Kate Mueting on Workplace Discrimination, Representing Lawyers & Advocating for Clients in Crisis

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I am David Sanford of Sanford Heisler Sharp McNight, chairman of a national civil rights law firm, and I am delighted to be here today with my long-term partner, Kate Meeting, who also serves as the firm administrative partner. Welcome, Kate.

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Thank you. Thank you, David. I’m happy to be talking with you.

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Yeah. This is exciting because I haven’t had a chance to really spend a lot of time, even though we’ve been partners for a long time and you’ve been at the firm a long time, really exploring and drilling down into your life, your early childhood. So let’s just dive in and start there.

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[chuckles]

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Tell me about where you grew up and what your formative influences were like.

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Yeah. I grew up in Iowa, a small town in northwest Iowa. I’m the oldest of four children. Very close with my family. I was growing up, and I still am. I grew up in a small town such that we got to do a little bit of everything, right? And I think about how different my kids are going to be than the way I was raised, but I did cross country and track, and I did mock trial, and I did show choir, and I was in the marching band and

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did the plays and played basketball and just got to do a lot of different things.

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Sounds exhausting.

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[laughs] I’m sure it was for my parents. As a kid, though, it was exciting, right?

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Well, it was exhausting for your parents as you’re one of four.

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[laughs]

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And if your other three were doing that, too, that’s a big day.

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That’s true.

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Every day.

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That’s true.

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By the way-

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It was a lot of fun

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… how old are the younger kids?

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Andy is the next youngest. He’s three years younger, and then the twins are the two, the youngest. They’re eight years younger than I am, so-

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What are they doing?

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… I’m the oldest. Andy’s a doctor, a family practice doctor in northwest Iowa, next door to my parents. My parents moved next door to him. My brother works as a fundraiser for the Basilica in the Twin Cities. And my sister is a speech pathologist in eastern Iowa.

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Wow. So did they have the kind of peripatetic life that you just described-

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[laughs]

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… having, where they were doing everything at once?

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We did a lot. It was a small town, so there was a lot of opportunities and to dabble, certainly. So, yes.

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Well, we always have that conversation in our house, well, from time to time about, to what extent one goes deep and focuses. As a child, having an 11-year-old child who loves to play tennis and is out on a tennis court five, six days a week as a competitive tennis player, versus being what is viewed generally as being well-rounded and being able to dabble in a lot of things. I was more of a dabbler, like you.

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Mm-hmm.

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I did a lot of different things.

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Yeah.

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But I think there’s a view that I’m becoming more and more attached to, which says that, in order to be really great at something, you got to dive in deep early, right?

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Yeah.

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And so it’s attention, isn’t it?

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Yeah. I appreciated the opportunity to be a dabbler. I think it gave me a lot of confidence to go into new situations and feel like I don’t know exactly what is happening, but I can figure this out, right? And I think that’s benefited me a lot.

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Yeah.

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But yeah, I hear what you’re saying.

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So you were in Iowa, stayed in Iowa. You went to school where?

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I went to college at University of Nebraska.

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Nebraska.

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And then I did two years of AmeriCorps. I was a team leader for the AmeriCorps NCCC program, which is based on the old Civilian Conservation Corps. So I was leading a team of 10 people, 18 to 24 years old, and we traveled around the country for two weeks to three months partnering with different organizations. So I chainsawed trees down to prepare for controlled burns, and I did tutoring in elementary schools. We partnered with Habitat for Humanity, and I built houses. So all kinds

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of different stuff.

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That is so cool, and I didn’t know that about you, actually. That’s fabulous.

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It was a formative experience, for sure.

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Do we still have AmeriCorps?

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We do, yes, in various forms. AmeriCorps is primarily a grant-making organization that gives grants to local organizations doing good work. But this was a specialized program that was team-based and went into different communities.

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Very cool. That’s a great experience.

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Yeah. So good.

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So when you were doing that, did you know you were going to be a lawyer at some point?

