Rise of Miers low-key, steady
Colleagues say views unknown
DALLAS -- When Harriet Miers finally got a job in the old-boy- dominated Dallas legal world at the start of the 1970s, after having been snubbed a year earlier by all the major Dallas firms, she knew she was breaking down barriers.
Yet she hoped to get ahead not by pushing, but by persuading. Friends and colleagues recall that she presented herself as a no- nonsense lawyer: quietly competent, pleasant to work with, unlikely to ruffle feathers.
''Harriet's attitude and mine, and I think the attitude of many of the women then, was that you just do the best job you can," said Miers's sister-in-law, federal Judge Elizabeth Lang-Miers, formerly a partner in Miers's firm. ''At the time, you're not approaching it with a view to any particular legacy or impact. You just want to do the best job you can and hope you succeed."
Added Suzan E. Fenner, a Dallas attorney who also entered the profession in the early 1970s: ''We shared a lot of the same attitude that burning bridges and being obnoxious to get your points across did not achieve your objective as effectively as being confident, pleasant, and the best lawyer you could be."
Over time, those qualities became Miers's professional trademark. She was pleasingly professional, conciliatory enough to negotiate the merger of two law firms full of big egos and long traditions, and attentive to clients.
Now, as Miers prepares to face confirmation for the US Supreme Court, many in Washington point to her ''lack of a paper trail" on polarizing issues. But friends and colleagues suggest that Miers so embodies the ideal of lawyerly rectitude that her own views on constitutional issues may either have been repressed or never existed in the first place.
Thus, Miers could be something new in the contentious world of judicial nominations: a nominee who not only shields her views, declining to answer questions on matters likely to come before the court, but one who may not hold strong views on controversial issues, and who will let her judicial philosophy develop over time, case by case.
''I don't know what her underlying views are on the controversial issues of the day -- I really don't. And I consider myself to be a really good friend of hers," said Darrell Jordan, an attorney who worked with Miers at the Dallas Bar Association. ''She is a very caring, easy-to-talk-to person who listens extremely well and is not prone to let you know what her opinions are."
Dallas businessman Tom Dunning has known Miers since grade school, but said he has no idea how she might decide cases involving abortion or other highly charged topics. Nor does the preacher at Valley View Christian Church, which Miers has attended for many years.
Even Miers's former fiance, Jim Martin, can't predict how Miers might come down on matters before the high court. Martin said he thought she would be like retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who approached each case on its own merits and who disappointed her conservative backers by failing to overturn abortion rights.
''I think the likelihood is that Harriet will be in the mold of Sandra Day O'Connor, something of a swing voter," said Martin. ''She'd be far more in that mold than a conservative ideologue."
Martin dated Miers for two years after the two graduated from Southern Methodist University Law School, and was engaged to her for about a year. He said they didn't marry because both were consumed by their work.
O'Connor was valued in some circles for having had major formative experiences before becoming a judge, from growing up on a ranch to raising children to serving as majority leader of the Arizona Senate. Miers has had a somewhat more community- service-oriented life, but with a similar taste of politics from her two years on the Dallas City Council and tenure as a White House staff secretary, deputy chief of staff for policy, and counsel.
President Bush and others cite Miers's role as a groundbreaking female attorney as her personal crucible. But while some friends point to her support of non- discrimination laws as an example of how her life experiences have influenced her work, others say her years in legal practice have taught her to treat each case as a matter of first impression.
''What I would tell you is that whatever her personal opinion is, it will not influence her decision in any case," said Ann Simmons, a friend of 30 years. ''Harriet studies all of the facts and issues very carefully -- she would look at all sides, then interpret the law and apply it."
Middle-class roots
Miers, now 60, grew up in a middle-class neighborhood of North Dallas at a time when, a childhood friend recalled, people left their doors unlocked and kids rode bikes a mile and a half to school. The fourth of five children of a real estate executive and a homemaker, she led a typical Eisenhower-era childhood, but stood out for quiet intelligence.
At Hillcrest High School, Miers excelled in academics and sports; she was voted the most athletic female in the class, and was a National Merit Scholar.
Miers didn't run with the football-playing and cheerleading crowd, but was not an introvert, either, friends say. Instead, Miers began to display the determination associates say later helped her achieve groundbreaking positions.
Miers had expected she would become a teacher, said Lang-Miers, her sister-in-law, and at one point considered medicine. But when Miers's father, Harris Miers Sr., became ill, she began to worry she would be unable to finish her studies at SMU, the leading college in the Dallas area. With the help of financial aid and the advice of a lawyer, she worked her way through school and graduated with a degree in mathematics.
It was the compassionate advice of the lawyers, Lang-Miers said, that made Harriet Miers think about the law as a career. ''That made her think it would be a good profession," said Lang-Miers, her future legal colleague. (The two women became sisters-in-law after Miers set up her younger brother on a blind date with a reluctant Lang-Miers.)
At SMU School of Law, Miers was something of an anomaly, one of eight women in a class of about 100. But while she plugged away at her studies -- graduating near the top of her class, according to friends -- Miers was not a vocal defender of women's rights, friends and classmates recall.
But if she hoped her good grades and recommendations would get her a job in Dallas, she was disappointed. All the major firms rejected her, friends and family recall, a snub almost certainly related to her gender in Dallas in the 1970s. Miers instead took a clerkship in San Francisco, working for a US District Court judge, Joe E. Estes.
