The Long and Winding Road

In some retirements, the lucky worker gets a gold watch, a pension, and a party. In my case, on a not especially memorable day in December 2016, nothing earth-shattering happened. I telephoned the Massachusetts Board of Bar Overseers to inform them that I did not plan to renew my license to practice law. They briefly explained how to remove my name online from the rolls and ended the call with “Congratulations, Attorney Levine.”

I felt a slight flutter in my chest. Maybe this was an event worth noting after all.

IN THE BEGINNING . . . .

I became a divorce lawyer in the early 1970s as three trends gained momentum:

*Women were graduating from law school in growing numbers. In my section of the Class of 1971, we numbered in the single digits, but that changed rapidly year by year. It felt like a tidal wave.

*It was considered a coup to hire a female attorney. After all, anyone singled out by gender for grilling in class by a sadistic professor had to be smart, tough, motivated, and aggressive.

*In 1970, California was the first state to legislate “no fault” divorce. During the next ten years, it spread through every state, reaching Massachusetts in 1975.

Father Robert Drinan, a Jesuit priest, was Dean of my alma mater, Boston College Law School. A brilliant scholar and inspiring teacher, he presided in an era of significant social and political change, a human rights activist on fire for social justice—antiwar protest, civil rights, equal rights for women. The first priest elected to Congress, he served five terms.

His support of abortion rights angered church leaders and they pressured him intensely to resign his office. He finally did so in 1981 when Pope John Paul II himself demanded that all priests withdraw from electoral politics under threat of expulsion from the priesthood. A devoted Jesuit priest through and through, he accepted the ultimatum.

Father Drinan will always be a hero to me and my classmates. He was also my family law professor and the outgoing man with the collar who sat at our table in the cafeteria, eager to engage intellectually with us, the law students he saw as future leaders for just causes. Our school participated in a major Boston anti-war demonstration and supported draft resisters in sanctuary at the Arlington Street Church.

This was my time—a female, a newly admitted attorney, an avalanche of new divorces, and the inspiration of a great teacher.

After I passed the New Jersey Bar in 1971 and Massachusetts in 1973, then served a clerkship with a Judge in Newark, I returned to Massachusetts to marry my husband and signed up for public defender cases. I rented office space with another new attorney. His wife was our secretary and receptionist.

My parents and grandparents traveled from New Jersey to attend our office opening. This was a big deal, their daughter/granddaughter starting out in a professional career.

💼 I wore power suits with high heels, toted an attaché case, and marched into the fray. I can admit now that I had no idea what I was doing! I had to learn how to run a business, navigate court rules and procedures, devise courtroom strategies, promote my new practice, and find clients at a time when advertising by attorneys was strictly prohibited. I got my name around by speaking to women’s groups about their rights under the new divorce laws.

I received an unusual fee from a client for my very first divorce case—a professional pool table with the related equipment. I can’t disclose the circumstances for confidentiality reasons, but I do remember that the table was a monster to move. After many years of use, some cue sticks went missing and the felt finally wore out, along with my interest in keeping it.

Our technology at the time was an office telephone with extensions, filing cabinets, an IBM Selectric typewriter, carbon paper, and yellow-lined legal pads. The next wave of technology, a Rolodex, a Xerox machine, and an answering machine. Then, word processors, voicemail, and fax machines. The car phone and desk computer with the blue screen (DOS) were exciting developments.

My career is partially defined by the march of technology through the last third of the twentieth century.

But for me, the biggest challenge of conducting a law practice was in finding a sane balance between work and family.

When I married in 1972, I immediately acquired two stepsons in our household, then a son and daughter of my own in due time. Back then, daycare facilities were non-existent and we had to find neighborhood stay-at-home moms with young children willing to take care of ours. Some were fortunate to have extended family close by. We did not.

But if Flora or Margarita were not available, or a child had to stay home, I flew into a panic trying to find a sub. More often than not, I got on the phone to cancel and reschedule the day of meetings and appointments. If I had to appear in court, it was imperative to find coverage. My stress level escalated dramatically under these circumstances..

