Episode 160: Judith Clark
Presiding Judge of the Riverside Superior Court
00:57:37
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Show Notes
Judith Clark is the Presiding Judge of the Riverside Superior Court, one of California's busy and growing trial courts. With host M.C. Sungaila, she shares her path to the bench, offers advice for those considering serving on the bench themselves, and underscores how being open-minded about opportunities and the guidance of mentors led her to become a prosecutor and, later, a judge. Listen in for some thoughtful insights from a remarkable judicial leader.
Relevant episode links:
Riverside Superior Court , Judge Callahan – Past episode
About Judith Clark:
Judge Judith Clark began her term as the Presiding Judge of the Riverside Superior Court in January 2023. She previously served as the Assistant Presiding Judge while presiding over the Domestic Violence VCD calendar in Riverside. Judge Clark was appointed to the bench in 2005 by Governor Schwarzenegger. Over her judicial career she has handled criminal trials, VCD/Master Calendar courts, family law, and served as the Presiding Judge of the Juvenile Courts, handling dependency and delinquency matters.
Prior to her appointment, Judge Clark served as a Deputy District Attorney for the Riverside County District Attorney’s office for fifteen years. She spent most of her career as a child abuse and sexual assault prosecutor and finished her career with the office as Supervisor of the Training and Writs and Appeal Division.
Judge Clark earned her Juris Doctorate from the University of San Diego School of Law. She holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Criminal Justice with a minor in addictions. Prior to entering the legal field, she worked as a counselor at VisionQuest and Excelsior Youth Center, both residential treatment centers for youth.
Transcript
I'm very pleased to have joined us as the Presiding Judge of the Riverside Superior Court, Judge Judith Clark. Welcome.
Thank you. I am so pleased to be with you.
Thank you for joining. As we were talking about before, this is a momentous time for the California trial courts in terms of the number of women presiding judges of major trial courts, including Southern California, your court, Los Angeles, and Orange County, which is a first. I'm so pleased to have you join in that setting.
Thank you. It's my honor that my court has entrusted me with the responsibility of leading the Riverside Superior Court. I'm excited to be part of this particular time for the big five Southern California courts. In January 2024, all 5 of the Southern California courts, San Diego, San Bernardino, Riverside, Orange, and Los Angeles will all have women presiding judges at the same time, which is an exciting and momentous occasion.
I'm so glad to have you join and those other county courts as well join and share their journeys because it's amazing. This is also to encourage others to consider if they are judges to become presiding judges of their courts also. I wanted to start first with the fundamental question of how it is that you got into the law. How did you decide you wanted to become a lawyer or go to law school?
It was not anything that I ever thought about. I don't have any lawyers in my family. I never knew any attorneys along the way in my educational process. I was working as a juvenile counselor. A number of the youth that were placed at the facilities where I worked often had interactions with the court, either the family court or the juvenile court. I would often accompany them to court.
As I often sat in the hearings and listened, I was inspired by the intellectual challenge of the law. I liked watching the lawyers formulate their responses to the judge and how they addressed some of the issues and the advocacy portion of what I saw. When I decided that I wanted to do something other than make a full career out of being a juvenile counselor, I decided to go to law school. Even at that time, I had no idea what type of lawyer I would be. I didn't have any preconceived notions. I didn't even know what was possible.
It's interesting down the line that you became the presiding judge of the juvenile court. That must have been a full-circle moment.
It is. Surprisingly enough, when I first became a lawyer, I went to work for the district attorney's office also here in Riverside County. I specifically asked not to be assigned to the juvenile court because I wanted to do something different. I was a little afraid that I would get pigeonholed into doing something very connected to what I had done before. At any point, as a district attorney, I never worked in a juvenile court assignment.
I did end up working with kids but as a child abuse and sexual assault prosecutor. I had lots of young victims that I dealt with, so I was able to put my counseling skills and some of those discussion skills that I had to work on in that context. It was full circle when I finally, as a judge, came back to coming into the juvenile court arena and I thought, “That brings me 30 years around here to when I would have sat in the back of a courtroom into what was happening.”
You never know. You said, “I became interested in the process and got into law school.” Who would have thought that you would have been in that seat in the juvenile court 30 years later?
It never would have crossed my mind.
Also, I wanted to get some idea of what it was like to be in the district attorney's office and be a prosecutor for those who might be considering that or maybe who haven't considered it but should for some of the experience they can get and the impact they can make.
It wasn't something that I intended to do. When I first started going to law school, I anticipated that I would be a corporate business or international business lawyer. My father was in the Air Force, so I traveled a lot as a young person, so I thought I would do something in the international business arena. It was a fluke that I ended up at the district attorney's office. I am happy to share that with you in terms of how that occurred.