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I was already, yes, committed to the University of Iowa for law school, and I just deferred for a couple of years. So I knew I wanted to be a lawyer, starting in, I think, junior high or early high school. I was in the kitchen talking with my mom, and I was like, “I don’t know what I want to be,” and I sort of knew. And she’s like, “Well, you really enjoy mock trial. Maybe you should think about being a lawyer.” And since then, I’ve just said I want to be a lawyer.

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Isn’t that interesting? How old were you at that point?

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I think it was in late junior high or early high school.

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Fascinating.

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Yeah. Early age.

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Yeah. So your mom called it.

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She did. She’s good at that. She knows me, and I think lawyers are problem-solvers. Lawyers read and write, and I was drawn to those things. Lawyers work with people. They’re in the community. That’s where I like to be.

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Very cool. So you go to college in Nebraska, you go to law school at Iowa. What was that like?

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I enjoyed law school a lot. I made great friends. I learned a lot. I had great professors. It was fun to be in Iowa City. There’s not a lot happening in Iowa City, right, besides the college. And so it was really very much a college-focused experience, and a lot of my friends were in law school, and I had a lot of time to study, and I had a great experience.

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And obviously you did very well. You came out and had two great clerkships. Talk about that clerkship experience.

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Yes. Yeah. I was a clerk for Judge Mulloy in the Eighth Circuit, based out of Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Had a fantastic experience. I learned a lot, really honed my writing. One of my co-clerks is now a federal judge, and I learned a ton from her. She would review all of my drafts and comment on them, and we’d comment on each other’s, and I feel like it was really a time to hone my research and writing. We were in St. Louis every month for court week with a whole bunch of other clerks from around

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the Eighth Circuit. And so I got to develop a lot of great relationships with my co-clerks. And then I clerked for Judge Leon in the district court, uh, in DC, and he was hearing the Guantanamo Bay cases at the time.

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Fascinating. Mm-hmm.

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That was really interesting to be a part of that, part of history. And a lot of high-profile cases that go in and out of that court.

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I’ve had the pleasure and privilege of speaking with a lot of our partners, and one theme that has come up is the value of a clerkship. I clerked for a federal judge as well, and I felt like for the first time, I was able to learn to write like a lawyer. I didn’t really do that in law school, came from an academic background, and my writing wasn’t really honed in a legal context.

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Mm-hmm.

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It was honed in an academic context. It took me a while to adjust in law school and in my first half year of my clerkship. In the second half, I started getting it. It started clicking. But it really was invaluable for that reason, and you mentioned as well in your circuit court clerkship that the writing was so important, and it really started clicking for you, too. What would you say to law students who are thinking about clerking, the value of a clerkship versus starting

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right away, earning money, and getting into the workforce? What would you say to them?

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Yeah. I had a great experience clerking, and I would recommend it to anyone. I think it’s valuable because you learn to write, and you see how judges think. You see the kind of people that go before judges, and what makes a good oral advocate and what doesn’t, and what you see in briefs can vary widely, and you can really gauge how people are persuasive. So I learned a lot. Substantively, I also found it really interesting because judges hear all kinds of cases, and so it was a good opportunity to learn a lot

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about different types of cases.

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Yeah.

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I think that’s true with respect to the writing. Although also when I started in Big Law, I was told that I write like a clerk, right? She didn’t mean it as a compliment at that point.

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I would take that as a compliment, actually.

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[laughing] I think she meant it.

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She meant that you were too on the one hand this, on the other hand that.

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Yeah, or like there’s a five-part test. Let’s go through the five parts.

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Uh-huh.

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Right? And we’re advocates now, and so I’m not going to focus on the first three parts of the test if the real crux of the dispute is number four.

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Right. So you did that, and then what was your next move?

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After clerking, I went to Covington, a big law firm in DC.

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Covington & Burling, one of the very best, by reputation and I’m sure by your experience-

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I had a great-

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… big law firms in America.

