Super Lawyers - 2012 Ohio

used my married name, and then when I got divorced 10 years ago, I went back to my maiden name. There were definitely clubs in Cincinnati that didn’t have women. People thought I was the paralegal and the secretary; people called me Ruthie. I was lucky I worked at the same firm as my husband—it was a large firm—and they didn’t care who you were related to. … But at a lot of firms, if two people got married, the wife left. I had my daughter in ’ 84. I left the firm because I couldn’t work part time. That was a struggle for years, to get part time accepted in this city. Maternity leave was a struggle.

Q: How did you end up in Chicago after
Harvard?

A: I was a blank slate; I didn’t know where to go. This sounds very nonfeminist: I was dating someone who was going to Chicago; it turned out I wasn’t dating him by the time I graduated, but it was a big city and it was as good as any. I interviewed in Boston, but it was a very competitive market and they weren’t paying competitively. New York scared me because it was so big and I’d never been there. I mean, I was from another country! So Chicago seemed kind of manageable and they were paying well, and lots of firms were eager for Harvard graduates, so I went there. That’s a terrible way to pick a job.

Q: And then what brought you to Cincinnati? A: I married someone from my law school class, and we decided Chicago was too big to raise a family. It wasn’t like our home cities. We wanted a place where we could live in the suburbs and drive to downtown and not be running for the train. Two people in his law firm died of a heart attack running for a train—died on the L platform—in one year. We didn’t want that kind of a lifestyle. We were from middle-size cities like Cincinnati, where you could live in a suburb and have a normal life. We actually went out and spent weekends in cities—Louisville, Indianapolis, Columbus, Cincinnati—and we decided on Cincinnati.

Q: How did you wind up at Kohnen &
Patton?
A: They have a really nice tax practice;

it’s a substantial percentage of the firm and I was looking for a firm where the tax practice would be highly valued. [Also] it had an outstanding international tax practice. It was a good fit for me with my international background, and they were looking for someone to extend into Canada. I have some connections in Toronto, and they would like to reach out there. … That’s a nice synergy for us.

Q: Is there a different feel in the U.S. and
Canada?
A: Yes, you could talk endlessly about the
differences and similarities.
Q: Such as? Is the Canadian personality
different from that of the U.S.?
A: I’m not gonna go there. Not gonna
touch that.

Q: You have a strong public service ethic. A: The thing I’m currently interested in is a program called Dress for Success. It suits women who are underprivileged—maybe they’ve been incarcerated, maybe they’re impoverished—but they’re currently unemployed, and they’re referred to us for suits and interviewing skills. When they get their job, they come back and get their second suit and we give them further training on job skills, budgeting. … So they get continuing education through our program, and we have a resale shop where they can buy clothes inexpensively. I’m on the board of the resale shop. We do a fashion show with our graduates, and they tell their stories. It’s so inspiring. These women are former drug addicts; they have such stories of hardship, and [yet] they go on: They get their GEDs and sometimes [go to] college. What they can do from abusive backgrounds, incarcerations. … We get lawyers to volunteer their time to get their [criminal] backgrounds expunged. There’s a program to help refinance mortgages, so that’s something that I can help with.

Q: Must be rewarding to watch these women change their lives. A: It’s wonderful. I say to myself, why can’t I do more with what I have? With everything I got on a silver platter, why can’t I do more? Everything was given to me, and these women have to struggle so hard for everything.

Q: Can you give an example of a case that was both rewarding and a struggle? A: In the 1990s, in addition to my regular estate planning, I did quite a bit of elder law work, including Medicaid planning, which generally meant helping middle-class couples set aside assets so that when one spouse went to a nursing home the other spouse would not be impoverished. … In the late 1990s, in an ill-conceived effort to reduce Medicaid planning, Congress passed a law making it a crime to advise a client of all the financial options. It was called the "Granny's Lawyer Goes to Jail" law. Such a law would be similar to criminalizing advice for tax avoidance, as opposed to tax evasion. The New York State Bar Association challenged the law and won. I do not personally know of any Medicaid attorney who stopped giving advice during this period, but I am sure that the law had a chilling effect.

During this time, I was in the Cincinnati office of [a] Columbus-based firm. A partner in the Columbus office, who did not know the substance of my work but was morally opposed to it, demanded that I stop. Irate, I protested to the managing partner of my office. He simply asked that I write two paragraphs supporting my position. I angrily argued that I should not have to defend my work. He calmly repeated his request; he needed something to send to Columbus. I complied and heard nothing more of the matter.

Medicaid planning is a firmly established specialty these days. I was proud and immensely gratified that my managing partner stood up for me in the early days of Medicaid planning. I also learned a valuable lesson from him: It is not enough to shout that you are right (even when you are); you have to be willing to give the "other side" something that they need, or think they need … if only to allow them to save face.