Coming into the Riverside County District Attorney's Office at the time I joined was a rapidly growing office with lots of opportunities for advancement. The district attorney at that time was very focused on establishing an office of long-term professional prosecutors. People stayed for a long time. They made a career out of being there. It was not a stopping point for a couple of years’ worth of litigation experience. People were committed to being there for the long haul.
When I joined the district attorney's office, it didn't take too long into my career that I moved into the sexual assault and child molestation unit. I did that for a long time. It was very difficult, challenging work, but a tremendous amount of personal satisfaction from it. After I finished that, I supervised some offices. I enjoyed that a lot, supervising younger attorneys and running an office. I was fortunate to be entrusted with a tremendous amount of discretion in how I resolved cases on behalf of the office. I eventually ended up being the training supervisor and having the opportunity to train all the new hire attorneys for the office for a number of years. My experience at the district attorney's office was phenomenal. I loved working there.
It sounds like you had a range of opportunities to grow there too, because of the way that the office was being managed. They wanted people to stay and to grow into and across different roles in the office.
The office had a process by which people were regularly rotated to different assignments. If you found something that you liked and you wanted to stay, they typically tried to accommodate that. They also encouraged people to move to different assignments and learn different areas of the law. We do the same thing here in the Riverside Superior Court.
In lots of courts where you are assigned when you start, maybe that is where you finish your judicial career, but that's not true for us here in Riverside. We rotate our judges on average about every 3 years, maybe 5 depending on the assignment. That helps our judges to have a much better understanding of how the court system as a whole works and how different divisions of this court influence our community and impact the residents of our community and a more global perspective on what it's that we do.
It's great training for leadership within the court. If you are going to be in your position or the assistant PJ position, it's much better to have that firsthand knowledge of different aspects of the court.
That cannot be overstated. Understanding how different divisions work and how the actions that I, as the presiding judge, take in one division are going to impact other divisions of the court is significant. Probably one of the most beneficial things that a court leader can have is a broader perspective on how different divisions of the court work.
One of the most beneficial things that a court leader can have is a broader perspective on how different divisions of the court work.
Hearing your experience in that regard, hearing Judge Hernandez's experience, and others who have come into the presiding judge role, they all value that. It seems to me like a corollary if you are the CEO of a particular court system, as in a business or a corporation, it's better if you are the leader of it to have a very broad and wide understanding of what's going on in different parts of the company and then come into leadership. You are better prepared for that.
That's very true. One of the primary responsibilities that a presiding judge has is to allocate the resources of the court. I'm sure you will hear from virtually all of us that we are woefully under-resourced to meet the needs of the legal demands of the community that we are trying to meet and serve. Having a better understanding of what happens in different divisions and what the true burden and responsibilities are of a judicial officer in those assignments helps to be able to more meaningfully and accurately allocate the resources of the court.
It helps with the triage sometimes.
We are always in a state of triage.
It seems like more often than not, something like that is going on. In your role as presiding judge, do you also keep a calendar or you don't do that?
I don't. I am the reserve judge to fill spaces. When people call in sick or we have been unable to secure an assigned judge for a particular assignment, I may be called on to go over and cover different courtrooms. I do go take over courtrooms and cover courtrooms, but it's intermittent. We are big enough that I'm busy enough on a daily basis with the administrative aspects of the job that holding down a calendar at the same time would be impossible.
I wanted to ask that because sometimes that's what people miss in the presiding judge role. It is not being able to be a judge presiding in cases yourself in that timeframe.
It’s hard to step away from that. I do enjoy it. The week of July 4th, 2023, I covered in court for that whole week. It was nice to be back over there, calling cases, seeing people, seeing the lawyers, hearing the arguments again, and reminding myself how to articulate rulings and what to happen. You don't want your skillset to fade.
You don't want your skillset to fade.
It's good to have those opportunities to do that. I'm sure once you go back, you adjust pretty quickly, but it's that first moment of, “I haven't done this for a while.” How did you come to decide to apply to the bench, and what attracted you to serve in that way?
Riverside had a number of positions that were open. I had reached a point at the district attorney's office where I did not think that I would probably move forward necessarily from that role. I was approached by a judge that I had done a number of trials in front of. He asked me if I had considered it and I said, “No. It had never crossed my mind.” I didn't know anybody. I knew new judges that I had appeared in front of, but I didn't know any judges to have a relationship with them.
He was a judge that I had done a number of cases in front of. He had spoken with justice from the court of appeal about me and that justice happened to have read a number of my cases as they were up on appeal. He recognized my name, so I was asked if I would go to lunch with the two of them, and I did. They talked to me about how they felt that I would be someone who should think about coming to the bench.
