Fall 2008 - Cumberland School of Law - Samford University

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attorneys, especially women, starting out.”
Pope says that young lawyers do interesting
things quickly in the public sector.
“Where else can you go and try cases right
away?” she asked.“Your experience there
can help you move into the private sector
and more responsibility, not to mention that
you’re doing something for the larger
good.”
Pope took a circuitous route to the
public sector, where she has been since
2003. She first pursued a federal clerkship
with U.S. District Judge James Todd in
Jackson,Tenn. She then practiced law in
Washington, D.C., with Webster,
Chamberlain, and Bean, doing intellectual
property work and finally representing nonprofits.
(Pope also found success in the
private sector. She served as president/chief
executive officer for the Parks-Belk
Company, a department store group located
in northeast Tennessee, and then as president
of Proffitt’s of the Tri-Cities, Inc., a
division of Saks, Inc.)
In 1996, Pope was the only female
candidate of 11 to run for U.S. Congress,
the first woman to run for Congress in her
area.Although she finished sixth, she says
that election changed her path.Tennessee
Gov. Don Sundquist saw the campaign and
asked her to work in his administration as
executive director of the Tennessee Film,
Entertainment, and Music Commission.
Later, she became commissioner of the
Tennessee Department of Commerce and
Insurance, a state regulatory agency with
broad responsibilities for licensing and
regulation of more than 97 professions and
commercial activities.
“I had a great experience at
Cumberland,” Pope said. She estimates that
35–40% of the students in her class were
women, but she had no sense of different
treatment at all.“It never crossed my mind,”
she said.
Role Models Sitting prominently on a
shelf in the office of
Shannon Barnhill
Lisenby ’97 is a placard
from the national suffrage
movement of 1919 that
reads:“Let women vote.”
She remembers her grandmother, born in
1910, telling stories about Lisenby’s greatgrandmother
attending women’s suffrage
rallies. Her great-grandmother struggled
with the notion of a woman’s right to vote,
but ultimately decided in favor of the
movement. Lisenby’s grandmother was
always quick to remind her six granddaughters
that women might have to work
a little harder, but they could have the same
opportunities afforded their male
counterparts.
“My parents tell me that at age 5, I
would put my hands on my hips and
declare, ‘I want to be a transactional
lawyer,’” said Lisenby, a partner in
the Birmingham office of Bradley
Arant Rose & White. Her practice is purely
transactional, with an emphasis on commercial
lending.“I don’t know where that
came from, since there were no lawyers in
my family,” she added with a laugh.
Lisenby recently was named one of
Birmingham Business Journal’s “Top 40
Under 40,” and she is president of the
Junior League of Birmingham.
“Developing the potential of women
in all careers is important to me,” she said.
“The legal profession has made great
strides, but that doesn’t mean we should not
continue to mentor younger women in our
profession and in others.”
Kay Bains ’80, a partner at Bradley
Arant, is Lisenby’s mentor. Bains tells young
women lawyers about her law school experience.
She graduated first in her class but
faced discrimination because of her gender.
For Lisenby, gender was not an issue at
Cumberland School of Law or in her
workplace. She credits her experiences to
the hard work of women such as Bains,
who forged the way for women to practice
law and have families, who demanded
equality for women in law firms and
worked tirelessly to prove that women
could excel as lawyers.
Although not an alumna, Janie Shores
had a profound influence on a number of
women graduates from Cumberland School
of Law. She was the first woman to serve
on the Alabama Supreme Court (1974–99)
and was the first female law professor at the
law school (1966–74).
Beverly Baker ’85 started
college at age 35 with
three children, and she
graduated first in her class
in urban studies at the
University of Alabama at
Birmingham.“I only took
the LSAT because Janie Shores suggested it
one night,” said Baker.“The test was being
14
given the next day, and Janie said they
would allow walk-ins.”
With some professors and classmates,
Baker felt her distinct minority status. Many
others were kind and generous. One of her
favorites was Professor Ben Hardy. She
remembers a time he called on a woman
who wouldn’t speak.“He pressed her hard,
‘Why can’t you speak in class?’” she said.
“People were outraged. He sat on the edge
of his desk and gave an impassioned speech
about why he used this technique. He said
he was preparing us never to be intimidated
in a courtroom. I was so impressed by the
way he dealt with her.”
When she graduated, Baker found a
job with George McMillan,Alabama’s
lieutenant governor and a favorite to be
elected governor. She also worked as a legal
secretary for U.W. Clemon when he
practiced law with her husband and Oscar
W.Adams, Jr. during a pivotal time in the
history of civil rights.
As chief diversity officer for Ogletree
Deakins, Baker sees gender issues from
many angles—race, generation, as employer,
as employee—all tweaked by the particular
nature of the profession.
“This is a very difficult profession
designed by men for men, slow to change,
slow to accept the reality that women are
colleagues, wives and mothers, in addition
to being lawyers,” she said.
Baker believes gender separation takes
less during hiring and more when moving
from associate to partner.“That’s where
women start falling off the chart—not in
hiring, but in retention,” she said.
“The attitude that women will go off
and have families is a prejudicial statement
that partners often internalize,” she continued.“They
assign women associates less
work, and thus give them fewer opportunities,
and create a self-fulfilling paradigm
of failure.”
Mentoring is another issue.“Unless
you have a strong person committed to the
value of inclusion, who is in a position of
power in the law firm, younger women are
not going to be treated equally,” Baker said.
“Men are mentored without ever thinking
about it.They get it at the golf course,
water cooler talks, theYMCA.”