by Megyn Kelly
“BORING!”
“Wait! Our defense is that the plaintiff was actually fired for cause—”
“BORING!”
“And that cause was: she was sexually harassing the male employees of the firm. She would show her breasts and rub up against the men. She engaged in X-rated discussions at the office place regularly. She propositioned more than one man in the salon.”
The judge started looking more interested. Suddenly he spoke to my fellow lawyer, looking at me: “Is this the plaintiff?”
“No, Your Honor. This is my co-counsel.”
Cue the look of disappointment on the judge’s face.
“But she’ll be trying the case with me!” he said. “She’ll be in court every day!”
Thinking about it now, I see that this was a bit like being asked to go out with the boss’s son. Here I was, having appeared repeatedly before this judge, but still the assumption was that I was not a lawyer. I’m sure it had something to do with my youth and blondness (and, once again, my judge’s advanced age), and again, in the moment, it didn’t bother me much. We wanted that December trial date. And even though I could have taken offense, I was content to be offered up to this judge like a shiny toy before a distracted baby to get what my client wanted.
We got our December trial, tried it in a week, and won a jury verdict vindicating our client entirely. The joy of that win was unlike any I had ever experienced. It was exhilarating.
Meanwhile, I had begun dating Dan long distance, and it was getting harder and harder to be apart. I initially thought this was going to be a fling. But we really hit it off, and so from the fall of 1997 through August 1999, we tolerated the plane rides between New York and Chicago.
Dan is six feet tall and has brown hair and brown eyes. He’s good-looking. Athletic. Fun. He is a nice guy—happy-go-lucky. I don’t know if I’ve ever really seen him in a bad mood. He likes to have a good time. He’s smart. He loves sports and medicine—two things in which I have no interest. But this didn’t strike me as a problem, because I enjoyed his company so much.
He was also a welcome distraction from the constant drumbeat of work in my life. Yes, the long hours and contentious nature of litigation had followed me to New York. Days would go by when I talked to no one except the people with whom I worked, and corporate litigators, while very dynamic, aren’t as a rule the most emotionally in-touch people on the planet.
Workdays were full of fights with opposing counsel. The acrimony was never-ending—it’s the nature of the beast. When we won a case, it was electrifying in the moment. The losses, however, were incredibly harsh. I would drag myself back to my apartment at the end of the day, eager to flip on the TV and steal a few hours of sleep. I’d put on Oprah and marvel at how others were working to improve their lives. Sometimes in the mornings, I’d put on Little House on the Prairie reruns instead of the news. It felt like a comfort from home, an escape. I didn’t have time to think or even really feel.
I wasn’t yet thinking I’ll do something else for a living, but it struck me that if I had Dan closer, I might be happier. So my third year in New York, Dan moved to town, and in with me. His medical school allowed him to complete his last year working at New York hospitals, which we figured would be good for both of us. The long-distance courtship had been wearing thin.
Before I knew it, Dan surprised me with a proposal. I could hardly believe how everything was lining up. High-paying legal job at a Big Law firm? Check. Nice apartment? Check. And now a future doctor husband? Check. The lady at the Saks Fifth Avenue counter exclaimed, “A doc-tah and a loy-yah! Does it get any bettah?” I loved Dan, and I loved how he fit so perfectly into this new ideal-on-paper life I was making for myself. If life was a contest, was I ever winning it.
In case you haven’t noticed by now, I really like to win.
In the spring, Dan learned that he had been accepted at Northwestern University Hospital in Chicago. It was clear to us both we were heading back to Illinois. I asked Jones Day if they would consider allowing me to work out of their Chicago office, and they graciously agreed. They were always so good to me.
I wasn’t sorry to go. New York had never grown on me; it had never felt that warm, nor like I had mastered it. I was looking forward to a fresh start in a familiar city. We left Manhattan in the summer of 2000.
