Twenty-six years after my clerkship, it’s the small things I remember, including: The power of red grapes: I didn’t know that they were Shirley’s secret manna. How many nights and weekends did we together feed on those little red things, which kept us going…
I moved to Berkeley, CA after my clerkship and have lived and worked here in the Bay Area ever since. I am an energy regulatory attorney, and a partner at Ellison Schneider Harris & Donlan, a small energy/water firm with offices in Sacramento.
I had the privilege to clerk for the Chief when she had only been on the bench ten years. One classic story is that she called me on a Saturday morning to offer me the job. I was dating a guy in Nashville where I attended law school so was on the fence about a move. I asked if I could have the weekend to think it over. She said, “No, you can have an hour.” So I quickly called around and talked to my Vanderbilt professor who told me she was a rising star and I should accept a […]
She was an incredibly important influence on my life, and I’ve always been grateful to her for what she did for me. She taught me how to write – and how to work very, very hard. Even more important, she was my first real professional role model, and she helped to convince me that I could achieve anything I set my mind to. I had really never known a female lawyer before – and certainly not one who was so eminent and so brilliant. During my first year of law school at Columbia (in 1981), there was not a single […]
By far the most interesting case I worked on was State v. Gilbert, 115 Wis. 2d 371, 340 N.W.2d 511 (1983), which dealt with the issue of whether a child, who was the only witness to her mother’s murder, had to testify. The court established standards for arranging courtrooms to accommodate children. This work on this case set me on a career of dealing with children who are victims of child abuse and neglect. I was not involved in elections! (1982-83) However, one of the fun things Shirley authorized was playing Dreidel in the back of chambers. I introduced the […]
I am surprised to hear that Shirley ever took a nap. I think she was 45 years old when I worked with her in 1979. She slept only 3 hours a night. We worked long hours, sometimes past midnight, and before there were computers. My mother took my two-year-old son for two months so that I could finish the cases by the end of the session. Shirley said be consistent in using a word in a decision and don’t try to be creative like in an English class. We kept one law student away from a case until we thought we were […]
When Kirbie Knutson and I began clerking for Justice Abrahamson in September 1977, she was not only the newest member of the court, but also — since hers was the only chambers with a magnetic card typewriter — the most technologically advanced. I point this out to dazzle Peter Chen, whose recollections of Shirley’s “ruthless” commitment to ever more research, analysis, revision, and re-editing we all can relate to and love. Just imagine “ruthless” before computers, Peter! (Spoiler alert: She made it work.) I am not surprised that so many of Shirley’s clerks have written to describe, with fondness and […]