Don’t tell attorneys Paula Grace and Mary Albert that litigation
is men’s work
HOLLISTER
– You’d think a town that boasts about having a militia might
not be the perfect place for two independent-minded urban women to
open a law firm.
You’d be wrong.
Don’t tell attorneys Paula Grace and Mary Albert that litigation is men’s work
HOLLISTER – You’d think a town that boasts about having a militia might not be the perfect place for two independent-minded urban women to open a law firm.
You’d be wrong.
While there is a smattering of women attorneys in Hollister, Grace & Albert is the only firm in San Benito County run by women partners. But as Paula Grace notes, Hollister is more accommodating to powerful women than first blush would suggest.
“We just elected the first woman district attorney, the county’s chief administrative officer is a woman, 50 percent of the county counsel’s office is women, the former city attorney for Hollister is a women and the city manager of San Juan Bautista is a woman,” Grace said. “You see a lot of very strong women in San Benito County just going about their business.”
Grace and Albert see their gender as a plus in the legal profession, one in which the art of negotiation is so critical. They often like to quote former U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno: “I think women are better problem solvers. Women generally look at a situation and instead of ascribing guilt or innocence, they say, ‘How can I keep this from happening again?’ So it’s not a revolving door,” Reno wrote in the California State Bar Journal.
No, gender wasn’t the hardest challenge for Grace and Albert when they opened the firm two years ago – it was the newcomer stigma. Grace found she was considered a newcomer until she’d lived here for nearly a decade. Gender didn’t, and hasn’t, played a role nearly as challenging as breaking into a business network where people’s longevity in the county is measured not in years, but in generations.
In many ways, Hollister mirrors and sometimes exceeds national trends in women entering the legal profession. From 1951 through 1971, only 3 percent of the lawyer population were women. By 2000 that percentage had swelled to 27 and by the end of last year, nearly one in three attorneys were women, according to the American Bar Association.
San Benito County outperformed the nation with 36 percent of the attorneys registered with the San Benito County Bar Association being women. However, percentages applied to small numbers – there are roughly 40 attorneys registered with the bar in Hollister – will result in rapid statistical increases with each additional woman attorney counted.
While both women were cognizant of gender issues while opening the firm, neither of them viewed it as insurmountable challenges. Mary Albert came from a large law firm background, including Pillsbury & Winthrop, and Townsend, Townsend and Crew, which were on “the leading edge of gender neutrality litigation,” she said.
Grace, who hails from the world of corporate and nonprofit law, said she was often the only woman at the table during negotiations.
“I have a soft voice, but when you get into the heat of the negotiations, it doesn’t matter – [gender] falls away as soon as you come out swinging,” she said.
To Grace and Albert, expertise trumps all. There are some attorneys that hang a shingle and begin practicing “door law,” they said about attorneys who practice any branch of the law that walks through their doors.
Instead, they specialized in business, real estate, succession planning, estate planning and probate, and employment and labor law. With multigenerational families still living and working in the area, Grace & Albert have carved out a vibrant niche in helping families wind their ways through the maze of probate court, negotiating contested matters in probate, as well as being trusted advisors to the building and transfer of wealth and property.
Albert’s background in labor and employment law also has provided a valuable expertise for the fledgling firm. The firm offers training for employers on labor law compliance issues, and provides a special rate for nonprofit groups, which themselves face “a zillion compliance issues,” Grace said. The firm provides free educational seminars to nonprofits, and recently completed a seminar for Community Foundation.
The firm has built a slow, steady incline in business during the past two years, and may be looking at adding another partner in the future. But for now, Grace & Albert is focusing on helping families and businesses through arguably one of the most difficult periods in their lives. Grace only half jokingly describes much of what they do as “counselors at law.”
“We have Kleenex, and we use them,” she said.
