Author: TSA Press

Ed. note: This is the latest installment in a series of posts on motherhood in the legal profession, in partnership with our friends at MothersEsquire. Welcome Jennifer Kleier to our pages.

Not long ago, a friend shared an example with me that she believes illustrates the difference between mothers and fathers. The example went something like this: There is only one piece of cake left and three children. A mother cuts the cake into three equal pieces and gives one to each child, taking nothing for herself. A father cuts the cake into four equal pieces, gives one to each child, and takes one for himself. I later shared her example with my husband and he was, rightfully so, very insulted. The point of her example was to demonstrate how the mother is a better parent because she was willing to sacrifice, or be a martyr, for her children. To me, it’s the perfect representation of the idealistic and unfair expectations we place on mothers. I’ve found that quite often those same expectations extend to women as lawyers and it’s just as unfair.

I started my legal career in 2010 as a public defender. It was my dream job at the time because I saw it as an opportunity not only to gain valuable courtroom experience but to help others much less fortunate than myself.  I knew being a public defender wouldn’t be easy but had no way to appreciate the actual sacrifices it required until I was in the thick of it. It demanded long hours for little pay while representing clients who often don’t appreciate you, don’t respect you, and don’t listen to you. More often than not, my days ended with me exhausted, stressed, and unsure as to whether anything I had done that day actually made a difference. The more I sacrificed for my job the more I took on the role of a martyr, a view which was reinforced by others. I can’t tell you how often I would tell people what I did for a living and would hear a response such as, “Wow, that’s such a tough job. And it’s so impressive that you can do it.” Hearing someone acknowledge your sacrifices feels good. But it’s dangerous because it has the unfortunate side effect of creating a false feeling of superiority, devaluing the work that others are doing.

I gave birth to my first child a few months before my four-year anniversary at the public defender’s office. Coming back from maternity leave, I felt like I was drowning. Between work and being a mother, I was overwhelmed with trying to meet others’ expectations of me. I felt like my worth as a mom and a lawyer was being judged solely by the sacrifices I was willing to make. My physical and mental health began to decline and I knew I had to make a change.

In 2015, an opportunity presented itself and I left the public defender’s office for private practice. I joined a small, newly formed law firm where I was the only associate. The two partners in the firm were both male and had been practicing for decades. It was a much different work environment, yet I struggled to get rid of the martyr mentality. I continued to feel like I had to be everything for everyone, all the time. Since that’s an impossible task, I always felt like I was failing.

After giving birth to my second child in 2016, I finally began to realize that simply changing jobs wasn’t enough. I had to take affirmative steps to change my mindset. Every day presents new challenges but I have made significant improvements by employing the following techniques:

1) No longer expecting others to read my mind. I work hard to listen but also be direct about my feelings and needs.

2) Recognizing that I have choices and no longer expecting that I will be rewarded for suffering.

3) Identifying my unspoken expectations of myself and others and asking whether those expectations are reasonable.

4) Accepting that not everything will turn out the way I want and appreciating others regardless.

5) Seeking help from others.

6) Learning to set effective boundaries.

These strategies have been successful not only in my law practice but at home as well. When I employ them consistently, I give myself the opportunity to succeed versus constantly sabotaging myself.

I also came to realize that neither my clients nor my children need me to be superwoman. And that by feeding into the idea that they do, I’m doing a disservice to myself, to them, and others around me. I have sacrificed and made hard choices both for my children and my clients but its important that my needs and desires are respected too. By not making myself a martyr, I am teaching my children that while my love for them is unconditional, being part of a community requires a delicate balancing of everyone’s needs. Setting a good example for both my children and my clients will help them to be more successful in their future endeavors. And hopefully, just hopefully, everyone can enjoy a piece of the cake without any guilt.

Earlier: Mothers At Law: Achieving Meaningful Success In The Legal Profession

After graduating from the Brandeis School of Law in 2010, Jennifer Kleier served the public by working as a public defender for the Louisville Metro Public Defender’s Office. Jennifer entered private practice in 2015 and is a partner in Karem & Kleier Law. She practices in the areas of criminal defense, family law, personal injury, and estate/probate law. She is an active member of both the Kentucky Bar Association and the Louisville Bar Association. Jennifer helped to create the Louisville Bar Association’s Gender Equality Committee and currently serves as its chair. She is a City Councilor for Audubon Park, Kentucky, is a member of the 2019 Louisville Bar Association’s Leadership Program, and a member of the Women Lawyer’s Association in Jefferson County. She was also honored to be an associate member of the Louis D. Brandeis Inn of Court from 2016-2019. She’s a proud mom of two beautiful girls, two dogs, two cats, and married to a loving and supportive spouse. In her free time, she loves to hang out with her family, read, bake, and do just about anything active.