My biggest concern was that I didn't know anybody. I didn't have anybody to advocate on behalf of me in that pursuit. I also didn't live in the main legal community of Riverside County. I didn't participate in a court down here, so I had no context outside of the criminal court environment. I didn't know any of the civil lawyers. I didn't know anybody in family law. I was concerned about whether I would have broad enough support across the legal community for that to happen. They were very encouraging and I decided to give it a try. It happened to work out.
That's great. It is great to have people encourage you and approach you like that. They see something in you that you may not see or may not know, “That would be a great use of my skills,” or, “I have a particular knack for something.” To have judges recognize that in you and suggest that you consider serving in that way is always great and is hard to say no to.
I had to think about it. I didn't want to say no to people whom I respected tremendously, but at the same time, it was intimidating to think about saying yes because I didn't want to do it and fail.
There's the component of, “It is great that people see this in me. I'm confident in my skills,” but because of the way judges are chosen here through the appointment process, which isn't true in other jurisdictions, the next question is, “Do people who are making those decisions know me? Can I get through that gauntlet?”
That's very true. You find yourself thinking about that. It's also a huge life change whether you are in private practice or whether you work for an agency like I did to stop being in an advocacy role and commit yourself for the rest of your legal career to being neutral in a different role. You have to be ready to take that step. That is not something that people should gloss over lightly when they make the decision because it's a big change.
That's a good point. It's helpful for another reason to have judges approach you and suggest this because they will say, “Here's why we can see your skills applying well here.” They can also describe what it is like to be on the bench. Sometimes, people have an image of it like, “That would be cool. I'd like to wear a robe, make decisions, and all of that,” but what does it mean to be in that role? Will that feel comfortable for you? Are you ready to switch to that role? That's an important consideration to make.
Of all the things you mentioned, the one that is most important to me is how they thought about whether they wanted to be the person who is responsible for making the decisions. I meet with lots of individuals who are deciding to submit their applications. I try to make sure that I'm always available to them. The thing that I talk to them about is to set aside the notion of the title, the job, or what you are giving up. Look instead to what is the role and the true responsibility of a judge.
The true responsibility of a judge is to make decisions. If you are a person who is going to be in a stranglehold because you know there's more information out there that you don't know, you will never have 100% of the story. You won’t, but you cannot not decide. People need their judge on their case to make a decision, the best decision they can with the information that they have in front of them at the time. You have to be a person who's able to do that. It is recognizing that there may be things that you don't know. You may find out later some additional facts that you wish you would have known but you can't be afraid to make the call. That's the thing that I emphasize to people most when I talk to them. Do you want to be in that role?
There are two things there. There's the one who makes the decision. You have to be comfortable bearing that responsibility and the consequences of that because you are affecting real people and their lives and the community at large in a ripple effect way as a trial judge. The second part of that is, especially at the trial court level, are you comfortable making those decisions in an imperfect environment where you are like, “I'm going to make this decision with the information I have. I have to make it. I'm not able to get all the story I might like, but I'm still going to have to decide.”
That’s exactly it. You have to be comfortable with both aspects of that to do this job.
You can think about the differences between trial and appellate lawyers. Being an appellate lawyer, I'm like, “I enjoy it because I know the whole story.” I don't know the whole story, but I know the whole story of what happened in the trial court and that's what's being reviewed. I have that and the appellate ices have that. They know they can't go outside the record, so they are dealing with what they have there. In the trial realm, you feel like, “This is the part where we are gathering the evidence in the record.” You are feeling like, “Did I miss that one more thing?” It would have been nice to know, but you are not presenting the case. The lawyers are.
You have to be comfortable with the notion that you are not the advocate. Be comfortable with the fact that it is not your responsibility to bring the evidence to court. It is your responsibility as the judge to evaluate what is placed before you to do the best job you can of weighing that evidence in light of the burden of proof or the question that is in front of you. Make the best decision that you can based on what you know but not stepping out of that role of being the judge. It can be very challenging.
That's especially true, but it doesn't matter what division or what category of cases you are talking about because cases in every division of the court have significant impacts on the litigant's lives. Whether it's a very serious criminal case that you are deciding a significant sentencing question on or whether it is a small claim preceding for that litigant, that is significant for them. It requires a judge to be able to make a reasonable decision based on what they have to go on. You have to want to be in that role because it can be challenging. There are decisions for which we lose a lot of sleep.
