Glass Everywhere

BAR BUSINESS

Reflections on Waiting for Our First Female Vice President

By Ashley Senary Dahlberg

After the election of Senator Kamala Harris to our second-highest executive office, my social media feeds filled with one viral image: a depiction of Harris, as an adult woman, clad in her signature dark pantsuit, triumphantly striding alongside a depiction of a young Ruby Bridges, in her dress and pigtails. Both familiar images, the two, together, stirred emotions in me: pride, relief, triumph, and more than a touch of bittersweetness.

Four years and several days prior to Harris’s ascension, I joyfully arrived at the office in a white pantsuit, bounding around, giddy at what seemed like the imminent election of a woman lawyer to the nation’s highest office. Since then, I’d put the pantsuit away. Something about it bothered me. It seemed . . . misplaced. A relic of a very particular time, and a very specific hope. If a suit can look both overly expectant and dejected all at once, this one did.

So much looks different now too, four years since that night in 2016, when so many women like me held their collective breaths. I look different now, too. I’ve birthed another child and spent too many long days and nights in my office chair during the pandemic, working and fretting over the state of most things. Beyond the suit’s literally not fitting, I didn’t feel like looking at the suit, and so I stuffed it into the back of the closet next to the symbolic things – the things we save but know we’ll never wear – that we can’t bear to part with. I tucked it next to my wedding dress (never washed, but carefully bagged) and a flimsy cap and gown. I also tucked away my long-held sigh. That, I tucked into my chest, hoping it would not suffocate me when I least expected it. It, like the suit, would have to wait for a day I hoped would arrive within my lifetime.

Four years and several days later, Harris, a woman lawyer, would finally be named to ascend to the second highest executive office in the land. Her husband, Doug Emhoff, himself a powerful lawyer, was now, too, a trailblazer in his own right. Yet, there she was—and there he was—a seemingly impossible vision-comereality, underneath a sky of dancing drones and bursting fireworks. She’d worn a white pantsuit, and I exhaled slowly.

On Saturday morning, on the day the election was called, I’d begun stringing up our Christmas tree with my five-year-old son. I had been looking at the inside of my home (and nowhere else) for so many months, and my bottle of celebratory wine (replaced, since 2016) was still sitting in the fridge. The wait, it seemed, would continue. My breath would stay buried a bit longer. I needed some light, quite literally.

When the election was finally called, I was in the middle of the frustrating task of untangling a string of lights as my toddler grew increasingly impatient. I turned the television louder and walked right up to it, looking closely at Harris on my screen. I stood a foot away, in what I know was subconsciously my need to really look and make sure that the woman on my screen was real.

The next generation of women watch as the first female vice president is elected.

photo courtesy of Lauren Corriveau

I turned my phone’s video camera on and pointed at the television. “Do you see that LADY?” I said to my son. “THAT LADY is going to be the Vice President of the United States.” That week, my son had learned about voting in his virtual kindergarten class. “Do people vote for the Vice President, too?” Yes. Yes, they do. I may have cried a little. The photo of Harris and Bridges was so stirring because it was a reminder that we are not alone and that, together, we can achieve extraordinary, difficult things. Harris herself invoked this idea in several speeches prior to the election; that is, that she does not stand alone before us, but instead is simply the highest and most visible pillar of a community of women, particularly Black and brown women, who for so long have been passed over. As a child, in 1960, Ruby Bridges desegregated the all-white William Frantz Elementary School in New Orleans. Bridges, though depicted as a child from another time in the drawing, is alive and well. Bridges is a mere sixty-six years old. Harris, at fifty-six, is only one decade behind.

The New York Times reported that, prior to the election, Harris spoke to a majority Black audience in Fort Worth “of being singular in her role but not solitary.” Harris remarked: “Yes, sister, sometimes we may be the only one that looks like us walking in that room. But the thing we all know is we never walk in those rooms alone—we are all in that room together.”