I remember the day the school called (in the early 70s) to say that my stepson forgot to bring a towel for his swimming lesson at the Y. Women were entering the workplace and taking on new careers previously closed to them, but in our upscale North Shore community, many still stayed at home. Well, I was not one of those.

Why didn’t they find a towel somewhere instead of making a kid stay on the sidelines because his working parents couldn’t drop everything and get over there in time? I tried to explain but the message I essentially heard was, “You’re on your own, lady.”

The world wasn’t quite prepared for the two-income family or the single parent, in attitude or resources. Nor was it unconditionally welcoming to women in the legal profession.

ATTORNEY ON TRIAL . . . .

In 1975, at the age of thirty, I was pregnant with my son Max. In those days, pregnant women wore shapeless sacks in flower patterns or pastel colors, not my style. I managed to find a more business-like plaid top and slack outfit to wear for clients or court.

🏛 In one of my first cases, when I stepped into the courtroom—none too gracefully in my third trimester—the judge singled me out and said,

“Madame Attorney, what are you wearing?

Puzzled at his question, I replied diffidently, ”I’m pregnant, your honor.”

“I see that. I do not permit women to wear trousers in my courtroom.”

I knew I had to keep my composure and speak respectfully to the judge, for both my career and my client’s sake. He continued in a stern tone of voice, “I will make an exception this time—but don’t try that again!”

He motioned me with a casual wave of his hand to approach the bench and present my argument. I mustered all my mental strength to perform, tamping down my shock at his public scolding.

Okay, I told myself, this is what it’s like to be a lawyer. In those early days, it was natural to take the blame on oneself. I’d better learn to grow a tough shell. I need to learn the ropes. This is my initiation into the legal profession.

My body and appearance were fair game for attention and ridicule. Judge Z. had no sense of the impact for good he could have had on young people entering the profession. The word that comes to mind to describe his behavior is “dream-crusher.”

He denied my motion summarily and pounded his gavel. I felt everyone’s eyes on me as I exited the courtroom, along with the disappointment of my clients that they had hired this inexperienced attorney who the judge clearly didn’t like.

He had the power. He lacked the grace. He was no Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

I followed on the trail blazed by my Aunt Jean. She passed the bar in 1933 and, as a young widow, supported her daughter by working as an assistant prosecutor. She endured tremendous prejudice in the male bastion of the legal world through the 1950s but managed to move forward—to a point—by virtue of her formidable brainpower and survival skills.

At the time of the courtroom incident, my Aunt Jean alone truly understood how it felt to me.

TAKING DOWN THE SHINGLE . . . .

I arrived on the scene when it was still more of an individual effort for a woman to make her way in a career, given the unreliable social, legal, and community support. The environment for working families steadily improved in the form of preschools, after-school programs, and daycare centers. Just imagine a time when they didn’t exist. The prior generation of women (my mother’s) was expected to stay home during child rearing years—although volunteer work was acceptable.

Now, my daughter is an attorney, taking her little boy to daycare a few blocks away on the Upper West Side, her husband picking him up at the end of the day. If the daycare is closed for vacation, her firm provides coverage at a corporate facility as a benefit. She receives five months of paid family leave and her husband gets two. Children in New York City begin attending free public preschool programs at age four, an enlightened policy making the city for livable for working parents.

⚖ Looking back over the more than four decades since law school, I feel that I was part of something important, the world arcing for a time—as envisioned by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.—towards justice. It was a privilege to advocate for clients seeking redress or otherwise caught in the grinding wheels of the system. I hope that I made a positive difference in their lives, as family law is a helping profession.

Some will say that I was a pioneer too, in the style of my Aunt Jean, clearing the path for the next generation of my female colleagues, and then, further along the way, for my daughter.

It’s been an amazing ride. I remember the day it started, opening the letter with the decision of Boston College Law School to accept me in 1968. I remember the day it ended, with the phone call to the Mass Board of Bar Overseers when I made my own decision—to leave—in 2016.

Now, my day is mine. My life is mine, full of personal choices that I have earned the right to make. This time in life is a gift in which my creative writing endeavors are taking flight. I couldn’t be happier.

No regrets.

Essex County Bar Association photo (in my forties)