Judge Callahan on the Ninth Circuit was on the show. She was a state trial judge. She still says she thinks about some of those decisions that she made then says, “I hope that was the right one.” You have to be prepared to take that on and maybe think about it. You will be thinking about it years later, too. It's a challenge. I always think about, too, that at the trial court level, you may not have a law that's precisely on point either. You are also navigating that saying, “I'm going to do the best I can on the precedent I have,” and decide that. There are two layers to think about.
Judges need to recognize that that's what the appellate court is for. Who is there to tell us if we got it wrong? If so, I don't take that personally. I’d be like, “I didn't get this one. Tell me what I need to do or a different way that I'm supposed to interpret or apply this. I can do that.” Many of the decisions come down to being solely within our discretion. It has to be a person who's willing to make the decision. First and foremost, that's what people need to think about.
Are you at a point in your life where you want to do that? I often have individuals talk to me about considering coming to the bench. The thing they want to tell me about is how many cases they have tried, how many matters they handle, and how much they think they know the law. To me, that's less important. What I care about is do you have the skillset to research the law about some people you don’t know, but do you have the ability based on your experience level to weigh evidence, figure out how that comes on, apply a burden of proof, and make a decision? It is not, for me, about whether you have tried all these significant things. It's, do you have the underlying skillsets that are necessary?
That's something that, as an appellate lawyer, resonates with me because we are constantly taking on cases with different issues in different areas of the law. One day, it could be a probate. The next day, it could be a family law question. The next day, it could be a business dispute, a contract question, or a tort question. To me, I'm like, “We need to figure out that particular area and have the best way to present it.” You need those same skills as a judge.
You look at somebody with my background, having been exclusively a district attorney my entire practicing legal career, to come into the court, my first assignments were in criminal. I was very comfortable right out of the gate with the legal aspect of what I was doing. I have clear memories of the day that my presiding judge came in and told me I was being transferred to family law. I was like, “I have never seen a family law. I haven't thought one bit about civil procedure or civil discovery since I studied it for the bar exam. This is going to be quite the learning curve.” Third is, do you have the skillset to take that learning cross and do you have the work ethic to do it? That's what matters.
Does it excite you to do that? Do you like that? Do you like moving between those? In your court, and particularly in a lot of courts, it's true. You may have one assignment in a substantive area that you are familiar with, but you may have another one later.
It has turned out to be the best thing that happened to me. What I encourage all of my judges to embrace from the standpoint of court leadership, it's essential to know how other divisions work. To keep this job fresh and to be challenged, excited, and motivated by what you are doing, taking on a new subject area is like starting again. It excites you in what you are doing. It helps to avoid things becoming rote or automatic.
When things become too automatic for us, that's when we tend to slip off how precise, careful, and specific we are being. Maybe we tend to take a few things for granted and not recognize the significance of this issue for this litigant that is in front of us. By making it new and different, we stay at the top of our game.
That's an important component of it as well. Learning the wide impact of the courts and different subject areas that keep it fresh for you also keeps you on your toes. You are more aware of those things because they are newer to you as well. You never know what you might enjoy or appreciate because you don't know until you are in there.
I had a friend who was on the Superior Court in LA. She had been a federal prosecutor. She ended up having a family law assignment and she loved it. She said, “This is amazing. I love it. I can use a lot of my finance skills and accounting skills that I used in white-collar cases in the family law setting. I never would have imagined it, but it's a good fit.” She had no idea. That wouldn't have been her first choice for an assignment, but it was a great one. It was perfect for the skills she had.
I had the same experience when I was proteming on the Orange County Superior Court. I was in the collaborative courts. I have very minimal criminal law experience and certainly not in a court that is so different from pure adversarial courts. It was so amazing to learn about that and to learn how to bring people together and all the different parts of the system together. To see people come out of a very difficult time of their lives and blossom and see that ripple effect across the community is very rewarding.
I would say that about my time in the juvenile court. I never anticipated that was an assignment that I would end up taking as a judge. More than anything, what going to family law taught me is that I was not too old to learn to do something new. When I came out of family law, I went back to a criminal assignment. I took a little break from that, and then after about two years, I could sense that I was already ready for a new challenge. I volunteered to go to the dependency court assignment, which is pretty work-intensive, but I was excited about that and I loved it. I’d go back in a heartbeat when I'm done being the presiding judge. I found that work so satisfying. Yet, it was nothing I had ever anticipated doing as a judge.
What's satisfying for you about that in particular?
I found that I felt that what I was doing as a judge was important. I was making sure that the children were safe. I felt that it was my responsibility to recognize how important it is to keep a family together if you can safely do that. It was important that the judge was the gatekeeper to ensure that the government did not overreach in terms of their involvement with a family. Recognizing that to sever a family's relationship and sever parental rights changes the trajectory of this child's life in insurmountable ways and it changes the trajectory of an entire family.
