Thursday, April 27, 2000
The University Daily Kansan
Section A·Page 5
Judge one of few women presiding over court
Continued from page 1A
Love on the career path
Beier worked as a copy editor at the Kansas City Times, then sister paper of the Kansas City Star, for about a year and a half after graduation.
However, Beier said that in the early '80s, moving up in the news business meant moving to a different newspaper, and her personal situation didn't allow her to leave the area.
"I thought the law would be a good graduate education, and with not a whole lot more foresight than that. I
She decided to go back to college at the KU School of Law.
signed up to take the LSAT, took it and ended up at KU." Beier said.
"If you'd asked me on day one of law school, I would have said I am going to go back out of law school when I graduate and write (about courts or be a lawyer for a paper."
But Beir excelled in law school, and soon returning to journalism became less attractive.
"Gradually, the plan to go back to newspaper work
in a more direct way faded," she said. "I still like the business a lot, and I thought it could do things -- make a meaningful difference in the world." Opportunities surfaced after law school; first a clerkship for Jim Logan, a judge for the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, then an opportunity to live in Washington D.C.
Beier worked for a year as a staff attorney for the National Women's Law Center,
She then worked for a year in a Washington law firm defending white-collar criminals.
Beier said "love" brought her back to Kansas. Love translated into husband Richard Green. They met through mutual friends while Beier was a law student. He had ties in Wichita.
In 1988, she joined the Wichita law firm of Foulston & Slefkin, where she became partner and worked in litigation for 11 years.
And, in the meantime, she started a family and challenged the attorney status no.
"The private practice is built on the paradigm that you're going to have a law practitioner and that he will have a spouse that takes care of everything else in life other than the practice of law," Beier said.
In a way, Beier said, she conformed to the paradigm. Her husband was a stay-at-home spouse.
"I readily accepted that role," Green said. "It was something that I enjoyed and wanted to do. It was also beneficial to Carol because she could throw herself into her career."
Green, a high school social studies teacher, was modest about his role in Beier's success, but he said he accepted the compliment that he was the man behind that success.
He held the Bible during her swearing in ceremony. Their 8-year-old son, 10-year-old daughter and his 20-year-old son also participated in the ceremony, helping Beier into the robe for the first time. Beier smiled through most of the ceremony.
"She smiles all the time," Green said.
In and out of court
The statue "Justice," a kneeling woman holding a priarie falcon, symbolizes justice in Kansas as the compassion and sensitivity of a woman holding the powers of unrivaled vision and swift and accurate action. The statue sits inside the Judicial Center in Topeka.
I shouldn't even say it because everybody will want it."
Her intensity controls the moment. She never loses eye contact with the attorney responding to her question. She turns her head to the side in doubt or nods in understanding but still remains focused.
But the initial smile doesn't underline her focus when court begins.
"When she's focused on you as a friend and what you're doing, her energy, enthusiasm and concern are overwhelming," says Rachel Pirner, an attorney.
Tibets, Beier's friend and fellow attorney at Foulson & Siefkin, says Beier is one of the wittiest people she knows.
This intensity is typical of Beier, friends say.
“When she started at our firm, she was a pretty outspoken feminist,” Tibbets says. “To tease her, one of our partners would call her 'babe' as a joke, and in response she would call him ‘sport.’ He'd say, 'What's up, babe?' and she'd say, 'Not much. sport.'”
Stout also admits trying to talk Beier out of accepting a judgeship, wanting to keep her at the firm. Indeed, her career caseload included several high-profile cases, such as defending William Koch of Wichita-based Koch Industries and managers of bankrupt savings and loans.
Mike Stout, a partner at Foulston & Siefkin, admits teasing Beier about being a "women libber," but he says she always retaliated.
Instead, her pro bono and volunteer work matters more. Stout says. And being a judge will give Beier an opportunity to serve the public from the bench by guiding and shaping Kansas laws.
"If you ask her about her most important cases, you won't get the list of the biggest clients that she had." Stout says.
"She will get more satisfaction out of the feeling that she's doing something for the public." Stout says.
Mindv Berns / KANSAN
But a sense of humor brings Beier down to earth. Pirrer says.
Friends, including Pirner and Tibbets, joke that "there's nothing that Carol can't do."
Her modesty and bubbling laughter keep her real to family, friends and colleagues. Her husband says Beier doesn't even brag at home.
"We all aspire to modesty in this household," Green says. "It's far better to receive a compliment gracefully because somebody knows you've done a good job than to tell somebody you've done a good job."
Joining a men's club
Once told girls weren't allowed, Beier now belongs to a largely men's club. Out of 250 judges in the state, 41 are women. Although about 25 percent of attorneys practicing law in Kansas are women, fewer than 17 percent of Kansas judges are women.
Oddly enough, in the atrium of the Judicial Center in Topeka stands the three-story statue "Justice," a kneeling woman holding a prairie falcon — a swift bird whose vision is eight times as powerful as a human's.
"Justice in Kansas is depicted as the compassion and sensitivity of a woman holding the powers of unrivaled vision and swift and accurate action," reads the paragraph explaining "Justice."
A woman may symbolize justice in Kansas, but the numbers point to an inequality that Beier says will be slow to change.
That is sort of what the law is like, too," she says. "It is supposed to be building on precedent slowly and incrementally, and I think that dynamic persists in the profession itself."
Although she's never considered her gender much of a disadvantage, she says she is aware of gender issues, especially in the legal profession.
"It's been said a lot that it's not going to be figured out in my lifetime — it takes time," Beier says. "The world is not perfect yet."
- Edited by Nathan Willis
- Designed by Amy Train
WOMEN IN LAW
At work, women comprise
41 percent of associates at large law firms
15 percent of partners at large law firms
At law school, women comprise: 48 percent of entering law students
In the federal judiciary, women com
prise;
22 percent of Supreme Court Justices 16 percent of U.S. Circuit Court judges
14 percent of U.S. District Court judges
Source: American Bar Association Commission on Women in the Profession
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