and the judge is like, "No, I'm telling you it's not a conspiracy." "Oh, it's a conspiracy. It's a conspiracy." [laughter] Of course, it's not a conspiracy. It was basically the task force targeted two brothers, but there really wasn't anything to show that their drug dealing was together as opposed to independent agents. That's why it wasn't a conspiracy. In any event, that was fine. [Editor's Note: Louis Charles Bechtle served as a judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania from 1972 to 1993. Judge Bechtle served as Chief Judge from 1990 to 1993 and Senior Judge from 1993 until his retirement in 2001.]
I have a jury, and now I've got to stand up and I've got to give an opening statement that I am completely unprepared to give. I gave it, and it was fine. I got a conviction--no, no, the jury goes to deliberate. They go away. The judge has me immediately pick another jury for the trial of the other brother. While one jury is in a room deliberating, I have another jury in the box now for the other brother, which is crazy because no rest for the weary. I'm about to argue that case, and all of a sudden, the jury has a verdict on the other case. This jury goes out. The other jury comes in--can you imagine one jury shuffling in and one jury shuffling out?--the first jury comes in. They have a verdict, and they say, "Guilty." I'm pretty excited--it's my first verdict--and defense wants to poll the jury. I don't know what that means. I really don't know what it means, and that means you ask each juror, "Is that your verdict?" Okay, fine. They want to poll the jury. They poll the jury, and one juror changes her mind. Now, in my next forty years of practice, I've never seen this happen, but it happens on my first trial, so I don't know what this means. [laughter] I don't know what this means. The judge, who knew what he was doing, fortunately, sort of takes control of it and says, "You need to be unanimous. I'm going to send you right back. You go and deliberate some more, and let me know whether you're unanimous," and he shuffles them back. Then, he puts the other jury back in the box. I'm like this, I don't understand what went on, and then I've got to start arguing to this jury. Then, they do have a verdict. They shuffle that jury out. They bring the [old] jury back in, and then the judge says to the juror who changed her mind, "And what is your verdict?" [laughter] She says, "Guilty," and that was that. Then, they go away, and then the new jury comes back.
It was the only way to learn, but there was a lot going on and it was exciting. We would all come back to the U.S. Attorney's Office, and we would have stories. We'd be in the library, and the stories would always start out this way, "You're never going to believe what happened in court today. Can you believe …" and then it would be blah, blah, blah and those kinds of things. Those are things that I always remember. I also remember that when Sonny Walker got sentenced, he got an incredibly long sentence for just a couple heroin transactions, and the reason why is that his criminal record went back to 1947. It was a very long one and he had been a big-time drug dealer, but because of his drug addiction, he could never stop drug dealing but was not a big player when I had that case. The judge gave him a lengthy sentence because of his previous record. When he was sentenced, he looked at the judge--he got ten years, which was a really long sentence--he looked at the judge and said, "Who died and made you God?" [laughter] I was standing right next to him. The judge looks down at him and says, "Cuff him," and I had never seen handcuffs before. [laughter] Then, he gets cuffed right there, and the marshals are all on top of him. The man's taller than I am, and he looks down at me. I thought, "Oh, God, you just screamed at the judge. What is he going to say to me?" He looked at me, and he said, "Next time, I want you for my lawyer." I said, "Well, good luck to you, Mr. Walker. Good luck to you." [laughter] It was exciting. That's all I can say. It was just exciting. It was real drama, real life, that's what it was, real people.
SI: Wow. You said the first year you did ten cases. Through your early years, did that pace keep up?
LH: It didn't keep up. The chief of the Criminal Division, a guy by the name of Peter Smith, who ultimately became a U.S. Attorney in the Middle District of Pennsylvania recently--a wonderful, wonderful individual, a fabulous mentor to me, just fabulous, he was a very experienced litigator--he sort of plucked me up and decided we were going to work a big case together. It started from nothing. It started from nothing at all, and it became a huge corruption case and, ultimately, resulted in twenty-seven maybe or twenty-six convictions of individuals and entities involved in far-reaching corruption at a facility in Philadelphia called the Defense Personnel Support Center. That involved bribery of very high-level Department of Defense officials.