I was in Chicago on September 11, 2001, which happened to be two weeks before my wedding to Dan. I remember sitting on my couch watching the TV and calling Dan, who was already in surgery, and telling him—and thus his entire OR—that the first World Trade Center tower had just fallen. They thought they had heard me wrong.
“It’s gone,” I said again. The second tower fell, and the world changed forever.
Like so much of America that day, I couldn’t tear myself away from TV news. I found myself hypnotized in particular by Ashleigh Banfield and Peter Jennings, who were on competing networks. She was on the street for NBC; he was in the anchor chair for ABC, and I felt like they were both talking right to me. I’d always had much respect for journalists, and here was as clear an instance as I’d ever seen of the nation benefiting from their calm professionalism. They had a higher calling in those terrible days, and they fulfilled it with humanity and grace. Like a lot of people, I felt like I wished I too could do something to help the country through it. For the first moment I could remember since entering law school, I felt regret at not becoming a journalist. It wasn’t that I was second-guessing my legal path yet; it was that I was envying someone else’s choice, admiring a service whose value was so apparent.
Beyond that, all I could think about was the people in my former apartment building, which was steps away from the WTC. My doormen, my neighbors, the people who worked in the Millenium Hotel, in which I had made that phone call to my mom. The humorless clerk at Duane Reade. The ones who worked in the towers, whom I would see on the subway late at night when I came home from my law practice.
As it turned out, my old apartment building was badly damaged by the attack, and had to be closed for months afterward for repairs. I was told that a large piece of one of the plane’s engines had been found on our rooftop. I cannot imagine the hell those in my old neighborhood went through at that time, nor what the fallen experienced as their lives were cut short that Tuesday in September—the day America lost its innocence.
Dan and I went ahead with our wedding, though naturally the nation’s agony cast a pall over it. It was a lovely ceremony at a Catholic church in Chicago, followed by a reception at the InterContinental—the very one I had stayed in when Bickel & Brewer first flew me out to the city on a recruiting trip, six years earlier.
We spent our honeymoon in Bora Bora, which is a spectacular place, or so I hear—it rained the entire eleven days we were there. I kept abreast of the news back home, which was full of stories too awful to really take in; on top of that, an anthrax scare was terrifying the nation.
Although the wedding and honeymoon were off to a somewhat somber start, when Dan and I returned to Chicago, a rich life awaited us, full of challenging careers and a terrific social whirl. Finally, I thought, everything was clicking into place. Now that I was married and back in a town I loved, surely I would be more fulfilled.
We made many friends through Dan’s anesthesia residency program at Northwestern. The hard work kept all of the young doctors busy, but also ready to seize upon whatever fun was available. We spent the weekends out with friends at the Chicago restaurants or attending Chicago’s many street fairs or parties. We loved to go with our friends to one bar in particular, the Hangge-Uppe, where we would dance to 1980s music until the wee hours and cheer for the Elvis impersonator who would sometimes appear. If we had any concerns about marriage or our careers, we drank and danced and laughed them away.
We spent most of our time in a group setting, so Dan and I didn’t get a lot of one-on-one time, especially because we both worked so much. Of course that was a problem, but we couldn’t see it at the time. We were so fo
cused on our careers. He would go on to become chief resident and was well respected at Northwestern. I was trying and preparing cases and learning a ton. Dan and I had each other’s back, and we figured that meant giving each other freedom to work crazy hours in the pursuit of our dreams.
We didn’t think it was unusual to go days, weeks on end, without spending any real time together. All of our friends were busy too. They were mostly lawyers or young doctors, so in a sense, we were all in it together. There was a coming of age and coming into our own professionally, and living on the promise of what might be.
This was actually a very happy time for me. I met two of my best friends—Rebecca and Andrea, with whom I am still very close. The three of us still take a girls’ trip every year, usually to one of our hometowns—Chicago, Detroit, or New York.