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I had a great experience there. I learned a ton. I learned a ton there. I had great training. I worked with really, really brilliant people. I made great friends there also.

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Some of whom you stay in touch with.

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For sure. Yeah. And it wasn’t a place that I had intended to spend my career, so I didn’t think of it as a shift when I left. And I learned a lot, but I wasn’t super fired up about the kind of work that I was doing there. And I was in a book club with someone who was at this firm at the time, Lubna, and she was like, “We’re hiring, and you should think about it.” And I got home from book club, and

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I read the job description, and I stayed up all night working on my resume and my cover letter because I just felt like this firm, Sanford Heisler, was where I wanted to be. It was doing work that was aligned with my values, academically challenging, high profile, able to make an impact where I wanted to be able to make an impact. So I got really excited about that.

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That sounds like a job I’d love.

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[laughing]

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That sounds pretty cool. Well, we’re really happy you made that decision to transfer in. We have from time to time taken lawyers like you, really great experienced lawyers from Big Law, and have hired them in and the promise that they could transfer the skills that they got when they were at Big Law into our firm. Generally speaking, it works, but sometimes it doesn’t. There is a difference in culture and expectations,

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and work relationships in Big Law that sometimes people feel a difficult time transferring into our firm. Obviously, that didn’t happen with you. You’ve been with us for a long time. You’re a partner. You’re the firm-wide administrative partner. What is it about your skill set and your energy and your spirit that you think helped you make that transition?

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That’s a great question. I think some of it… I’ll say a couple of thoughts. One, I think in Big Law, I was not managing work, right? It was trickling down like, “Write a memo on this.” I wrote a memo. It trickled up. I wasn’t involved in the decision-making process because that happened far above me. And then when I came to this firm, I was much more involved in kind of managing the cases and moving the cases along, and I think I am a good case manager, right? I am good

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at figuring out what needs to happen next and making it happen. And so I think that is a skill that I did not necessarily learn in Big Law, but that fit my… It was something that I used a lot when I got to this firm, for sure. And I think another thing, I had another thought. I’m a people person, and we represent people, and we represent people in the context of their lives not the general counsel in the context of his or her job,

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and I really value that, and I try not to lose sight of the fact, like I am talking to my clients now as part of my job, but this is their life. And I think that is something that really resonated with me.

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Well, you clearly connect with clients, and one other thing you do as well as anyone I’ve ever worked with, you always, and I’m going to sing your praises for a moment, so don’t blush, but you always express the sense of urgency That we care about so much in this firm, and that it’s so important to demonstrate on a regular basis. And there’s not a day that has ever gone by that I haven’t sensed that you have that sense of urgency, your availability, your responsiveness, your attentiveness, and your care and your compassion

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and your passion for this work, all are evident in what you do. Is that something that’s a part of your personality, do you think, going back to your early days in Iowa and Nebraska and then in-

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Mm-hmm

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… Iowan school, or is it something that you have developed over time?

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I think that I try not to lose sight of the fact that when clients come to us, they have already been through an awful lot, and it takes a long time for someone to call a lawyer about their job, about what’s happening at work. So when they make that call, they are ready to go. There’s no reason from their perspective to wait. I think it comes from being focused on the client and putting myself in the client’s shoes and wanting to move and being anxious. They call us not at a happy point in their

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life. They want a solution, and they want to know things are being moved forward. And so I strive to be there for them and to make it happen quickly because that is often what they want. And I do a lot of work on weekends and late at night, and one of my neighbors, who’s a lawyer, was like, “What kind of urgencies do you have?” And I was like, “People are fired. People are demoted. People are in crisis, and they’re calling me, and I don’t want to say, ‘I’ll talk to you in three days.’ I want to be there for them right now because that’s when they need me.”

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Well, when you’re there from the right now, there are choices and there are sacrifices, and there’s no question that doing this job involves sacrifices. You have a family. You have two little kids. How do you, in the general sense, how do you wind up juggling the responsibilities of a firm administrative partner, being involved at the highest level of so many of our cases, going up against some of the best lawyers around the country, including Covington lawyers that you once worked with?