The top official was a guy by the name of Frank Coccia. By starting very little and working our case up, covertly, being able to get a series of wiretaps, not only in our jurisdiction but in New Jersey and also in Florida, intercepting mail, we were able to build the case of a tremendous amount of bribes. It was a million dollars of bribes to be paid, in total, promised or paid, a million dollars, and this was the early '80s. He was in charge of awarding all military clothing contracts for all the Armed Services of the United States throughout the world, and back then, in the early '80s, to clothe the military was over a billion dollars a year. When the agent told me it was a billion, I said, "Oh, you mean a million," because we never, in the early '80s, talked about billions. There were no billionaires in the early '80s. It was so much money and so much corruption at every level with these military clothing contracts. I'll always remember that the bribe paid for those beautiful peacoats the Navy officials wear was like thirty-five cents a coat, something like that, and it adds up.
They were all small business set-aside contracts, and there was tremendous corruption throughout the United States. We worked that case together. I learned tremendous skills at investigative work, and I worked with a fabulous guy in the FBI; his name is Joe Ford. Joe, ultimately--he's a good friend--he ultimately became number three under Director Mueller at the FBI. He was number three at the FBI, and Joe was a tremendously gifted agent. Now, the problem with that was I thought everybody was as brilliant as Pete and as Joe were, and I thought that every case you investigate is going to have that kind of fabulous result. It was just such a tremendous case to work on. I was spoiled. I really was spoiled because we worked so well together as a team. We uncovered so much evidence--oh, and when you do a case like that, people don't go to trial. They all pled, and everybody went to jail in that case. It was over a number of years, and that's when I had my first child. [Editor's Note: In 2004, Joseph L. Ford was appointed to be the Assistant Director for the FBI's Finance Division and Chief Financial Officer. Ford was appointed by FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III, who served as the director from 2001 to 2013.]
My daughter Alicia was born in December of '85. We were still working the end of that case at that time. I remember the agent coming out to my house when I had my baby. I was breastfeeding, and I had to sign off on a search warrant. I also remember that when I gave birth to Alicia, we were in the middle of our wiretaps. We had a fifteen-day report due. It had to be flown down to Florida. It was sort of before FedEx, it was so long ago. The U.S. Air pilots would take our sealed envelopes and deliver--an FBI agent would go to the Philadelphia Airport and they would fly it down on the next flight to Florida, and then that FBI agent would meet that pilot and get the fifteen-day report. I gave birth on Monday morning, December 30th at nine-fifteen, and within a half-hour, I was on the phone with Pete [Smith] telling him that that report was on my desk. It needed to be filed, it was all ready, and Pete said, "Great." I said, "Well, I had my baby." "Oh, wonderful, you had your baby this weekend?" I was like, "No, I had the baby like fifteen, thirty minutes ago," and poor Peter started hyperventilating. [laughter] I only took off six weeks with her and went back to work. It was exciting work. It was exciting times.
SI: Working at that time, through a pregnancy, was the Department of Justice supportive, or was anybody saying, "Well, I guess you're going to quit" or anything like that?
LH: No. It was very interesting. We had a number of women in the office, I don't know, five, six, seven of us, and we all got pregnant around the same time because we were all in our early thirties. No, nobody assumed that we would quit. Our careers were very important to us. I don't think any of us quit. We struggled. It was hard. It was hard to find daycare, it was hard to find the coverage that you needed, and we all struggled in that respect. DOJ [Department of Justice] offered no maternity leave. You had to borrow your vacation and you had to borrow against your sick leave, and so I was always in the hole, for years, on any sick leave or vacation time. The government was not kind in that respect. It would have been better--had I been in private practice, I would have had three months of paid maternity leave, but you didn't get that with the government. But everybody was great. The agents and everyone were great. It was wonderful.
There was one time when I was pregnant and in Peter's office with the FBI agents. The baby had never kicked before, but now she kicked. She didn't just kick. She backed up on the fifty-yard line and then she ran forward and then she kicked me really hard. I didn't know what it was, and I thought somebody had punched me. [laughter] I screamed, and everybody was like, "What? What? Are you all right?" Then, I realized what happened, and I went, "Oh, no. No." I was like, "The baby kicked. No, I'm good." [laughter] Oh, it's funny the things you remember.
SI: After that case, you were there for twenty-five years. We do not have to go into every case, but can you talk about some of the other ones that really stand out in your memory?