My girlfriends and I formed a wine club. I lived on the second floor of a three-story brownstone, and there was a tiny back patio in the rear. My friends would come over on the weekends, and we would sit with lit candles all around us, playing music (plenty of the Smiths), telling stories about our work and our relationships.
It wasn’t until my third year into this stint that my work life again morphed into an exercise in survival. I never said no to work. I considered it a badge of honor to be asked to be on the best cases. And the firm rewarded me with plum assignments and tons of responsibility, not to mention big bonuses and raises. I was succeeding by any professional measure. And I was not the only one—there were plenty of lawyers going full throttle. I remember saying to one female partner whom I really liked, “Did you see that article in the Tribune this morning?”
“Oh, you misunderstand me,” she said. “You see, whenever I’m not at the office, I’m intoxicated.” She was only half joking.
I loved the praise that came with doing well. It’s hard to get hired at a firm like Jones Day, at least for someone like me, let alone to be recognized as one of the best. I had made it. I was competing—successfully—against the Ivy grads. Me, a girl from Albany.
I enjoyed my colleagues and had many fun times. But it’s fun swimming in the ocean, too, until suddenly you realize you might be about to drown. It’s still beautiful, and the water’s as blue and warm as ever, but it’s up above your lips and climbing, and you quickly find yourself desperate to get back to shore.
What had started as a step up in intensity and opportunity at work had transformed yet again into nonstop hours, acrimony, and the elimination of the social life I had come to love. Those wine club get-togethers went away, and soon Dan and I barely saw each other at all.
I talked to some of my colleagues about switching careers. “You’re thinking of leaving law?” my friends at work would ask. “Are you insane?” One brilliant appeals lawyer pulled me aside, saying, “The law is your highest and best calling; you’ll never be as good at anything as you are at this.” Your ego gets tied to being a lawyer. Mine was. I thought it was the only way for me to be taken seriously, especially by powerful men. The people I dealt with all day—judges, my bosses, clients—were almost all men.
My legal training gave me several skills, but knowing how to handle men in positions of authority was easily one of the most valuable. I would call on it many, many times. I endeared myself to them by working incessantly and by figuring out what made each of them tick. This one partner used me a lot on his cases because I worked hard and I knew how to get to the point. Once, a junior associate saw him in my office. She ran in, trying to regale him with her totally irrelevant knowledge on a case. Sensing his frustration, I found an excuse to send her off. He looked at me and deadpanned, “Don’t ever let her speak to me again.”
I became good at reading powerful people and managing their egos. The most challenging thing was dealing with opposing counsel. At that level of practice, these are killers, formidable adversaries, and they want to embarrass you. Every day is fraught with peril. When I started out in law, I felt insecure and was easily angered by these guys. I’d play right into stereotypes about “hysterical” women. I would get spitting mad at a deposition. I regret that now, looking back on it.
But I learned. A few years in, I had turned the tables. I might say something passive-aggressive just to get opposing counsel mad, and then when he got worked up about it, I would say calmly, “You seem upset. Do you need a break? We can take a moment if you’d like to step outside and get yourself together.” I became an expert in making them lose their cool.
For years I did that. And then it lost its luster.
8
Calling and Calling; Nobody’s Home
In 2002 the chickens came home to roost. I was driving home on Chicago’s Kennedy Expressway in the darkness, tears streaming down my face. If I could only break a bone, I thought. Nothing too catastrophic, but something significant. A femur? No one could argue with time off for a broken femur. They’d have to let me rest then.
I had been working around the clock—eighteen-hour days for weeks on end. In one way, it was paying off: seven years into my career, I’d become one of my law firm’s top billing associates. The cost, though, was brutal. For months, I hadn’t seen anyone except co-workers. I had blown off friends’ weddings. I cried a lot. I was sleepless, and sad, and lonely.
Gone were the days of law school when I’d been devoted to my studies because I loved learning. Now I was just cranking out work like a machine. And I’d come to realize that the joy of winning did not come close to justifying the pain of losing or the long, long hours of legal paperwork and intense strife that characterized the practice of law on a day-in, day-out basis.
