The Velvet Hammer -

My dear friend Bill Bailey is now on staff as a professor at the U of W law school.  He asks me to participate in a writing project.  You can figure out his question by reading the answer. 

I’m Hapa.

That means I’m not Chinese enough to be considered Chinese.  And not German enough to be considered White.

A few years ago, a friend asked why I wasn’t more active in the Asian Bar Association.  Response – I haven’t even told my partners that I’m female yet. 

I have been quite fierce in the quest not to become the best Eurasian female personal injury lawyer – but rather to become the best lawyer I can possibly be.   Early in my career, I shunned minority specialty bars because I was determined not to be categorized.  Or marginalized.

Many of my views on race were developed by watching people struggle to classify me.  What compelled them.  Why couldn’t they just relax and accept me without affixing a race label.  By age twenty, I had come up with a variety of answers that were used interchangeably depending on mood:  a)  a human being; b) what do you think I am; c) what are you; d) does it matter.

Disco ruled in the 70s and early 80s.  I loved dressing up and shaking my groove thing.  During law school, I still managed to go out two nights over the weekend and one or two nights during the week.  It was incredibly fun.   The club scene had a dark side.  I chose not to see it.  I didn’t drink or do drugs.  I was there to dance and hang out with friends.  The blinders let me enjoy the light side.

In our legal world, I am known as a fighter for diversity and justice for others.  But when it comes to defending myself, I don’t tend to punch back (at least not immediately).    I choose to wear the blinders.  But they don’t always work.

• I speak around the country for the American Association for Justice and state trial lawyer associations.  Last year, a seminar chair asked me to speak. After I agreed, he said – it’s a good thing you are a minority.  I didn’t have one on the program and AAJ said they wouldn’t approve the agenda unless I got one. 
• I was nominated and elected to the executive committee of a specialized national injury group.  The lawyer who told me I’d been chosen, said in the same breath that they were trying to make a positive step towards diversity.
• In Snohomish County five of us lawyers spent half an hour in judge’s chambers discussing protocol.  We returned to the courtroom.  As the jury was being ushered in to begin voir dire, the judge leaned over and said to me:  “are you a lawyer?”

I have never tallied the number of times I’ve been called honey, sweetie, or been mistaken for the court reporter.   A senior partner at a very large Seattle firm, once proclaimed (in front of the court reporter, witness and half a dozen attorneys)  it was no wonder my husband was divorcing me. 

There is a mask that sits over my face.  Underneath I feel the hurt.  Outside I do not flinch.  Careless, boorish, prejudiced, ignorant comments fuel a relentless determination that burns within me.  

For the past decade, I’ve been involved in female and minority lawyers groups.   I feel both the need to belong and unhappiness that it is necessary. 

How has diversity made me a better lawyer? 

So many trial lawyers emulate their heroes.  They pattern themselves after their icons.  Early in my career I tried on some of those personas and they universally failed to attach themselves to me.  Being diverse has helped me not only to embrace my unique and authentic attributes.  But to celebrate them.   I have the pure freedom to only be me. 

She opens the door before I knock.  I walk up the three pristine wooden steps and am inside.

Please, she says, and motions for me to take the royal blue recliner.  She sits near me on the couch.  There is not much bric a brac.  No little tables cluttering the narrow path that runs down the side of her slender home.  It is a white rectangle.  I can see the bedroom at the other end.  The kitchen is in between.  On top of the refrigerator is a pottery piece of three very green and large smiling frogs.

The home is perfectly kept.  I can picture her cleaning it.  Very slowly.  Every day.  Not just for company.   She sits on a couch under the picture of a lion that fills most of the wall.  The remaining space is taken up by the picture of a tiger.

It is warm out and she is wearing short sleeves.  She is so thin that the bones of her arms seem to be dressed in sheer wrinkled pieces of the finest cloth.  When she speaks – softly and slowly -  her arms move.  The wrinkles of cloth float and settle upon them.  Float and settle. 