LH: You do remember your trials, which are interesting. As you advance, you are better at preparing your cases, investigating your cases. Your reputation is established that you're a competent trial attorney, so people are less willing to go and take a trial or take a matter to trial, but I would still get trials. What I gravitated toward though and I loved were the corruption and fraud cases and the complex cases that involved a lot of paper and that were difficult to prove, difficult to investigate, and difficult to explain. I found that extremely challenging, to take very complicated ideas and make sure that a jury could understand them. I think teaching law school and my interest in teaching were very helpful in honing my trial skills, being able to be a good and clear communicator with a jury.
The one big case that I do remember--and it was very, very difficult--was a RICO case that I tried. It took six weeks to try. It should have probably taken three months. What was so difficult about it was that I had not initially investigated it, and it was very quickly indicted. It was handled down in Alabama, but they brought it up here because the venue was stronger here and they quickly indicted it. The Alabama lawyer needed it to be indicted quickly, because assets were going to go offshore and they were going to disappear. Proceeds of fraud you can seize, but you can't seize substitute assets. It's just hard to grab them. So, if you indict, if you bring that criminal case, then you can seize some of those assets, but they couldn't do it if they hadn't indicted. The case was indicted probably before it should have been indicted. [Editor's Note: The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) is a federal law that is designed to combat organized crime.]
I was always catching up, trying to sort of learn it, and I had co-counsel, AUSA Mike Rasmussen, from Birmingham, who came up and tried the case with me. It was assigned to Chief Judge Bartle. My adversary was Bob Welsh. The defendant was a partner at Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, one of the largest law firms in the country, and he was their top insurance law partner. What he had essentially done was he acquired, through a leveraged buyout, meaning he bought an insurance company with its own assets. You can imagine an insurance company is supposed to keep its assets on reserve to pay policies when they're due. He dipped into that asset reserve pool in a series of complicated transactions, created a hole, meaning the reserves were below what they needed to be to allow that entity, that insurance company, to remain solvent. He hid it, he papered it, through a myriad of corporate structures that he pretended were unrelated entities, and then he did basically note swapping, like musical chairs. The notes would go back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth among, I don't know, fifty entities. If the music stopped, one would see there was a hole, and that the entity, the insurance company, wasn't solvent. But he kept it all moving. Because he was a Morgan, Lewis & Bockius attorney, he had a great deal of credibility, and he was very litigious and he was able to intimidate anybody that got in his way and pulled this off, this huge insolvency, of a hundred million dollars. At the end of the day, he sort of forced this thing, the insolvent entities, off on--I don't know--an unwitting buyer and then tried to point the finger at him for the insolvency. [Editor's Note: Harvey Bartle III served as a judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania from 1991 to 2011. From 2006 to 2011, Bartle served as Chief Judge, and in 2011, he became Senior Judge of the district court.]
To prove this, without any insider testimony, was really hard, but for the first time--this is back in 1998--we were able to use technology in the courtroom. It was absolutely the first time. Now, we do it all the time, but back then, PowerPoint, nobody had ever seen it. I was able to use a thousand exhibits--imaged documents--and explain all the swapping of notes that were going back and forth that were really worthless, and prove, through paper, what had occurred and convicted him on all counts. He got a fifteen-year sentence, but that was a really hard case. That was a hard-fought case, and that was so complicated. We won in the Third Circuit, and we established some good law, especially in the area of forfeiture law. It was really, really hard to do, because I was always playing catchup because I had not originally investigated the case.
SI: We are at 11:37. Do you want to break, or do you want to continue for a little bit?
LH: We could go for a little bit more if you want, but we'll have to finish up. Are we still recording?
SI: Yes.
LH: Okay. One thing I also want to explain besides my cases is sort of how my responsibilities changed in the office.
I started out as an Assistant U.S. attorney, and I did that for a good number of years. After that RICO case I told you about, they promoted me to what's called the Senior Litigation Counsel, and I began to do a lot of teaching in the office.
There was a short stint that I had done, when the kids were little, at the beginning of the Clinton Administration, where I went down to the Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys and I worked down in D.C. and commuted home. That was hard because the girls were still little, but I was so excited to go down to [the Department of] Justice and see how that worked. Having done that, I got the opportunity to teach training sessions around the country. Then, they didn't have the National Advocacy Center, and so DOJ would do conferences all around the country. I got to do that.