One case in particular, representing Bridgestone Firestone, had been consuming every waking hour of my life. It became the straw that broke the camel’s back. I was flying all over the country, from Wisconsin, to Texas, to California and beyond. One particularly rough flight to Greenville, South Carolina, is seared in my memory as a metaphor for how I felt during that time: helpless, trapped, and terrified.
Another lawyer on the case and I boarded a plane at O’Hare Airport in Chicago in the middle of a significant thunderstorm. It wasn’t terrible yet on the ground, but you could see the dark skies in the distance, and the rain was pounding. I remember wondering if it was safe to fly. The pilot came on the overhead shortly after takeoff and said, “We’re coming up on an area of bad turbulence. Don’t worry, folks, we would never fly in that. We’re going to take the long way around, but it won’t add too much time to our trip.”
Flash forward about ten minutes, when the we-would-never-fly-in-that clouds were upon us and the plane was getting tossed around like a toy in a tornado. Suddenly the flight attendant was thrown to the floor, and began crawling up the aisle to the front of the plane.
People were screaming. I was one of them.
The plane kept dropping as if in free fall. We could see lightning out the windows. We had no idea if we were going to live or die. Some people were crying. I was holding on for dear life to the eighty-year-old woman next to me. All of a sudden, from the seat behind me, I felt a hand grabbing my arm. It belonged to the other lawyer, whom I barely knew. He was scared out of his mind and thought he was about to die. I reached one arm back in between the seats to hold him. We kept silent, and prayed. We all have these brushes with death, these moments that remind us of our tenuous connections to life. But I think for those of us who lost someone young, there is something particularly sharp about those reminders: no, really, you could die at any second.
After what felt like an eternity, things settled down. No one on the plane spoke. Finally, the pilot came on the PA. (Why must they maintain total silence in these situations? Just one calm word from the cockpit would help so much. I suppose it’s because they are busy trying to keep us alive.) “No extra charge for the fun ride,” the pilot said. “We’re out of trouble, should be a relatively smooth ride from here.”
The flight attendant, who was now vertical, said, “Anybody need anything?”
A loud voice boomed b
ack: “Where is the alcohol?”
It may or may not have been me.
As is often the case, it’s the rare near-death experience that actually forces you to reevaluate your life. Those things are traumatic, but they are so packed with adrenaline that it’s more cinematic than life-changing. Rather, my awakening came from something far more, for lack of a better word, innocuous (hi, Jim): a trip home to see my mom.
I had been working myself into a frenzy, billing more than 3,000 hours a year. The better you are as a lawyer, the more work gets loaded on you as a “reward.” As they say, working in law is like a pie-eating contest in which the prize is more pie. Which is about when I realized: just because you’re good at something doesn’t mean it makes you happy.
It sounds so obvious now, but for most of my adult life I’d been chasing success with such single-minded determination that I hadn’t thought much about my long-term goals, only about acing each new challenge as it came. I’d come of age believing so strongly in the value of hard work, and it had paid off for me many times already. Only now was I starting to see that I had taken it too far. There was nothing wrong with working hard—but without a plan it was more like running in a hamster wheel than running toward some place I wanted to be.
“Mom, why don’t you meet me at the racetrack in Saratoga?” I suggested before boarding my plane home. “I’ll call you when I land and tell you where I am.”
When I arrived in Saratoga, I went to a restaurant and called Mom. She didn’t answer her phone, so I left a message.
“I’m here,” I said. “I’ll wait for you at the restaurant.”
I waited and waited, and still she didn’t show up. I called again and left another message. An hour passed. On the third call, Mom finally answered her phone.
“Mom, where have you been?” I said. “I’ve left you two messages!”
“You didn’t leave me any messages,” she said. “I’ve been right here, waiting to hear from you.”