She is not my client.  Her son has died.   I am meeting with a woman whose son has died, who doesn’t know me, and who isn’t my client.  The thought circles through my mid a few times. She cannot be my client.  In Washington the law doesn’t believe that parents of killed adult children suffer a loss that should be recognized in a courtroom.  (I represent the Estate which doesn't include her).

We settle deeper into our cushions.  She shares the memories that she can.   The saying goes that there is no greater sorrow for a parent, than to survive the death of a child.  We should go first.  We would willingly go first.  It is unspeakably terrible when we do not go first.

After awhile it is time for me to leave.  She takes longer to rise than I do.  I go to shake her hand.  She wraps her hard but soft arms around me.   I hug her back carefully.  And touch my hand to the dainty ridges of her back. 

A letter from Tom E:

Karen, you story reminds me of someone, equally devilish, who rammed a jury verdict right through my professional reputation 33 years ago, after I lost a supposedly unlosable case. Only it wasn’t a He. It  was a she.

As the then City Attorney for Lake Forest Park, it was my duty to prosecute a gentlemen who was accused of unlawfully aiming and pointing a firearm, and attempted assault for throwing Ninja Stars. Seems he had challenged a patron of our City’s Dance Club – Fandango’s – to a Kung Fu fight in the parking lot. A fight witnessed by close to 100 patrons, all of whom were more than willing to testify the Defendant had indeed drawn a gun and thrown a Ninja Star.

In those days, even gross misdemeanors could go to Superior Court, de novo, for jury trial.  And my opponent,  unfazed by the municipal court conviction,  demanded de-novo 12 person jury trial in King County.

So, during the trial, my opponent kept referring to me as, “Tom.” “Why’d you do that for, Tom?” “Boy, that was sure dumb, Tom.”  “Think the City Council will vote to approve your bill, Tom?” “Your not gonna  call all 10 of your witnesses, are you, Tom?”

Just like you, I was soooo polite. Figuring Jesus must have been right  “…the meek shall inherit the earth…” I knew I could count on, at very least, the minds of 12 jurors in an unlosable prosecution.

Then my opponent did the unthinkable.  She called the Defendant to the stand. Had him explain the Rules of Ninja. Why he was so good at throwing Ninja Stars. Had he really intended to Star-Stab his challenger, he would have. And, he wasn’t pointing the loaded gun at just one person, he was pointing it at the whole crowd, because they were taunting him!

But the worst thing she did, was to make this Defendant into a really likeable guy!

In retrospect, probably my best move during the entire case, was to make sure the Judge did not let any bullets go back to the jury room, along with the gun.

The jury was out, lets see, maybe 10 minutes.  It was unanimous.  12 – zip. Not guilty.  As I was leaving the court room, the Defendant, now a star a/k/a Bruce Lee, was instructing some of the jurors on how to throw a Ninja Star.

And the name of my opponent? That dreaded terror, seared into my memory, whom I am sometimes reminded of when someone says “Hey, Tom” (which can happen a lot when you are named Tom).

Mary Fung Koehler. Your Mother.

Photo:  Mom before she became a tiger lawyer

Thelma (our receptionist) gives me a manilla envelope.  She says - after much sleuthing I figured this out.  I don't understand.  My name is not on the envelope.   Black marker simply says "Jo-Hanna Read." 

Jo-Hanna is the only person I've ever known whose name is Jo-Hanna.  I'm careful to spell it correctly because it is a very special name.  Jo-Hanna is a dear friend of mine.  A trial lawyer who champions the rights of those who are abused - usually sexually.

I open the envelope.  Inside are two brightly covered mittens without fingers.  My favorite type of hand warmer in the whole wide world.  I smile in delight.   Not only are they beautiful - but in my mind I can see Jo-Hanna knitting them as she is listening to a speech or waiting for her turn in court.  Thank you Jo-Hanna.