As a result of doing that, I met an individual by the name of Joe Hartzler. I was doing a lot of grand jury training and advanced grand jury training [for DOJ], how to investigate cases, how to use the grand jury, how to do it properly, how not to commit any abuses in the grand jury, and I met an individual when I was teaching whose name was Joe Hartzler. Joe became the lead prosecutor for the Oklahoma City bombing case. We had just met. He was in the audience. He was one of my students. We had met at that conference, and he's a terrific guy out of Illinois. He was appointed by Jamie Gorelick, who was Janet Reno's Deputy Attorney General, to be the lead prosecutor, which was quite amazing. He has MS [multiple sclerosis] and he was in a wheelchair. To do this case was so important; I don't know if people remember how important that prosecution was. They had lost out in L.A. the O.J. Simpson case, and a lot of people had lost a lot of confidence in the jury trial system, and not only was this the first major act of terrorism on American soil but also just the importance of people believing in our justice system was at stake. [Editor's Note: The Oklahoma City bombing occurred on April 19, 1995, when a rental truck packed full of explosives was detonated outside of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. The explosion destroyed the north wall of the building, killing 168 people and leaving hundreds more injured. The blast was set off by Timothy McVeigh, who was convicted on fifteen counts of murder and conspiracy in 1997 and executed in 2001. His co-conspirator Terry Nichols was sentenced to life in prison. The lead prosecutor of the case was U.S. Attorney Joseph Hartzler. On October 3, 1995, former NFL running back O.J. Simpson was acquitted of the double murder of his estranged wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ronald Goldman, at her condo on June 12, 1994.]
Joe asked me to be the spokesperson for the Department of Justice for this prosecution. For six months, I commuted, Monday mornings, out to Denver--because that's where the case got transferred to be tried--and I did that for six months during the pretrial phrase. They needed a lawyer because there were leaks in the grand jury, and they wanted someone to know what it is you can tell the press and what it is you can't tell the press. Ultimately, we got a gag order in place, and at that point, my services weren't needed any longer. They then just needed a typical press person. Earlier, they needed a lawyer to do that [job], and that was a tremendous responsibility and experience. They had a tremendously gifted, talented prosecution team trying the case.
I then came back [to the U.S. Attorney's Office in Philadelphia]. The last ten years that I was there, I was asked to be the Deputy Chief of the Criminal Division. It was a new position they created. I was never a team supervisor. I sort of leapt up to a second level [supervisory position]. I loved it. That was tremendous fun. I got to review people's cases, approve their indictments, review their investigations, give them advice on these investigations, and be involved in the policies that were going on in the office.
Then, when my supervisor, Tim Rice, left to become a U.S. magistrate judge, then I was asked to be--with Pat Meehan as the U.S. attorney--to be the criminal chief. I also loved doing that job, and that was a twenty-four/seven hour job. You have a hundred federal prosecutors you're in charge of, responsible for making the hard decisions, "This case is not ready to indict," or, "This case is ready to indict," or anything that was coming up, tough things that were going on with court decisions, "Do we appeal? Don't we appeal?" Every decision that was made came to my desk. I used to joke, "Nothing was too important and nothing was too insignificant not to land on my desk." That's when emails first started up, and I would have two hundred substantive emails [each day] because everything landed on my desk. I saw my job as being one that I had to have policies, I had to clear policies, and I had to enforce those policies consistently for the office so people knew what was expected of them. It was a time that our budget was cut by twenty percent. When people left, we couldn't replace them, and yet we kept our indictment numbers up and the quality of the work that we were doing. I was very proud of the work that the office did, but, man, that was probably the toughest job I ever had.
Then, at the end of that administration, I went over to join [U.S. Senator] Arlen Specter. He asked me to be his Senior Criminal Counsel at the Senate Judiciary Committee. Just like I was curious to go to DOJ, I was curious to go the Senate to sort of see how things worked.
Oh, one thing I did forget. I had another tremendous opportunity. I got to join the Criminal Chiefs Working Group at Main Justice, and we would meet four times a year, and we would advise the Attorney General's Advisory Committee. They would select certain U.S. Attorneys to advise the Attorney General, and we would be advising them because we're not the political appointees, the criminal chiefs. We are the boots on the ground. We know what's working. We know what's not working. We know the changes. We got to have tremendous input at Main Justice, meet with the attorney generals, and giving them input on things that needed to be changed and approved and things like that. I loved that, and ultimately, I became the Chair of that group. It was a fabulous group of people to work with, so that was very exciting.
