Yes, first of all, I had, I think, a non-traditional route to law school.
An entire thought process. I did not interview with any large firms or
small firms because I was married and planning to return to a town and
live with my husband wherever that was. I really had no clue what
lawyers did, and this is a true story about how I clerked for Woodrow
Jones. He was sitting in the Dean's office at Wake Forest, at lunch time
one day, and I walked in and I had on blue jeans and a t-shirt. Now it
wasn't a t-shirt with a slogan, it was before that time, but still it
was blue jeans and t-shirt. The secretary got me around the corner and
she said, "Do you know where your roommate is. We've got Judge Jones
here and he's supposed to interview her at 1:00, and he's here early and
the Dean's not here, and here we've got this federal judge sitting out
here in our office twiddling his thumbs." And I said, "No, I don't know
where Judy is." Then I took a deep breath and thought about what I had
on, and I said, "But I know Judge Jones because my husband has appeared in front of him and we live in the same
area, and I'll just come out and chit chat with him a little bit." I had
great trepidation of doing that considering the way I looked. I had not
signed up to interview with him. The reason was because he wanted a
two-year commitment, and at that point I really wanted to start a family
and wasn't sure that I wanted to give a two-year commitment. I had
interviewed at Legal Services, the Public Defender's Office and a couple
places like that. That's what I was looking at. Anyway, to make this
long story shorter, I walked up and introduced myself to the Chief
District Court Judge for the Western District of North Carolina, in the
Dean's Office at Wake Forest, in my jeans and t-shirt. It didn't seem to
faze him one bit, and he said "Are you going to interview with me?" And
I said, "No", and all of a sudden the truth popped out. And he said,
"Well, my goodness we can work that out. You can have a family and work
for me too. In fact I've been toying with the idea of having a permanent
clerk, and you live in Shelby which is thirty minutes from Rutherfordton
where I live, and that's something we could think about." Well, I mean,
I hadn't even given any thought to this before this point in time. So,
we talked a little bit and he said, "Well, I'm going to interview here
today, and then I'll call you." That was probably around the first of
November, and he called me and I drove up to Rutherfordton, I remember
during the Thanksgiving break of 1976. I went up to his house, met his
wife. I had heard the rumor that he really wanted people who lived in
the area, because he found that if people weren't used to a small rural
town in North Carolina that they were very
unhappy. He didn't want an unhappy clerk. So, I interviewed with him. He
didn't offer me the job on the spot, but I felt like I would probably
get it, and sure enough he called me a couple days later and offered me
the job. It was one of those situations that I was in the right place at
the right time. I didn't plan it. Somebody was looking after me when I
couldn't look after myself.
I did clerk for him for two years. It was a very positive experience. He
is a wonderful man. It was a great transition for me from "liberal law
school" to the real world. He was very much a real world person. Plenty
of people described him as conservative. I think he was a true democrat,
and thoroughly enjoyed working for him. We often had discussions about
women, and minorities and I think I learned a lot from him, and he
learned a lot from me. I remember when I got ready to leave, and I told
him I was going to be working at Moore & Van Allen. He had had a
woman clerk before, but she ended up teaching school. I was the first
woman lawyer who he really knew intended to go practice in the court
room. I always remember that she shook my hand and looked me in the eye,
and said, "You can do it." So, it was really wonderful. He is very
formal, and I remember the first year at Christmas, there was a
secretary and a baliff and me. He chose to have a baliff to drive his
car rather than two clerks. He had also been on the bench a long time,
and he did not need much criminal work at all. I did mostly civil. We were trying to decide what to do for him for
Christmas. We are Southern, and you do a little token. So, we decided to
send him a poinsettia, and we did it at noon on the Friday before we
were going to be out for the Christmas holiday. He came back after lunch
with hot cookies that I assume he had his wife bake during lunch,
because he just couldn't stand it that we had sent him something and he
could not reciprocate. He was that type of a Southern gentleman and
person. The fun thing for me was, he mellowed very much during the two
years I was with him. I think one of the reasons he mellowed is that I
went through a divorce the last couple of months, and he was very
protective of me. I might have resented that at some other time, but I
needed . . . My father died many many years ago, and so it was nice to
have an older man. He took this very professional, but we became much
closer friends because of my adversity and he became much less formal.
As the years have gone by, he has become much less formal with everyone
I think. Now, he may not like me saying that. I mean it certainly as a
compliment. He is also the silver haired justice. He really did practice
what he preached; worked hard; never expected me to do something he
wouldn't do himself. So, anyway, I clerked for him, and as a result of
clerking for him all the doors opened up for jobs.
I interviewed in Charlotte. At that point I was separated. Interviewed in
Charlotte and was really very fortunate. I really interviewed up and
down the East Coast, and finally decided that my sister lived in
Charlotte, I had a great network, and I had several great job offers.
So, after taking a couple of months off, my last
day of work for Judge Jones was the 29th of August, and I think I went
to work around Thanksgiving at Moore & Van Allen. As I told the
Moore & Van Allen folks, they were getting me refreshed from a
vacation that they had paid for. After clerking for Judge Jones and
going through a divorce I needed some time. Took some time off and
travelled, and all the things I would recommend to all starting out
lawyers. You can be a lawyer for a long time, but you can't travel
around the world once you get into your practice. So, I took a couple of
months off and didn't travel around the world, but drove my car by
myself from North Carolina to Maine and I thought that was a pretty big
deal. Visiting friends along the way. Took about a month, and then did a
couple of other things I always wanted to do. Climb Mt. LeConte, spent
the night up there. Did some other backpacking and hiking. In the fall
it was really nice. There I was, this is '97, we were at '79, so
eighteen years ago right about now I started working at Moore &
Van Allen.