It was so important for a judge to be very mindful of how significant these decisions were and that they could not be made carelessly or cavalierly. It was important that the judge was there to ensure that the agencies involved with this family were discharging their responsibilities to this family appropriately that the families were given every opportunity to be able to be reunified with their children and that the family unit remained intact.
It is so important for a judge to be very mindful of how significant decisions are, and that they could not be made carelessly or cavalierly.
At the same time, it is recognizing that it was so important to have the judge be someone who was prepared to make that hard decision to terminate parental rights and sever this relationship if that's what the situation warranted. That's not an easy thing to do, but judges in that role need to be courageous enough to do that because that's what is so necessary in the best interest of those children. I felt like all the decisions I made, whether it was putting families back together or whether it was taking the step to say, “This child is going to move forward in a different way,” were such important decisions. It was valuable work.
Impacting that child's life and the family, and then thereby impacting the community, too. It’s good to be reminded of the humanity of the decisions that you are making, too.
Those are the decisions that keep you up at night. They have long-lasting implications for the child, the parents, and the extended family members. It has ripple effects on so many individuals. It's so important that every aspect of that decision is carefully and meaningfully thought through.
For some of us, we like to hope that we bring a humanistic aspect to the law that's not black and white cases, that the law has an impact, and you are having an impact. It is to take that seriously but also to look at the whole person and the whole family that's in front of you when you are making those decisions.
That may mean that you are deciding that maybe it's nothing more specifically articulable than, “My gut is telling me to give this person a little bit more time. With a little more support and a little more time, I can get this family where I need them to be.” You have to be willing to trust that instinct and go there. At the same time, you will have people arguing in front of you, “All I need is a little more time,” but you have to be able to trust your instinct that what has already happened makes it clear to you that that isn't going to change anything. The delay is causing more harm to this child than moving forward will. You have to move forward to make some of those decisions.
I can see why you appreciate that assignment so much.
It was a meaningful, rewarding experience.
That’s neat. You are right. I don't think that a lot of people think about that or know about that assignment or area of the law and the impact that it has. It's good to share that as well. We talked a little bit about what you would tell people who are considering the bench. I wonder. Is there anything else you would tell them in terms of preparing for the bench as opposed to being ready and understanding what's involved? Is there anything else that you would say would be good preparation for that role?
Probably in terms of what I would tell young attorneys, and I tell young attorneys when I have a chance to talk to them, is that from the very beginning of their career, the most important thing they need to recognize is that their reputation is everything. It was the best advice I got. I still remember it on my very first day as a certified law clerk, walking into court with my first supervisor. She made a point of telling me that no single case that I would handle and no single victim that I would advocate on behalf of was worth sacrificing my reputation with the court. I needed to recognize that from the beginning because cases would come and go, but once your reputation was set, it would follow you everywhere. It was probably the best advice I ever got. I try hard to emphasize that for young lawyers. Sometimes, they are too focused on trying to get that big win.
From the very beginning of their career, the most important thing young attorneys need to recognize is that their reputation is everything.
The short-term decision.
They want to have that gotcha moment in court where they catch the other lawyer and win, but that's not what matters when the time comes for you to put your name in for the bench. When the time comes for you to put your name in for the bench, people who are asked to evaluate you are not going to be asking, “Have you had three big verdicts? Have you had such big judgments that you have secured?”
What we are going to be asking is, “Are you a person who has been able to meaningfully work with the other side? Have you been able to consider the position of the other side?” We need to make sure that you are a person who can step into the role of being neutral and stop being an advocate or so intransigent in one position that you cannot listen to both sides of the argument.
People are going to be asking, “Are you someone that people could work with? Did you play fair when it came to discovery? Were you forthright about what you turned over and what you didn't turn over? Did you play by the rules in that regard? When you advocated before the court, are you a person who was forthright in how you argued things to the court such that your word can be trusted or your reputation was such that could be relied upon?”
Those are things that people are going to be looking at when they are asked to evaluate you in terms of whether or not you should be a judge and whether your behavior and temperament in terms of how you dealt with people and handled your responsibilities of a lawyer are going to translate to you being on the bench. People need to think about that if they have a projection to see being a judge in their future. It's good advice for any lawyer, quite honestly.
That's good advice overall.
If you want to think about coming to the bench, you need to think about the fact that your reputation is the most important thing that you will have. You need to be cognizant of that and protective of it all along the way.
That goes in the old-fashioned category of civility, collegiality, and all of that, too.
