• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 782 0

and became a popular stopping-off point for my colleagues when they returned from upstairs. We talked about assignments and about the partners for whom we worked; we shared office gossip. The long hours and work pressures sometimes led to squabbles, but they were few and reconcilable. Occasionally, the five of us socialized together. More often I spent my leisure time (weekend evenings) with my friends from law school and one of my colleagues from Wald, the only other new black associate. She and I became good friends, perhaps because of a shared sense of isolation. Until late in our first year there, we were the only black women in the firm, and despite Wald’s progressive atmosphere, there were partners who, rumor had it, resisted working with us.

The work I did there had to do mainly with business law. The firm represented major corporations in matters of trade, environmental, and banking law. There were some exciting projects at Wald’s, but none were included among my assignments, many of which were in the area of banking law. This was not considered the most interesting or extensive part of the firm’s practice, so there wasn’t much competition among associates to do it. Nevertheless, I found it challenging, and I was learning an area which I had not studied in school.

One project on which I spent considerable time was a banking law manual. It generated no billable hours, the key measure of accomplishment in the law firm. The project was done pro bono, as a way for the partner with whom I was working to showcase his knowledge of the subject with the hope that that would generate new client interest. It was an admittedly dry subject, particularly for me, for I was behind the scenes and would not be credited with bringing in the clients even if the project was successful. But after weeks of long days pulling together the material and drafting the text, the partner with whom I had been working left the firm, unexpectedly taking the project and my unfinished work with him. I had no clue that he was leaving or even that he was dissatisfied with the firm.

After my main project left the office, I worked on a number of other matters. They were minor and required little ongoing contact with specific partners. Not surprisingly, by the spring of 1981 I had not developed a real niche for myself at Wald. And of course the key to success in a law firm is to do precisely that, as early as possible, by doing well in important projects with successful partners or significant clients. In my first year at Wald, Harkrader I had done neither.

There was no overt discrimination to account for my failure to establish myself early on, but on some level, I began to question whether I would ever truly long to do the firm’s work. Some of the work was intellectually stimulating, but I felt very little personal investment in it or in the process by which I might ultimately become a partner. And though there were those who made me feel welcome, there were others whose skepticism showed. I did not fully understand its impact on me until years later, when I heard my colleagues ponder aloud whether a certain minority candidate would “fit in” on the faculty, or whether a certain woman was enough of a “team player,” or that “there was just something about” a certain Jewish candidate that someone “just couldn’t put a finger on.” I would watch, listen, and voice my disappointment as these ill-defined intangibles became more important than the very attractive tangible qualities of a candidate.

I never dealt with blatant discrimination at the firm. But there were rumors that, despite some positive reviews of my work from some partners, others preferred to work with the white associates. Some thought I was “too shy”; others “too aggressive.” And though I worked on some good assignments, many were pro bono. I did not receive the “choice assignment,” but rather was assigned to work with partners like the banking expert, who was thought to be difficult. Certainly, no other partner stepped in to take me under his or her wing or to teach me about functioning