Atlanta Injury Lawyer Blog
Like Mother, Like Daughter
By
Robin Frazer Clark
“Motherhood: All love begins and ends there.” – Robert Browning
Every lawyer who has a child often wonders “Will she become a lawyer, too?” “Will he choose the law?” During their formative years, you try not to push them in one particular direction; rather, you support them to find their passion, whatever that may turn out to be.
We know. We’ve been there. My husband, Bill, and I are fortunate to have two children. Our son, Chastain, is an artist, sculptor and now a Lecturer at the Georgia Tech School of Architecture. We are beyond proud of him. Not surprisingly, our daughter, Alex, chose law school and is a Double Dawg. I say not surprisingly because she has always shown a passion for Justice for those less fortunate, for those who have not been seen, and for equality for those who are treated unfairly simply because of who they are. An unjust situation motivates her more than anything. We are also incredibly proud of her.
We raised both of our children “in the State Bar.” By that I mean they traveled to their first State Bar of Georgia Annual Meeting in car seats and joined us for many Bar meetings as they grew up, including the Annual in Savannah in 2012 when I was honored to be sworn in as President of the State Bar. We believed that taking them to State Bar meetings and Georgia Trial Lawyers Association meetings would be good training for them socially, regardless of what profession they ultimately chose. And that has turned out to be true. They both experienced (or endured) many dinner conversations in which law and politics were at the center. Sometimes when they were little, I would take them to arraignment calendars to show them how people got into trouble and, hopefully, to scare them away from that. By the time they were in high school, they had sat in many courtrooms and felt comfortable around judges and lawyers.
There is a storied tradition in Georgia of sons of lawyers going to work with their fathers. I can name numerous father/son lawyer teams, including my good friends Tommy and Adam Malone, Dennis and Matthew Cathey, Bill and Ryles Stone, Ed and Spencer Tolley, Jay Cook and Jay W. Cook, Blair and Brian Craig, Jonathan and Jeffery Peters. In a bit of a twist, there is the father/daughter duo of Lance and Rebekah Cooper. This list could go on and on.
In 1994, professors at the University of Albany studied the long-standing tradition of a son going to work for his father at the father’s law firm. They shared their findings in a law review article “In My Father’s Footsteps: Career Patterns of Lawyers.” Their research focused on the father/son dynamic and did not even mention a mother/daughter law practice, as such seemingly didn’t exist even in 1994. Reasons given for children joining their lawyer-parents in practice suggest “[p]ride, tradition, and the desire to follow in a parent’s footsteps indicate the successful transfer of the profession’s and the family’s values and expectations. The opportunity to join a parent and the passing down of the family law firm from one generation to the next are evidence of the transfer of human capital within the present opportunity structure.” Wasby, Stephen L. and Daly, Susan S. (1994) “”In My Father’s Footsteps: Career Patterns of Lawyers”,” Akron Law Review: Vol. 27 : Iss. 3 , Article 3.
In the 30 years since this article, mother/daughter law teams are becoming a bit more widespread. There is the rather famous mother/child duo of Gloria Allred and Lisa Bloom, but, interestingly, they don’t practice together. There is the mother/daughter Cornell Law Firm in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The firm of Milner & Markee in San Diego, California is a mother/daughter team. Salley & Salley is a mother/daughter law firm in Metairie, Louisiana. The Irby Law Firm in Keller, Texas is a mother/daughter team. There is the personal injury firm Power & Power Law Firm in Anchorage, Alaska that is a mother/daughter team. So there are a few out there, but not many.
Now there is a new breed of parent/child lawyer team in Georgia, that of Mother/Daughter. The first such team I know of is Kathy McArthur, whose daughters, Lindsey Macon and Holly Stephens, now both practice with her. I know Kathy is overjoyed to have them working with her. Now I am proud to say that I am joining these new ranks of mother/daughter law teams as my daughter, Alex Clark, is joining me in the plaintiff’s personal injury world of litigation following a two-year stint in the Staff Attorney’s Office of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. And I think it’s a mutually beneficial arrangement: Alex is (hopefully) learning from me and my 36 years in the practice and I am learning from her new ways of looking at things and doing things. The additional benefit to me is that I now get to see her five days a week. Alex and I have a mutual respect for one another. We enjoy being together, which is critical when you spend so much time together. We hope as a mother/daughter team, we can provide a new and fresh perspective on the law and approach to serving the needs of our clients.
As we were raising Alex, I was always fearful I may not have been the best parent possible because I worked a lot, and Alex spent many hours in my office. Seeing her practice law beside me now has alleviated those fears, and I am one proud and lucky mom.