Too, that one image of Bridges and Harris, a daughter of a Jamaican father and an Indian mother, reminds us that when Harris began kindergarten, Harris was bused as part of Berkeley’s comprehensive desegregation program to Thousand Oaks Elementary School, a public school in northern Berkeley, which had previously had been 95% white. Harris subsequently graduated from Howard University and the University of California Hastings College of the Law, and she began her legal career in the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office. Harris was elected district attorney of San Francisco in 2003, and she was twice elected Attorney General of California before becoming the junior United States Senator from California in 2017.

Like many others, I first took real notice of Harris during her skilled questioning of witnesses in congressional committee hearings. As a lawyer, I focused on the ways in which she skillfully led a witness to her desired endpoint. Refusing to accept an answer that dodged her question and repeating the most salient points of the responses out loud, Harris’s ability to unapologetically command attention and generate the content she desired, was a master class. Regardless of political leanings, it was something. The questioning itself generated more viral content among non-lawyers, likely unaware that years of legal schooling and practice is what had brought Harris to that crescendo. When she was first named President-Elect Biden’s running mate, I posted a video of her judiciary committee questioning under the caption: “Reminder that our nation’s next Vice President is a fierce woman lawyer.”

I am a proud member of the Bexar County Women’s Bar (BCWB), which for decades has fostered hope, optimism, camaraderie, and relationship-building among women lawyers in our community. This year, the BCWB, under the leadership of Brittany Weil, has provided our larger community with panels on anti-racism advocacy and systemic challenges to voting among our community’s most vulnerable, and has done the hard work of holding space for so many women as we held our collective breaths—not just in our nation’s elections, but in times when we, too, have been passed over. With them, I never walk into the room alone, courtroom or elsewhere. We are all in the room together, and the room is large. We are, as Harris remarked, singular but not solitary.

Ashley Senary Dahlberg is a litigator at Norton Rose Fulbright US, LLP. She is the 2018 recipient of the Belva Lockwood Outstanding Young Lawyer of the Year Award and a graduate of the inaugural class of the Bexar County Women’s Bar LEAD Academy. She currently serves on the LEAD Steering Committee.

A Bar Association of Kindred Spirits

By Natalie Wilson

Candidly, I was not aware of how deeply the election of Kamala Harris affected me until I saw her stride onto the stage in an all-white pantsuit, appearing in public for the first time as the Vice President-Elect of the United States. I had had the TV on all day, hungry for any election updates, much to the annoyance of my children. I was switching laundry from washer to dryer, listening with half an ear, when Harris took the stage, and I burst into tears. Reader, I sobbed.

Regardless of political differences, we can celebrate Vice President Harris as a skillful and zealous female attorney, irrevocably linked to the sisters-in-law who preceded her and those who will follow. We are a network of kindred spirits, bound by the visceral knowledge of what it takes to succeed in a demanding profession that is, in many respects, still dominated by (white) men. Nowhere is that sisterhood truer than among the women of the Bexar County Women’s Bar Association.

I am constantly inspired by the myriad ways in which the members of the BCWB support and encourage each other. From formal mentoring to business referrals to the LEAD Academy’s groundbreaking professional development course, the women of the BCWB are wholly committed to each other and the success of all women in our profession. The “mothers” of the women’s bar worked tirelessly not only to open doors, but also to ensure they stayed open for other women. Each generation of women who followed has built on those successes, seeking out or creating more opportunities to promote and celebrate each other. We hope you will join our bar association of kindred spirits as we continue the challenging, exhilarating, and necessary work “to improve the status of women in the legal profession by providing its members with diverse opportunities for leadership, mentoring, career development, and involvement in the greater legal community.”

White pantsuits are optional—but encouraged.

Natalie Wilson is a Shareholder at Langley & Banack, Inc. She is Treasurer- Elect of the Bexar County Women’s Bar, a graduate of the LEAD Academy, a member of the LEAD Academy Steering Committee, and the 2014 recipient of the Belva Lockwood Outstanding Young Lawyer of the Year Award.

Why the BCWB Is a Special Specialty Bar Association*

By ileta! A. Sumner, esq.

I had been licensed to practice law in Texas for a whole month in 1993 when I met a member of the Board of Directors for the Bexar County Women’s Bar (BCWB) at a holiday party for a different legal organization. After an hour, she talked me into joining my first bar association. What was unique about this group wasn’t only the projects in which it was involved. It was the people.