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How do you do all of that while at the same time manage a household, attend to a family, and be a great mom and a great wife?

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[chuckles] You’re kind. I don’t know that anyone feels like they ever have it figured out because it’s not easy, but it’s always a balance. I will say, I think something that someone told me early in my career as a mom was not to let your kids know that you don’t want to go to work. And so I try to– I’m not like, “Oh, Mommy has to go to work.” Like, “Mommy gets to go to work to help people.” And I think communicating that to them, then they are seeing like, “Oh, this is part

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of what Mommy does.” And they have things that they like to do that I’m not there for, and I don’t want them to feel like they are the ones keeping me from doing the things that I want to be doing. So I think that’s a big part of it. Also say this job has flexibility. And when I need to be there for my clients, I’m there. But when I don’t need to be there, I am able to go to their school program, and I’m able to be a Girl Scout troop leader, and so I try to really carve out time so that I have those blocks when I’m devoted to them.

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Well, that’s a great answer. And it’s an important answer, I think, just the way you put it, as a mentor to some of our junior lawyers, both men and women, who always struggle with the issue of balance as people do in life. You’ve worked on some very high-profile matters in the firm since you’ve been with us. So many, we don’t have time to discuss them all, but what few cases stand out for you as being really

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representative- Mm-hmm … of your passion and commitment, representative of overcoming major legal challenges and personality challenges, as the case may be, when you look back on the last decade-plus of your-

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Yeah

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… career with us?

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I really value the work I’ve done representing lawyers, on behalf of lawyers. I feel honored that I’m able to help make change in my own profession. I think that we have come a long way, and I think we have a long way to go. And we’re risk averse by profession. And so it’s hard to raise your hand and call out discrimination when you see it, and I think helping, I’ve had many, many confidential negotiations, pre-suit cases on behalf of lawyers, but also some public class actions on behalf of lawyers. And I think that when we are able to raise our hand

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and call this out, whether it’s confidentially in the context of one firm or whether it’s broader, profession-wide, I think it helps other people be comfortable raising their hand. I think it helps people recognize when it’s happening to them. And I think it helps prevent it from happening again. I think people think twice. I think people check and are more aware of their biases when they see that other people have called this out.

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So we spend a lot of time in the firm, and you have spent an enormous amount of your professional career working really hard to assist people in what you just characterized as the pre-suit process. The pre-suit process is the process where we send a letter to the other side, and we invite them to have a conversation designed to resolve the dispute. And we do that confidentially, and we try to do it in an expedited way to get the client what the client deserves and wants and

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make it easy for the other side to say yes. And so we go through a process, typically, of mediation, where we hire a third-party neutral whose only role is that of an honest broker, whose role is to effectuate a settlement to get the parties to yes. And so we do that an awful lot, and clients often come to us with that desire, even though they’re ready to file if necessary. Obviously, they’d rather settle for the most part if they can. How do you, in

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your professional career, work through that tension between, on the one hand, you know Recognizing the value in the pre-suit process, recognizing the value of settling confidentially and early-

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Mm-hmm

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… versus the value of getting public vindication with a jury verdict.

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Yeah.

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Right? Because clients often also want to tell their story. They tell it to us, they might tell it to a mediator, but sometimes they really want to tell it to the world, they want to tell it to the press, they want to tell it to a jury, and they want the jury to affirm their story by giving them a verdict. And so there’s a tension, right? On the one hand, the private process of confidential settlement, and on the other hand, public validation and affirmation. How do you navigate those two worlds?

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I think so much about this. I think the first core principle is that I represent the client and what the client wants, right? And so most clients want to go through this process of a pre-suit mediation process first before they file anything. And I think I owe it to them, and I tell them that. I think we all owe it to this to figure out if litigation is something that can be avoided. I think litigation is certainly necessary at times and can be beneficial to changing the conversation and

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to moving the needle, but it is really hard. It’s expensive in terms of money, it’s expensive in terms of emotional investment, it’s expensive in terms of time, and it is not something that people should jump into lightly. And I think going through the mediation process helps them get a sense of what it might be like to litigate and to be able to make a more informed decision.