* The lawyer for an indicted Giuliani associate is seeking to step down because of his client’s inability to pay his fees. [The Hill]

* Speaking of Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor is facing backlash for falsely claiming on Facebook that he is a “former attorney general of the United States” even though he never held the high post at the Justice Department. [Daily Beast]

* An attorney who was accused of assisting a jailhouse drug smuggling ring has been accused of a hit and run as well. The attorney may be a criminal lawyer… [WTAE Pittsburgh]

* A disgraced Massachusetts lawyer has been sentenced to two years in prison for tax fraud. [Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly]

* Harvey Weinstein may face criminal charges in Los Angeles as well as his pending criminal charges in New York. [LA Times]

Jordan Rothman is a partner of The Rothman Law Firm, a full-service New York and New Jersey law firm. He is also the founder of Student Debt Diaries, a website discussing how he paid off his student loans. You can reach Jordan through email at jordan@rothmanlawyer.com.

Most Zimbabweans have been here before. The current inflation rate of 300 percent is well short of the 89.7 sextillion percent recorded in November 2008, and the shortages of fuel, the queues, and the 18-hour power cuts people now endure are familiar.

That doesn’t make it any easier to choose which child to send to school or to figure out where the food will come from if there’s another year with too little rain to nourish a household garden.

From the centre of the capital, Harare, to Zimbabwe’s suburbs and rural communities, The New Humanitarian encountered people who were getting by just fine not so long ago but who now have to reprioritise their needs in a day-to-day hustle for existence.

Many described the current crisis, in which almost eight million Zimbabweans – half the population – will be short of food by January, as particularly bad.

“In 2008, there was nothing in the shops,” said Jessica Pwiti, executive director of Amnesty International Zimbabwe. “This time, it’s everything [that’s wrong].”

The collapse in living standards has triggered a junior doctors’ strike to protest pay and conditions that has lasted more than three months and virtually closed public hospitals.

Cash-strapped city councils are unable to afford the chemicals to treat the water supply or to fix broken sewerage pipes, raising fears that a deadly cholera outbreak is just around the corner. And as schools hike term fees, parents are withdrawing their children – undermining their future.

“The crisis is becoming almost normalised,” said Pwiti. “The government is taking advantage of people’s resilience – it feels like it could go on forever.”

The accounts below are of three people from different walks of life trying to navigate the day-to-day realities of the current emergency.

What is the name of the lawyer who successfully defends Kris Kringle in the classic 1947 movie, Miracle On 34th Street?

Hint: Played by John Payne, the lawyer argued that Macy’s Santa Claus was the real deal.

See the answer on the next page.

Last week, evangelical culture in the U.S. was rocked after Mark Galli, the outgoing editor-in-chief of Christianity Today, the most popular evangelical magazine, issued an editorial calling for the removal of the current president from office. In explaining why he was issuing the editorial, Galli stated it was important before making his criticism to understand why the vast majority of Christians will nevertheless continue to support this president. One of the reasons cited by Galli for the continued Christian support, was the president “has done a great deal for religious freedom.” The reason why Christians need a great deal done for them when it comes to religious liberty is again, according to Galli, because there are sectors in “the United States” where Christians “are increasingly being disenfranchised.”

The claim that Christianity or individual Christians are under some sort of legal threat is often repeated by the president himself. In the current president’s view, he is the only thing standing in the way of government somehow taking Christianity away from all of his supporters. Nationally respected magazines have spread the same doomsday warnings about apocalyptic inquisitions that are just around the corner. Conveniently, the culprits or would-be perpetrators responsible just so happen to be the same group the administration literally blames for increasing every “social pathology”: nonbelievers, or those who reject Christianity and Judaism in particular.

Of course, it would be inaccurate to say Christians in the U.S. have never faced bigotry, even recently. On college campuses for example, Christian groups that condemn gay marriage as an abomination and abortion at any stage as equivalent to murder, face significant social backlash. But it is also important to acknowledge that the legal system has rightfully, and thankfully, prevented that backlash from becoming permanently institutionalized. Moreover, it appears the urge to use state power to silence disfavored speech on college campuses is a universal problem that includes the Christian right. The more significant point, however, is that if the legal threats faced by Christians are compared to what nonbelievers currently face, the argument that Christians are the ones who are under threat is turned on its head.

For instance, to my knowledge no state is currently trying to shut out all Christians by making nonbelief a perquisite for any official state act. Yet, just this year a federal court upheld a state’s disenfranchisement of nonbelievers from giving secular invocations. The court’s theory behind barring nonbelievers was “only theistic prayer can satisfy all the traditional purposes of legislative prayer.” This is not a neutral government position but a direct message of exclusion by a federal court to an ever-growing population of nonbelieving Americans.

In another federal court in Texas, a ban on “secular celebrants” from performing marriage ceremonies was recently upheld. Unless it can be shown that secular celebrants somehow harm religious celebrants or religious weddings, it is impossible to identify any state interest for banning secular celebrants from performing weddings for nonbelievers other than outright religious bigotry.  Yet, the federal court in Texas found no constitutional issue with a law that bans nearly a fifth of the Texas population from performing weddings based primarily on whether they subscribe to organized religion or not. There is simply no Christian disenfranchisement equivalent to the type upheld against nonbelievers in just these two cases alone, and I could go on.

