new; it keeps it interesting. You get to
speak to all sorts of interesting people,”
she says of her practice. “I think that it’s
just really fun to see what [clients are]
doing and then to be able to play a part in
supporting them in the way that we do.”
And she’s quick to credit her team. “I
think it’s very collaborative, what we do,
especially with litigation,” she says. “You
work in teams and you work with one
another and you’re not saying, ‘I’m the
only one with good ideas.’ We’re all these
people coming together and sharing our
ideas to come up with the best ideas of
how to do it well.”
At home, Chaplin does her best to
explain to her three sons, ages 3, 6 and
8, what she does when she goes in to
work every day. (Her husband, Tony, stays
home with the boys.) “They’re not even at
that age where they understand the court
system and that [you have] a judge; that
when we people have disputes, we have
this nice way to work it out in a civilized
fashion where we can have differences
and someone decides,” she says. “So I try
to explain for them.”
Chaplin describes how she recently
took her children through the steps of a
deposition, explaining to them how she
gets to ask someone questions under
oath. “I said, ‘And then Mommy asks
them questions and they have to answer.
And someone writes it all down and
somebody videotapes it,’” she told them.
“And [my sons] go, ‘Oh, my gosh, can
you ask him anything?’ And I said, ‘Well
pretty much anything …’” The explaining
can get too complicated, so Chaplin
sticks to the basics. “They said, ‘Oh,
please Mommy, please, please, please,
ask him [about] the closest planet to the
BRIEFS
RISING STARS
sun. Let’s see if he knows it.’ And I said,
‘Well that’s going to be hard to work in.
But if I can work it in, I will.’”
So, after a lunch break from the
deposition she explained that her children
had begged her to ask a certain question.
The man being deposed, in good humor,
admitted he didn’t know which planet was
closest to the sun—though Chaplin insists
he was probably just indulging her—and
after a laugh, the deposition continued.
Chaplin returned home to tell her sons
what happened and the three boys went to
sleep that night proud that they, in fact, did
know which planet was closest to the sun.
“I want them to feel like they understand
what I’m doing and they’re a part of it, too,
as much as [they] can be,” she says.