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Clients often ask me what I want to do, right? Which is not the right question. It’s what I think they should do under the circumstances. But when they ask me what I want to do, I say, “Look, I want to be in front of a jury every day.”

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Yeah.

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If I could be in front of a jury every day of my life, there’s nothing better than that, right? That’s what I love doing the most. But if the question is as it should be, what do I think they should do? If you have a great deal on the table, and even though potentially you could get maybe a greater deal before a jury-

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Yeah

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… but that would take a few years with a lot of risk that you don’t get that, do the great deal now and not try to get the perfect deal later.

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Right.

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The proverbial, don’t let the good stand in the way of the perfect, right? Or the perfect stand in the way… Well, yeah, the good stand in the way of perfect. So my question to you is, when you think of that, right, when you think about your professional goals-

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Mm-hmm

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… your professional desires in terms of what you most like to do, how does that play out when you’re thinking about the pre-suit process versus trial?

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Yeah. I guess first I want to just say what I would say if my client said this, what you just said, which is you’re not going to get a perfect deal, right?

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[laughs]

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You’re not going to get a perfect resolution.

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Right.

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Even if you go and you win big in court, we can’t reverse time and make what happened to you right.

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Right.

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And no judge can do that. Even if the company pays the maximum amount it would ever pay, they will never suffer as much as the harm that they have caused you to suffer.

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Right.

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Right? So I always want to keep that in mind, because I do think sometimes people are anxious to litigate because they think it will give them something that it may not give them.

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Right.

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But in terms of what my professional goals are, of course, I would love to litigate more, and especially when you have a great case, and those are the cases that are more likely to settle, you want to go and shout it from the rooftops. But again, you want to do what’s best for the client, and I really do, I am so happy when I’m able to get something that makes them happy. And I always tell them, you’re changing things in a small way. You’re raising your hand, you’re making things better for

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the people who come after you. And that may even be more true in the context of a pre-suit settlement where they’re not dug in, where they are not having lawyers tell them over and over, “You did the right thing, you didn’t discriminate.” They’re ending it quickly and then having some time to reflect.

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Right.

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And I think that really does make a difference.

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We’re the victims of our own success in many ways, right? Because we have been so successful-

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Yes

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… at trial and in arbitrations and people know that, the defense bar knows that, and so we’re able to get great results for our clients pre-suit. And some of those cases are really great cases-

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Yeah

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… that you just wish the world could know about. You just wish other people who are in similar situations-

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Mm-hmm

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… could know about because the results are so fantastic. So it is a tension-

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Yeah

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… I think both for clients and for us for different reasons, right?

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Yeah.

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So when people reach out to you and they’re seeking legal advice, they are often at the worst moment of their personal life-

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Mm-hmm

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… most certainly worst moment of their professional life. They tell you things that they may not even tell their closest loved ones, their most intimate friends, because life is complicated.

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Yeah.

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And rarely is there a perfect story. People, in some way, may be implicated in their story in ways that they may be ashamed of or may be concerned that other people will find out about.

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Mm-hmm.

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What can clients or potential clients expect when they come to you for advice?