It is so important. The terms of being on the bench can be very challenging. Things are coming at you fast. Some of the individuals who will be in front of you may not live up to those same standards of professionalism or civility. You will be challenged to maintain the appropriate decorum for your courtroom and a person in your position every day. Your reputation speaks volumes as to whether you will be able to do that or not more so than whether you can look up the right answer or figure out what the law is and make the decision of whether you are going to be able to handle the demands of the job, which often don't have anything to do with what is the correct legal answer.
There are a lot of layers to it. That's an important layer, but there are others as well. That's great advice, in general, for those early in their careers to consider overall having a more collegial and professional approach to things instead of a win-at-any-cost situation.
The other thing that I would tell attorneys is they need to be open to doing something different. They need to recognize that they may be presented with an option that takes them down an unexpected path. That may afford them great opportunities for personal growth or insight that they might not have otherwise had. That is the key to how I ended up in the position that I am in. When I was in law school, my study group, the second year of law school, did a challenge to each other. We would all participate in one moot court competition that year. I happened to participate in the criminal law moot court competition and shockingly won.
It was Justice Huffman from the Court of Appeal who presided over the final round. When I was talking to him at the end of the competition, he asked me what I was going to do with my legal career. I told him I was going to do something in international business. I like to travel. He said, “Will you do me a favor? Have you thought about being a litigator?” I said, “No. I'm a little afraid of public speaking. I'm shy naturally.” He said, “You need to think about this. Would you consider clerking for a district attorney's office for your 2L summer? You should think about doing that. Get into a courtroom and see how you would feel being in a courtroom.”
I always anticipated that I would work for a civil practice. I'd do a lot of going to court here or there, but for a law and motion calendar, I didn't anticipate doing anything else. For whatever reason, I decided to follow his advice. I clerked for the LA District Attorney's office as a 2L summer law clerk. I was in court every day and I never looked back.
That was the change for me in deciding what the projection of my legal career was going to be. I wanted to be in court every day. I wanted to be a litigator even though I would have to take a deep breath before I walked in there to be ready to do all that public speaking. That's what I wanted to do. I have no doubt that that was one moment in time in my career projection that changed the direction of where I would end up.
It’s pivotal. It was important to be open to that suggestion.
That's important. For young attorneys, I encourage them that if they have an opportunity to take on a case in an area that isn't what they typically do or maybe if they volunteer with legal aid, the Bar Association, or whatever, expand the areas of cases that they would take. Even if they participate in the ends of the court or a league of lawyers, don't necessarily sit with the same people that you would always sit with. Force yourself to take a step in a different direction and see what it might bring. You never know.
Force yourself to take a step in a different direction and see what it might bring.
I had a similar desire when I went to law school. I was going to be an international business lawyer also. I discovered that it meant a lot of contracts, and I wasn't too interested in that. I found appellate law serendipitously as well. Being open to other things and not being too wedded to your initial goal if something else looks interesting is important. In your case, it completely changed that.
I like that in terms of Justice Huffman saying, “Try. You are not banking your entire career on this. Try this and see how you feel about it.” That's a good suggestion for people like, “I'm not asking you to commit to this whole thing unless you are sure about it, but try it out and see if it's something you would enjoy.”
I would have easily dismissed that or talked myself right out of it. If I had sat at a panel discussion where different law offices and a district attorney's office were there talking about opportunities in those firms, I wouldn't have even listened to the district attorney. It wasn't even on my radar. It was listening to him and having him encourage me to invest that one summer. As he said, it wasn't for a lifetime. It was one summer. How fortuitous it was that I did that.
Also, the point about you might not have listened to it if someone was on the panel or said, “That’s not my interest.” There's a difference between your gut and your feeling. You know what feels right for you. Sometimes, having someone describe what it's like to them is different than you are doing it and feeling like, “This feels like my place. This is the place where I can make a difference.” At different points in your career, that can change, but you can't have that feeling unless you are in there doing it to see if you feel that way about it.
That's what he was saying. It was like, “I'm not going to say you do something because I say it because I'm an appellate justice, but I will bet if you tried that, you would have that feeling.” Having people suggest that and have you make your own decision but with input from others is invaluable. That fits in the category of various mentors, sponsors, and folks like that that we meet throughout our career that we are blessed to have that guidance from. That's amazing. That's such a great story. I'm glad you shared that because it is important.
In law school, it is easy to find out about certain routes because people come on campus and talk about them. For others, it's not the case. It is to be open to other options that you might enjoy. There are so many different things you can do with your law degree. I hope that people are open about that and not focused. Law school wants you to be very focused in certain areas.
You are so busy you don't have time to think about it.
You are like, “What's here? I will do that.” It is being open to different ways. That's part of what I hope from the show, too. It is that people can hear all the different things that people have done with their legal training, some of it even not in the law anymore, but making a difference with nonprofits or leading in other ways in the community. Legal training is an important foundation for being able to do that.