In order to appreciate the degree to which nonbelievers are regularly demonized by government officials let’s engage in the experiment I suggested here. Simply replace the word “secularists” with “Christians” or “Protestants” from a speech recently given by the Attorney General of the United States and I suspect many evangelicals would be outraged. For example, what if a nonbelieving Attorney General said:

“On the other hand, we see the growing ascendancy of [Protestants] and the doctrine of [Christianity]. By any honest assessment, the consequences of this moral upheaval have been grim. Virtually every measure of social pathology continues to gain ground.”

Or:

“I will not dwell on all the bitter results of the new [Christian] age. Suffice it to say that the campaign to destroy the traditional moral order has brought immense suffering, wreckage, and misery. And yet, the forces of [Christianity] ignoring these tragic results, press on with greater militancy.”

Is there any doubt evangelicals would react to such statements by an Attorney General with horror and outrage? So why is it okay if the statements are directed at nonbelievers? The likely reason that many evangelicals refuse to acknowledge or take a stand against bigotry toward nonbelievers is they have a distorted, often repeated, inaccurate view that Christians are being “disenfranchised” or legally attacked by secularists.

Those advocating for secular celebrants in Texas are not trying to prevent Christian celebrants from being something that exists. Rather, they are simply asking that those couples who desire to have someone who shares their beliefs and values to be able to perform their marriage. As the Center for Inquiry’s vice president and counsel Nick Little puts it: “All we want is for our celebrants to be allowed to serve our community, without lying and pretending to follow a religion they do not believe in.” The fact one of our most populous states would deny nonbelievers the ability to perform this service, that attorneys would fight to maintain this denial, and that a federal judge would uphold it, should be enough to settle the debate about who is really under legal threat.”

Tyler Broker’s work has been published in the Gonzaga Law Review, the Albany Law Review, and is forthcoming in the University of Memphis Law Review. Feel free to email him or follow him on Twitter to discuss his column.

Easily, the most significant civil rights victory of the decade is the advancement of LGBTQ rights. The struggle continues always, but it’s likely that our children or grandchildren will not remember a time when gay people couldn’t get married.

If Republicans were smart, they would accept the righteousness and morality of the LGBTQ cause, and pivot towards embracing gay equality. Significant numbers of white gay men would likely come back to the Republican party, if the GOP just let them enjoying the trappings and privileges of being white men.

But, because they are Republicans, bigotry and intolerance always gets in the way. Gay marriage might have achieved what appears to be a solid legal victory, but there are other fights for equality and fair treatment under the law. A new report from Lambda Legal illustrates the efforts of President Donald Trump, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, and, in all likelihood Vice President Mike Pence have made towards making the federal judiciary into the board of directors of Chick-Fil-A. From NBC News:

A third of the more than 50 circuit court judges nominated by President Donald Trump since he took office nearly three years ago have a “demonstrated history of anti-LGBTQ bias,” according to a new report by LGBTQ civil rights group Lambda Legal, which asserts that the justice system is “now indisputably in a state of crisis.”…

“This is a fast-moving train wreck that — unless something is done now — could undermine civil rights protections for the next 40 years.” Sasha Buchert, a senior attorney at Lambda Legal, said of the pace at which Trump is filling the courts. “An entire generation of LGBTQ people seeking their day in court could be facing judges who have made no secret about their hostility to the rights of LGBT people, women and immigrants.”

The play here is obvious. Anti-LGBTQ laws are now, finally, generally unpopular. I mean, there are always going to be pockets of homophobia and they’re always going to be bi-curious politicians overcompensating with draconian legislative proposals. But, in broad strokes, singling out gay people for humiliation as a matter of law is frowned upon in this experimental establishment. The homophobes are an aging, insular minority and the arc of history seems to finally be bending away from them.

Unfortunately, that aging insular minority has taken control of the federal courts. And from there, they can institute nearly-dead hand control over the laws for a generation. We’re likely to see, this June, the Supreme Court re-interpret the Civil Rights Act to exclude gay people. Throughout the Circuit Courts, these Trump judges will not so much deny the right of LGBTQ people to exist (so long as that existence comports with their gender at birth), but deny the right of LGBTQ people to sue to protect themselves from bigotry and inequality in any meaningful way.

And from their lifetime perches on the courts, these bigots can frustrate LGBTQ rights, without any check or retribution from the emerging popular will.

Trump and McConnell’s victory is not yet complete. Any of the Democrats running for President can put a stop to this robed bigotry. Any of them.

A third of Trump’s court nominees have anti-LGBTQ history, report finds [NBC News]

Elie Mystal is the Executive Editor of Above the Law and a contributor at The Nation. He can be reached @ElieNYC on Twitter, or at elie@abovethelaw.com. He will resist.