00:23:36 –> 00:24:06
Yeah. I think what you just said is something I try never to lose sight of, right? People have been through an awful lot before they even call us, and they’re never happy to be calling us, right? It feels trite. They’re like, “How are you? How are you?” I always say, “I don’t even want to ask you. I know you’re not great or you wouldn’t be calling me.” And I also know that they’re experiencing … problems at work, right? And they probably have very mixed emotions about that because there’s probably a lot of people that they care about at work, or the job that they love at work,

00:24:06 –> 00:24:36
and at the same time, they’re feeling really betrayed. And so I want to hear them. I want to express empathy. I want to recognize all of this and get an understanding of their experiences. And then my job is to figure out how those experiences fall within the framework of what is unlawful. And so I’ll often tell them there’s a whole big bucket of rotten behavior at work, and within that large bucket is a small bucket of things that are unlawful. And my job is to figure out how much of that really rotten behavior

00:24:36 –> 00:25:00
is unlawful. And so I’m going to ask them more targeted questions to figure out how much of their horrible experiences we can fit in that unlawful bucket. And we do that because we don’t take cases unless we think that there’s something that they can get relief for in the law, right? Unless there’s something unlawful that happened. And so I really want to really probe and figure out how much of their experiences were unlawful.

00:25:00 –> 00:25:12
Well, probing takes a long time usually because clients don’t know what’s lawful and what’s not. And so they are inclined to tell you everything under the sun, right? And so there’s a challenge there-

00:25:12 –> 00:25:12
Mm-hmm

00:25:13 –> 00:25:31
… because you want to steer them into the right direction, but you don’t want to foreclose the possibility of them giving you certain information that could be very valuable. So it’s a process, right? And it’s the beginning of a complex relationship. Complex because they’re disclosing, again, some of the most intimate details-

00:25:31 –> 00:25:31
Yeah

00:25:31 –> 00:25:34
… of their life to a complete stranger up until-

00:25:34 –> 00:25:34
Right

00:25:34 –> 00:25:42
… that point. And that’s not an easy thing, and I’m very proud that we’re in a firm that has sensitive people, partners all the way-

00:25:42 –> 00:25:42
Yeah

00:25:42 –> 00:25:50
… down the line, up and down the chain, people who really appreciate what you’re saying is true, namely that people are suffering.

00:25:50 –> 00:25:51
Mm-hmm.

00:25:51 –> 00:25:55
And there has to be a certain empathic engagement with people-

00:25:55 –> 00:25:55
Yeah

00:25:55 –> 00:26:01
… a certain sensitivity that we always express, a certain kindness that we bring to the table so that people-

00:26:01 –> 00:26:01
Yeah

00:26:01 –> 00:26:15
… realize they’re in good hands, and that we’re going to cherish what they’re telling us, and we’re going to protect them as much as we possibly can throughout the entire process. That requires a lot of skill and a lot of talent and a lot of genuine concern.

00:26:15 –> 00:26:16
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

00:26:16 –> 00:26:21
And you are who you are, and you can express that or not, and there’s no one who does that better than you do.

00:26:22 –> 00:26:52
Well, I appreciate you saying that. I think that we have those people at this firm because it’s modeled by leadership at the firm. I think people are treated like human beings at our firm, and we work hard, and we’re there for our clients. But when something happens in our lives and we need some grace, people give us that grace, right? And the firm gives us that grace. And I think that enables us to come with our whole selves to work and then to recognize that our clients are their whole selves as well, and to really try and see them for that and be empathetic in communicating.

00:26:52 –> 00:27:06
Yeah. You’ve been doing this a while. You’ve been involved in so many important matters for people throughout the country. What do you love most about your work?

00:27:07 –> 00:27:37
I feel so fortunate that I get to do work that’s in line with my values. I think that’s not common for lawyers, and I went into the law to do social justice work, and I’m doing it. And I just feel really fortunate that I’m able to do that. And we do that in the context of representing individuals and helping them through bad situations and negotiating their way out of that and getting some justice for that. And we do it in the context of splashy litigation

00:27:37 –> 00:27:54
where we’re part of national conversations about race discrimination and gender pay equity, and all of that is consistent with my values. And so I feel like every day I am doing something that really matters to me, and that when people call me and they want me to fight for them, I am fighting for something that I want to be fighting for.

00:27:55 –> 00:27:59
Kate Mading, it’s been a pleasure spending this time with you. Thank you so much.

00:27:59 –> 00:28:00
Thank you. I appreciate it.