Thank you so much for joining the show and sharing your insights, advice, and tips for those thinking about the bench but also your journey in the law. I appreciate it. Usually, I close with a few lightning-round questions, so I will run a few by them by you. The first one is which talent would you most like to have but don't?
I would like to be more tech-savvy, quite honestly. I am very technologically challenged. Having a better understanding of how technology works and having it be more innate for me is a conscious effort to figure out how to run a lot of this stuff. I'm sure I miss a lot of things. That's the thing I wish I had. It is the skills of a teenager to be able to operate technology.
It's a different language, isn't it? The way some of the next generation is operating seems innate. It is like another language. It would be nice to be more fluent in it. Who is your hero in real life?
I don't have a real personal specific hero, but I will tell you that the people that I admire and view as heroes are the judges who led their courts during the pandemic. I'm coming in here as the presiding judge right at the end of the pandemic and trying to bring my court out of that. Having been the APJ during the height of the pandemic and also having been on our court's executive staff for the presiding judge even before that, what those individuals were expected to do in unprecedented times. We talk about being methodical about what we do and thinking about the impacts across the visions of the court and how our decisions are going to impact them.
They didn't have the luxury of that. Decisions were being made fast. They were unprecedented decisions that dealt with often implications to people's constitutional rights with this overriding consideration of incredible potential health consequences to everyone who touches our court. I have a tremendous amount of admiration for the individuals who led their courts during that period of time at every level because it was so challenging for them. They should be admired and respected for the work that they do.
It's so important to have the courts be open and accessible during that period of time while balancing all the other concerns and issues that you mentioned. Not having the luxury of time to make a lot of those decisions. I can understand why you say that, especially in your new role. You are like, “That's something.” I'd like to always look at the silver lining of that, which is more technology. There are more ways of access that weren't in place previously and may not have been funded previously if there hadn't been an immediate need. It is working out the best way to integrate that and keep that as an option within the system. It has certainly accelerated in the state courts in particular.
The court can be sometimes slow to move from how we have always done it. The pandemic forced us to adopt new technologies and ways of doing things that we otherwise might have been very hesitant to do. It has been something a number of us have talked about. When I heard judges, when we were coming out from the worst of it saying, “I can't wait to go back to normal,” there was a group of us saying, “I hope we never go back to normal.” We want a new normal because this has gotten us over that hurdle to be embracing how we can look at new technologies to be able to better serve the people who come in contact. I don't want to have that stall. I want to have that continue to progress.
Recognizing that there's a balance, doing things in person, and having people here is important in that face-to-face interaction. There are so many things that the court does that can be done remotely that help us to better serve the population who comes before the court. We need to embrace that. We need to find that balance and be willing to embrace that and move forward. I hope we do that.
You have things in place, so that's good to be able to call on them when necessary. It's important to continue to have the physical. I know when I come to court and I'm arguing in the courtroom, it feels so different. It's like the sense of the public aspect of what's going on. It is not just the private dispute between the litigants but the public importance of the decision-making and all of that. We still need that, but having alternatives for other things that don't require that weightiness is nice and good for those who might have to travel far to come to court as well. It's a good balance. Who are some of your favorite writers?
I enjoy a Tom Clancy novel. I like Steve Berry's novels a lot. I like novels that are far away from what I do for a living. That's so very different. I have always liked those kinds of novels and continue to read them. I don't have quite as much time as I used to have, but that's all right.
It is nice to have a little escape every once in a while. Those are the kind you can read a little bit and come back to, so that's good.
It has something to do with this. Taking that time to read is an escape from this.
There's an Illinois Appellate Judge, David Ellis, who co-writes books with James Patterson, which is interesting. I was like, “That must be an escape for you from your judicial decision-making, opinion writing, and all of that.” He is a neat guy. That's one way if you are a writer to have some escapism and collaborate with someone like that.
I'm not ready to go quite that far.
For those of us who like to write, it's great. I was like, “How do you do that on top of the judicial workload?” He enjoys it, so he makes time for it. For what in life do you feel most grateful?
The thing that I am most grateful for is that I have always felt that I had a very stable support system behind me. I'm fortunate for that. In my family growing up, I had that even though my family moved a tremendous amount, I didn't have the same environment that I was in all the time. Nonetheless, I felt that I always had my parents there strongly behind me. I have been fortunate in that with my family as my husband, my children, and my extended family. It makes a real difference knowing that there's always somebody there as my fallback of people who are going to be there for me. A strong support system is the thing I am most grateful for.
It is important to have that foundation and home base.
