M. Ellen Carpenter, 52, top bankruptcy lawyer
A few years after launching a private law practice with four other women in 1989, M. Ellen Carpenter was called to serve on a grand jury, three months of daily duty that most consider an intrusion.
"Many busy lawyers might offer that they couldn't carry on their practice if they were asked to serve. She served," said Jack Cinquegrana, president of the Boston Bar Association.
"She didn't complain about anything," said Martha B. Sosman, a Supreme Judicial Court justice who was then a partner in private practice with Ms. Carpenter. "And she embraced it eagerly."
That willingness to serve, regardless of the task, could be seen everywhere in her life, friends and family members said, from uncompensated work for the bar association to being a mentor for young lawyers to the stolen moments of girl talk she shared on the phone with a niece.
A former bar association president and the first bankruptcy lawyer in that post, Ms. Carpenter elevated her area of expertise and her profession, colleagues say. Few lawyers in the state have had as much impact as she did in the bankruptcy field for the past 20 years, said Judge Joan N. Feeney of the US Bankruptcy Court for the District of Massachusetts.
Ms. Carpenter, who lived in Boston, died in Massachusetts General Hospital Sunday night of complications from a brain aneurysm she suffered that day while visiting her family in Vermont.
She was 52 and had just dined with her mother, siblings, in-laws, nephews, and nieces to celebrate her brother's birthday.
"Everybody in the Bankruptcy Court is mourning Ellen's untimely death," said Feeney, formerly the court's chief judge. "She was one of the finest and most respected lawyers in Massachusetts, and I don't limit my remarks to bankruptcy, though she was the leader and the champion of the bankruptcy bar. . . . There is no one who gave more to the legal community than Ellen Carpenter."
"I am deeply saddened to learn of Ellen Carpenter's sudden death," Margaret Marshall, chief justice of the SJC, said in a statement. "Ellen was an outstanding lawyer and bar leader who approached her work with vitality and zestful enthusiasm. . . . Ellen leaves a tremendous void in the legal profession."
Although no single case defines a career, Ms. Carpenter's name became fodder for water cooler conversations in law firms across the state when she recommended disbarment in May 2005 for three lawyers involved in a closely-watched disciplinary action. As the hearing officer for the Board of Bar Overseers, she filled a 229-page decision with details about the lawyers who were accused of trying to discredit a judge and intimidate the judge's clerk in a case involving the Demoulas supermarket family.
"I have found no case anywhere that deals with facts remotely like those at issue in this sordid affair. In that, I suppose, we should take some small comfort," she wrote in a voice resonant with ethical indignation, adding "They have left what one can only hope is not an indelible impression that lawyers, even very prominent ones, will do almost anything to prevail if enough money is at stake and available for their use."
Ms. Carpenter grew up in Bennington, Vt., the eldest of four children. Her career path may have been decided early by the example of her best friend's mother, who was an attorney.
"She thought about being a lawyer since she was a very little girl," said Ms. Carpenter's sister, Patricia Bolduc of Scarborough, Maine.
"Her mind was so quick it was amazing," said her brother John of Bennington.
At the University of Vermont, she was named the outstanding woman in political science in 1976, the year she graduated, and went on to graduate in 1979 from Notre Dame Law School, where she was the current alumni association president.
"She's the first female president of the Notre Dame Law Alumni Association, which she was quick to point out to me," said Ray Marvar, a law school classmate and former colleague. "She was an exemplar of the values that we all want and strive for."
Ms. Carpenter went to Washington, D.C., working first for the US Labor Department, then as a trial attorney in the tax division of the US Justice Department. In 1987 she moved to Boston to join the US attorney's office.
Two years later, some women in the US attorney's office were contemplating forming their own firm. Ms. Carpenter was relatively new in Boston, but was seen as an up-and-comer because of her energy and intelligence.
"The first words out of my mouth were, 'If Ellen's in, I'm in,' " Sosman said.
The firm was Kern, Sosman, Hagerty, Roach & Carpenter, the order chosen for sonority, rather than seniority.
"The other reason Ellen would have given you in later years of the firm was that she was the youngest," said Christine M. Roach, who continued to run Roach & Carpenter with her after their other partners left when opportunities such as judgeships beckoned.
When Ms. Carpenter became president of the Boston Bar Association in 2004, among her initiatives was a task force on financial literacy. In the joint program with the Bankruptcy Court, lawyers go to high schools and teach students about the magnitude and importance of credit cards, budgeting, and personal finance.
"She really dedicated her life to the bar," Feeney said. "Ellen's social life was not going to parties. Ellen's life was her family and the law."
"She was a G-woman at heart," Roach said. "She started out as a government lawyer, wearing a government badge. She never really strayed from that. She always understood that she was an officer of the court and she was trying to obtain justice."
Never humorless in the pursuit of what was right, Ms. Carpenter was "a very vigorous, vivacious person with an infectious laugh," said Christopher J. Panos, a lawyer and friend whose 3-year-old twins are her godchildren.
Ms. Carpenter may have been happiest spending time with her family. On Sunday evening, "we were in Bennington for a family birthday party for John," her sister said. "We had just a hysterical, funny, laughing, family dinner. And Ellen told most of the jokes."
In addition to her sister and brother, Ms. Carpenter leaves her mother, Mary Elaine Carpenter of Bennington, Vt., and another brother, James T. of East Hartford, Conn.
A funeral Mass will be said at 11 a.m. Saturday in St. Francis de Sales Roman Catholic Church in Bennington, Vt. A memorial service for the Boston legal community is being planned for next month.