Estes, now deceased, became an important mentor and helped Miers get hired at the Dallas law firm of Locke, Purnell, Rain & Harrell, Lang-Miers said. Miers eventually became a partner and a key leader of the firm, which represented top corporate clients.
''Back then, it was very rare for law firms of that nature to even hire females," said childhood friend Marshall Edwards. Miers's success ''proved to me that she was exceptional."
Close ties to community
As she rose through the ranks of her firm, Miers maintained close ties to the Dallas community. With her law salary, she bought a 4,000-square-foot home near where she grew up. Her mother, Sally, now 93, lived in the house for many years before recently moving to a nursing home.
Raised a Catholic, Miers began attending Valley View Christian, an evangelical church near her home, in 1979. She was brought to the church by a law firm colleague and longtime friend, Nathan L. Hecht, now a justice of the Texas Supreme Court. (Hecht recently left the church with other parishioners to form another group that favors more traditional music and sermons, said Barry McCarty, Valley View Christian's preaching minister, but he said Miers has not officially severed relations with her old neighborhood church.)
The church preaches a conservative, evangelical message. But while the church disavows abortion, McCarty said he doesn't know for sure if Miers -- who taught Sunday school to elementary school children and was active in the church's overseas mission program -- would promote that view as a judge. ''Our church is very pro-life. It is not, however, a test of membership," McCarty said in an interview in the sprawling, North Dallas church.
Miers remained a law firm partner until 2001. Her ties to Dallas grew even stronger in 1989, when she won a term on the Dallas City Council, holding an at-large position that was later eliminated after a bitter fight over council district reapportionment. Miers had been urged to run for the council by Dallas business leaders who sought her out as a moderate voice at a fractious moment in the council.
Miers decided to seek the council seat -- elected in nonpartisan elections -- out of a desire for community service, said Jan Hart Black, president of the Greater Dallas Chamber of Commerce and a friend of Miers. Miers decided not to run for a second term after the council seats were divided among 14 delineated districts, Black said.
During her short time on the council, Miers was as she was in high school: hard-working and conciliatory, but uncomfortable in the spotlight, said Ron Natinsky, a city council member and former high school classmate of Miers who has been involved in city government for more than 30 years. And even in a policy-making position, Miers revealed little about her political leanings, associates said.
''To the average person in Dallas, if you said, 'Harriet Miers,' it was 'Who?"' Natinsky said. ''She was a very diligent worker, but she wasn't someone who wanted, or found herself, on the front page of the metro section every day."
Law career takes off
After her brief foray into politics, Miers's law career kicked into high gear. The 1980s and '90s were a period of growth for her firm, which through mergers partly engineered by Miers became a powerhouse employing up to 400 lawyers, now known as Locke Liddell & Sapp. She rose to co- managing partner, sharing the firm's top leadership position.
In 1985, Miers became the first woman president of the Dallas Bar Association, where her face stands out as one of the few female faces on a wall of photos of past presidents of the organization. In 1992, after leaving the city council, she became head of the Texas statewide bar association.
As head of the Dallas bar, Miers was an advocate for women and minorities, frequently urging her colleagues to contribute their time to serve indigent populations in largely black areas of Dallas where people couldn't afford lawyers. She also bemoaned the lack of female and minority voices in the legal profession. ''We have come a long way, but we must remain vigilant to insure continued involvement of minorities and women," Miers wrote in her opening statement in the DBA newsletter -- which in 1985 still carried a column for the Dallas Lawyers' Wives Club.
She also championed an SMU Law School scholarship fund for minority students; the program, said Dianne Jones, a criminal court judge who received the scholarship, has been instrumental in advancing law careers for African-Americans such as herself.
In the early '90s, Miers became a personal attorney for George W. Bush, then preparing for a run for governor. As governor, he made her head of the Texas lottery commission and brought her to Washington as his presidential staff secretary and White House counsel.
Now, as Bush seeks to elevate her to the Supreme Court, people searching for clues to her judicial views wonder if her experiences as a pioneering lawyer made her more sensitive to discrimination against others. Back in the '80s, she refused to support overturning a Texas criminal law banning sodomy. But gay activists said she was willing to meet with them and listen to their concerns -- considered unusual for Dallas at the time -- and supported AIDS research.
But if Miers is committed to equal treatment of people, it is probably sublimated by her determination to be a good professional interpreter of the law, friends say.
''A lot of people would say she is a feminist activist. I wouldn't say that. She became a leader without a banner," said Michael Boone, a Dallas attorney who has opposed Miers in court. ''She's very creative and supportive of minority roles," but she exercised that support through community service and pro bono work, not through rhetoric, he said.
At Locke, Liddell & Sapp, Miers used her position to promote women, mostly by giving them a chance to interact with clients -- a role often assumed by men.
''A key to success in a law firm is getting to work on big cases with the right people and getting introduced to important clients so you can develop relationships with them, and she was very sensitive to that and very conscious of that and consciously did that," said Jerry K. Clements, a partner who attributes her own position on the firm's management committee in part to Miers's guidance.
Like other friends, Miers's law-firm colleagues say her ultimate judicial philosophy is unknown to them. But her rise through the Dallas legal world -- and on to the White House -- was a tribute to her low-key diligence, a quality all expect would be on display in judicial conferences if she's confirmed to the highest court in the land. 