It is easier to be willing to take that step into the unknown and try something new or something different if you know that you have a strong support system, therefore, you do it no matter what. Inevitably, in deciding that you are going to undertake something new, you are going to make some mistakes. It can be hard to be willing to take that chance if you are on your own.
That's particularly admirable when people do that. You have to do that. It feels like a bigger leap when you don't have that support behind you.
We try to make sure that new judges who come onto our bench know that we are here to be a support system for them, we have their back, and we recognize that they are going to make some mistakes. We want to minimize that and do everything we can to avoid that, but it's going to happen and we are going to be here for them. That's important for them to know that.
That’s a great culture to have because you want people to grow. It's hard for lawyers because we are trained that we have to be perfect. That's from law school, like, “We don't make mistakes,” but you do. When you are coming into anything new, you can't know everything perfectly. You learn it through experience and doing it. Having your colleagues be a safety net in that regard and a foundation for you helps you grow. That's a great analogy between the family and the court support system. These are the last two questions. Given the choice of anyone in the world, who would you invite to a dinner party that can be with us on this plane or not and in any era?
This is the question that I thought a lot about. I will tell you that the two individuals that I would like to have dinner with more than anyone are Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Justice Antonin Scalia. I will tell you why. In my experience not only watching our society, dealing with young people who are absorbed in social media, especially in my role with the juvenile court, and dealing with young attorneys. I see that our society is so quick to adopt an approach where if someone has a different answer or a different position about an issue than we do, society is quick to label that person as your enemy. People become extremely defensive in that regard and unable to seek common ground because people are being put under the label of being their enemy rather than being a person who has a different opinion.
When I look at Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Antonin Scalia, these were individuals, at the height of their careers, who were recognized as experts in their interpretations of constitutional issues before the court. They are probably as opposed as any two justices could be on so many issues. Yet, they were reported to be very good friends.
I would love to have dinner with them to talk about how they were able to bridge that divide and why it mattered to them to step beyond their differences to find their common ground. The thing that is impacting this society more than anything else is our unwillingness and inability to do that. That would be a dinner discussion worth having.
They exemplify that. I'm sure you'd have some discussion of opera as well. That was important to both of them and probably one part of their common ground also. It is that commitment that they had to wrestle with problems together even if they came out on disparate outcomes in a particular case. There is also the importance, particularly in a court like theirs where you have a collegial set of decision-making. No one person can decide anything, so it's important to continue to work well and to continue to work together like that. Plus, it would be fun. They are lively, so it seems like it would be a fun dinner party as well.
Of all the things I worry about in terms of the future of our community, it's our inability to find our commonalities because we are so focused on our differences. That's very true for how I watch young lawyers interact. When I was coming up as a young lawyer, we all went to lunch together regardless of which side of the table you advocated. We all knew each other. We celebrated the birth of our children and all those things. I see that people are more guarded. They are more aligned with one camp or the other. That can negatively impact people's willingness to meaningfully consider the argument of the other side. That's to the detriment of our community.
You might fight hard in court. On a personal level, it is collegiality and friendship in some cases. There are noticing the differences, but then judging those differences and using one difference as the judgment of the whole person and not looking at the bigger picture can lead to some things you might not want.
It impacts the collegiality and civility of legal practice as a whole. It tends to undermine those objectives.
This is the last question. What is your motto, if you have one?
During the last couple of years, I had the opportunity to watch the Ted Lasso series. There is one particular episode of that series that resonated with me. The title of that episode was Be Curious, Not Judgmental. That struck a chord in me and has been something I have adopted. I deal with that when I'm talking to other individuals about their ideas for the court when I'm talking with other stakeholders about how they view problems and issues that we are dealing with, or when I am addressing individuals in the community.
When they ask questions, I try so hard to approach how I respond and how I interact with them. I am trying very hard to be curious rather than being so quick to be judgmental. Often, it turns out that position, thought, or idea is motivated from a very different place than what my first gut reaction was. That seems to be something I have adopted, which is to be curious, and not judgmental in how I deal with issues.
That is a great mindset to have in so many contexts but particularly in the leadership role because you might discover something. If you are curious about where somebody's concern or comment is coming from, you might discover something else. It may not have been how they expressed it, but you might uncover something that you are like, “We should do something about that,” or, “This is an interesting new way to handle this issue,” which may not have been the issue they identified with. They see a different part of the elephant so they describe it that way. I love that. That's great.
Sometimes, we hear something and it resonates with us.
That is a perfect way to conclude our discussion. I hope that others will take that particular perspective to heart and maybe use it in their lives as well. Thank you so much for joining the show. It has been enjoyable. I appreciate your doing this.
It is my pleasure. Thank you so much for the invitation.