Watching “Perry Mason” was almost a ritual.
“There was a little girl who had a little curl right in the middle of her forehead. When she was good, she was very very good, but when she was bad she was horrid”
She grew up to be one warrior lawyer. And it all started on the living room floor at her grandparents’ home where she grew up. Watching Perry Mason with her grandmother was almost a ritual. She didn’t know it then, but the structure and rules of the courtroom spoke to her. The power to change a wrong to a right for his clients made Mr. Perry Mason invincible. His clients always trusted him and he protected them. She wanted to be invincible and have a team just like Perry Mason to help him protect his clients. Her grandmother used to tell her stories of having been a legal secretary to a lawyer in Detroit in the 1930s – you just knew she loved it! Her grandmother would just light up telling the stories of how she kept the lawyer’s office organized and how anything said in the office was a life time secret. She told her how the lawyer and she worked very hard and how serious it was to be a lawyer and knowing what to do to protect the clients.
As she grew up she just knew being a lawyer was a perfect fit. She loved the idea of being the one to know just what to do. No one could intimidate her, so trial work was a natural. She was a woman on a mission. After college, she attended law school at night while working in law offices by day. (Boy was she grateful that her father made her take typing in high school.) She made contacts and could decide what type of law she wanted to practice when the time came. Then she learned that there was a new and fabulous bonus – for every case, there was so much to learn about the client’s business. So being a business litigator was never ever going to be boring.
Now she IS the lawyer she always wanted to be. She protects her clients. She fights the battles. She makes the peace. She is the warrior who has a plan, not a bare wish, to protect her army. She is properly armed for battle and knows when to discuss and enter treaties.