HOW OTHERS SAW MIERS IN 1996 . . . On December 16, 1996, Harriet Miers was profiled by the Texas Lawyer in an article that's available on Lexis. The occasion for the profile was Miers' election as president of her 191-lawyer firm,  Locke Purnell Rain Harrell.

The profile offers some interesting tidbits: why Miers was not "universally liked," her commitment to pro bono work (including a firm class action on behalf of death-row inmates), and her play on the law firm's softball team.

I can't publish the whole thing due to copyright concerns (and I don't think anyone else has either), but here are some representative quotes from the lengthy profile:

Miers,  51, is well known as a tough commercial litigator who has juggled an exhaustive list of civic activities while racking up a string of professional firsts, including first woman president of the Dallas Bar in 1985 and first woman president of the State Bar in 1992-93.

. . .

"You can't be in a more favorable position in Harriet's life than to be her client. She really fights for her clients," says Texas Supreme Court Justice Nathan Hecht, Miers' friend and sometime business partner since their associate days in the 1970s at Locke Purnell.

. . .

Miers played marathon games on the firm's softball team and is remembered as the first woman to take part in the firm's retreat at Possum Kingdom Lake. Despite some trepidation all around, the outing apparently went smoothly, and yes, Miers was given her own bedroom.  "She laughed with us and kidded with us. She was anything but overbearing," Locke Purnell shareholder Joe H. Staley Jr. says. "She just instantly was one of the guys. Always has been."

. . .

Although Miers had considered working in public policy, she found her love in litigation. "I definitely think once you've clerked for a federal judge, litigation gets in your blood and you develop an admiration for the system, for those who serve in the judiciary, and there's no question that clerking led me eventually to want to do trial work," she says. "I've had her in court. [She's] very good, very cool, very deliberate, very poised, never gets rattled, very centered and has a very matter-of-fact way of communicating to a jury that's very effective," says 192nd District Judge Merrill L. Hartman.

. . .

These days, Miers mainly represents corporations, including Microsoft, Walt Disney Co. and SunGard Data Systems Inc. Despite her duties as president of the firm, her goal is to continue spending half her time practicing: "It's my first love in terms of a career." She feels she's coming close to meeting her goal, but says, "That's really measured against more than an eight-hour day."

. . .

Kirk Watson, chairman of the Bar's Legal Services to the Poor in Civil Matters committee and a partner in Austin's Whitehurst, Harkness, Watson, London, Ozmun & Galow, says he and others in the legal services community had been a bit leery of the conservative Miers, but were pleasantly surprised by her tenure as Bar president. "I think there was a general feel that Harriet might not have been as supportive of legal services as we would like, but we were surprised. She has a bunch of fans," Watson says.

. . .

Miers considers it a professional responsibility to do volunteer work, such as the class action other Locke Purnell lawyers filed in October on behalf of death-row inmates. In their suit, the attorneys argue that Texas shouldn't be eligible for new, tighter restrictions on federal habeas rules because the state doesn't have an effective system for appointing and paying lawyers for post-conviction proceedings.

. . .

Those who've watched her work say she's capable of juggling her many activities. "She dedicates the attention that needs to be dedicated to them, instead of just buzzing around doing what needs to be done to get by," Lang-Miers says. Darrell Jordan, president of the State Bar in 1989-1990 and a senior partner at Hughes & Luce, tells of a State Bar board meeting a few years ago in Wichita Falls, followed by a party at a nearby ranch. Miers went to the meeting and party, drove to Dallas that night for another commitment, and then made the nearly 150-mile drive back to Wichita Falls in time for a meeting the next morning, he says. "I thought, 'Wow, that's above and beyond the call of duty,' " Jordan says. "She is a very, very hard-driving person. She spends enormous hours at the office doing all the things that she does -- very disciplined. . . . And she's unflappable."

. . .

Probably the harshest criticism leveled at Miers stems from her only foray into pure politics: her two-year term as an at-large member of the Dallas City Council from 1989 to 1991. She didn't run for re-election after she won the State Bar presidency. It was a tumultuous time on the council, with contentious issues such as the Wright Amendment, Dallas' light-rail system and council redistricting all in play. Although none contacted would speak for attribution, some of her former council colleagues still criticize Miers as uncommunicative and worse. Yet others praise her.

. . .

Says Miers: "I'm not universally liked by everyone because I have very strong views of what's right and wrong, and I take my positions seriously and I fight for them strongly. And the role on the council was different in the sense that you really, in that arena, have to take the positions you feel are in the best interest of the city. And on a variety of very controversial issues, I felt very strongly about them and took a very aggressive position, and as to some of the council members, that made me unpopular because they were on the other side of those issues."

. . .

In her role as president of Locke Purnell, Miers will have to work to differentiate the firm from its similarly sized Dallas rivals. The firm recently completed an internal strategic plan that includes emphases on client service and responsiveness, technology and community impact, Miers says. "One of the challenges I think we have as a law firm in Dallas, Texas, is to continue a process that we have begun, which is to convince institutions that are accustomed to going to New York or Los Angeles for counsel that not only can we do the work -- sophisticated work -- as well, but we are more cost-efficient," Miers says.*

. . .

Friends uniformly describe Miers as generous, warm, tactful, a good listener. But her tendency to carefully deliberate and measure her words before she speaks can give her a distant air. For example, when asked about Gov. Bush's "pit bull" comparison (made in presenting her with the Anti-Defamation League's Jurisprudence Award in June), Miers covers her face with her hands and laughs. But asked whether she sees herself as tough, she will say only, "I have been so characterized by others."

*Maybe this explain something I'm confused about: why Miers wrote frequently on the issue of multijurisdictional practice, as documented by an Althouse commenter to this post, to the apparent exclusion of most other issues.

Comments

[David Giacalone]

Evan, I'm sure glad you had "copyright concerns," otherwise, I'd be up all night reading these excerpts. Looks like "fair(ly comprehensive) use."

[Beldar]

Very nice find, Evan, thank you.

FWIW, I've had a couple of cases before the quoted state district judge, Merrill Hartman of the 192nd District Court of Dallas County. He's as experienced and professional a judge as I've ever met, a straight shooter, and not prone to grade inflation.

[Beldar]

Oh, and re multi-state practice: That would be a topic she'd be interested in, I'm sure, both because the Texas Bar was looking at it (unauthorized practice implications caused by the invasion of out-of-state megafirms opening big Texas branch offices in the 1990s) and because of her own firm's interests in out-of-state offices. There were protectionists mutterings, some who wanted to use the Bar and UPL committees to throw up entry barriers; ultimately came to nothing, though, at least for office practice lawyers who aren't filing court pleadings on a regular basis.