Then, that's all done. Then, I go down to the U.S. Senate. What do you think the Senate was like? [Editor's Note: Arlen Specter was an American lawyer and politician who served as a U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania from 1981 to 2011. Specter served as Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee from 2005 to 2007.]
SI: Given the time period, it seems like a pretty contentious time. Tell me a little bit about that, if we have time.
LH: It is what we all hear about in the news today, which is it's very partisan. There was not a lot of reaching across the aisle to get things done, and it is hard to get things done. It is extremely hard. Now, in the criminal justice system, "You're going to plead. You're not going to plead. I'll meet with you. You're going to cooperate. You're not going to cooperate." Ultimately, you make a decision, and you say, "Go pound sand, Linda," and it's like, "Fine. Now, I'm going to indict you." But you don't get to do that [in the Senate]. If somebody says they're going to promise to cosponsor something, or they're going to support some kind of legislation and then at the last minute they back off, well, you don't get to indict that Senator now, do you? I'm going from this position of tremendous power and leverage, and, here, it's less so. Obviously, I'm not a Senator, I'm just a staffer, but we had Senate hearings. It was very interesting to work on the Senate hearings. I enjoyed doing that, but it was frustrating because it was a very slow pace to get things done. That was very, very frustrating.
One thing I'm proud of that I got to do--and I didn't mention--when I was criminal chief, we started a reentry court. Reentry courts are incredibly wonderful, and they are throughout the United States now in many of the federal courts. They work with high-risk probationers, high-risk at being recidivists, and there is a very intense supervision where there is a very collective effort by the prosecution and the defense and the magistrate judge or the federal judge to help support that probationer. There are immediate rewards, and there are immediate punishments. If they fall off the wayside, it's not like three months down the road, you're going to go to jail. It's like maybe a weekend in jail, but the main thing is, "What is going on?" and they help them. "Is it housing? Is it a job? What can we do?" It's like group therapy with a magistrate judge who's there rooting for you but holding you accountable. It's a great model. It's an intensive model. In our first couple years, we reduced the risk of recidivism, which they can quantify for the group with their risk factors, of forty-seven percent--reduced it down to eleven percent. It has a lot of success.
When I was in the Senate, I was able to have a Senate hearing, get our Chief Judge to come and testify about the success of this program that wasn't even funded. Then, Senator Specter was so impressed, he said, "Get that transcript. Write a letter for me," and he sent it out to every Chief Judge in the United States. "Look at this. Look what they're doing in Philly. You can do it too." They're doing it all over the country. I'm just one little piece of what happened, but we got EDPA to do it, the Eastern District of Pennsylvania to do it, and it just lit a fire. I'm very proud of that work. I'm very proud of all the people that put in all the hard work once we got it implemented. I was very proud that we could do something in the Senate that would sort of help move it along, so that was great.
I think I'm about done now.
SI: Thank you for all your time. Maybe down the road, maybe we can do another follow-up interview.
LH: Okay, that sounds great, and I can talk about the grandchildren.
SI: Yes, absolutely.
LH: All right, I hope I don't go on and on too much.
SI: It is important to see what you want to pass on to other generations about your life and experiences.
LH: When I talk to young women lawyers--I don't know if I've said this to you before--I say to them, especially those who want to have families and they've got to balance the work and everything, I say to them, "Don't be too hard on yourself. You're going to have to give up a little bit of perfection, but hang in there. Even if you have to tread water for a couple of years, you'll catch up, and you'll win the race ultimately." For example, I didn't become a supervisor until many men became supervisors that started with me and were junior to me, way before I became Deputy Chief of the Criminal Division. Then, I caught up, and it was worthwhile. It's frustrating for women sometimes when they see the males sort of rush ahead on them, but it doesn't mean that they're not going to catch up or even win the race in the end. You can. Play a long game, and whatever you do, I really encourage them strongly, because a lot of women do leave the practice of law, I say to them, "Keep your toe in the water. Just keep it in as best you can, even if that means going part time or whatever."
SI: All right, very good.
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Transcribed by Jesse Braddell 5/27/2022
Reviewed by Zach Batista 7/7/2022
Reviewed by Kathryn Tracy Rizzi 7/29/2022
Reviewed by Linda Dale Hoffa 4/26/2023