Three years later, I had a particularly nasty family violence case against a board-certified family law attorney who had a reputation for trying to terrify young attorneys. The night before my hearing, I had a panic attack. Thus, at 1:00 a.m., I called the woman who had been the President of the Women’s Bar when I first joined and explained my dilemma. She walked me through my hearing step by step until 5:00 a.m. Then, unexpectedly, at 9:00 a.m., she showed up at Presiding Court and attended my hearing with me for support. When opposing counsel saw that I had this well-known family lawyer in my corner, he stopped the game playing, and I got everything I had requested in my pleadings! That is one of the most special things about the BCWB. The more senior attorneys really look out for the newbies, take them under their wing, and guide them through this maze of navigating a complicated career and still maintaining a rich home life.

When my husband and I adopted our first son, I had no fewer than fifty calls on my answering machine from members of the BCWB. I kid you not. Many bar associations have successful projects. However, not many of them have members who care so deeply about the members who carry out those projects. Coming from out of state—from out of the country, actually, since my husband had just been stationed in Spain for the United States Air Force right after I graduated from law school and before we moved to Texas—I could not have been more lucky and more thankful to have found such a group of women who weren’t snarky and catty, but were absolutely talented, caring, and special themselves. May this tradition continue . . . .

*In the 1990’s, affinity bar associations were known as specialty bars.

ileta! A. Sumner, esq. was President of the San Antonio Black Lawyers Association in 1999 and of the Bexar County Women’s Bar in 2002. She was the creator and original General Counsel of the legal department for the Battered Women’s Shelter in San Antonio. Her full-time employment came to a halt when she contracted viral cardiomyopathy in 2005. However, she currently volunteers with various local public interest organizations.

The Next Generation of Leaders

By Riley Daniels

Kamala Harris made history as the first Black American, Asian American female Vice President-elect. She will also be the first Black American, Asian American female President of the Senate. This means she will be in a position to advocate and draw attention to concerns of minorities in the country through both the executive and legislative branches. I was moved by her opening remarks: “But while I may be the first woman in this office, I will not be the last.” These words made me proud to be a liaison between the Bexar County Women’s Bar (BCWB) and the St. Mary’s Women’s Law Association because that relationship helps women law students gain access to the tools we need to become the next women in positions of influence. Whether we are receiving mentorship from local female attorneys or attending Zoom Webinars to learn how to be an advocate against racism in the workplace, our members are preparing to become leaders in the legal community and beyond.

The leaders of the women’s bar form professional bonds and friendships so strong that they unintentionally coordinate their wardrobes for celebratory events. From left to right: Marissa Helm, Leslie Hyman, Tiffanie Clausewitz, Ashley Dahlberg, and Lisa Alcantar, each a former Officer or Director of the Bexar County Women’s Bar.

photo courtesy of Ashley Dahlberg

Riley Daniels is a third-year law student at St. Mary’s University School of Law. She is President of the Women’s Law Association and a Staff Writer for Volume 23 of The Scholar, which is St. Mary’s Law Review on Race and Social Justice.

BCWB: Decades of Nurturing Leaders

By Barbara Hanson Nellermoe

The Bexar County Women’s Bar (BCWB) was formed in 1983, the year I was licensed, and I joined the organization a couple of years later. The most extraordinary women served in leadership positions as I was gaining my footing, and the opportunity to connect with such spirited leadership has only increased in the ensuing decades. And if you note the members who go on to other leadership posts and then return to their homing signal, it is here. That should tell you something about this bar association. It endures.

Barbara Hanson Nellermoe, served as editor of Equal Times, BCWB President in 1996, and was honored to be named the Belva Lockwood Outstanding Lawyer in 1998. She was elected Judge of the 45th District Court, 2003-2014, and continued as a senior district judge thereafter.

The San Antonio Bar Association is excited and proud to begin a journey of collaboration with local affinity bar associations to bring you thoughtful articles and information about the profession you serve, the community you live in, and the opportunities we all share. If you’re involved in an affinity bar association and would like to contribute to San Antonio Lawyer on behalf of your association, please get in touch! Email June Moynihan at junem@sabar.org.