The Daily Record of Rochester (Rochester, NY), July 12, 2007, Thursday

Copyright 2007 Dolan Media Newswires

The Daily Record of Rochester (Rochester, NY)

July 12, 2007 Thursday

SECTION: NEWS

HEADLINE: Rochester-based Harris, Chesworth, O'Brien, Johnstone names first African-American female partner

BYLINE: Tara E. Buck

BODY:

LaMarr Jackson now has the distinction of being the first African-American female partner at a major area law firm.

The partners of Harris, Chesworth, O'Brien, Johnstone, Welch & Leone, LLP, elected Jackson to a partnership, which was made official July 1.

Jackson came to practice law later in life, having first earned a master's degree in education in 1974 from SUNY at Brockport, and her decision to attend law school was not an easy one, she recalled at her Linden Oaks office on Monday.

"I had only two weeks to prepare," she said, chuckling.

Jackson had been working in 1989 as the Affirmative Action Minority Business Coordinator for Monroe County under then-County Executive Lucian Warren when she was wait-listed at SUNY at Buffalo School of Law. She was weighing an offer to become a deputy director of the newly-formed Division of Minority and Women Business Enterprise for former Gov. Mario Cuomo's administration. And she was out of town for a meeting when her secretary received a call from UB Law's associate dean.

"She called and said, 'The dean of the law school called. They have an opening and they need to know by Monday. '"

"I had a weekend of, 'What do I do? What do I do? What do I do?'" Jackson said. "I talked to my family. I talked to my mentor, [Cornell University professor] Jean McKelvey, and then I said, 'OK. ' I called them back on Monday morning and I showed up with my deposit and had exactly two weeks to find a place, to make arrangements for someone to move into my house and find an apartment. The rest, as they say, is history. "

Jackson's parents, Edward and Sylvia Jackson, live in Churchville and they and other family members helped her to raise the niece she has raised as her own daughter, now 18.

"I was very blessed. My parents were in good health, my sister was available. I had a whole network of support from family and friends who said 'Just do it,' and I did it. I somewhat amazed myself because, at that time, you couldn't get a loan for law school and I had worked right up until two days before I started class. I exhausted my life's savings to go to law school, and it was interesting. I left a full-time position and stepped out on faith. I can say I enjoyed it. "

Jackson counts her parents as mentors, along with her uncle, Lloyd Hurst, a pioneering attorney in Rochester who now lives in North Carolina.

The late Jean and Blake McKelvey "were very close to me, kind of like a set of grandparents," Jackson noted. (In 1947, Jean was one of the founders of Cornell School of Industrial Labor Relations; her husband, Blake, was a City of Rochester historian.)

Throughout her "second career," or "BLS" - before law school - as Jackson likes to say, she also has relied on assistance and advice from Judges Patricia Marks and Evelyn Frazee, women she said she admires and respects, and who provided encouragement.

"Now I can't imagine doing anything else," Jackson said when asked whether she made the right decision.

The significance of her partnership is not lost on Jackson, although she is quick to point to the successful career of attorney Michelle A. Hutchinson, a founding partner of the firm Brown & Hutchinson.

More women, minority partners "probably should be par for the course, but it isn't yet because I don't think there are that many. There are women partners, yes, but not minority women partners. ... It's still something that's not in the ordinary and, until it becomes part of the ordinary, I think it is something that is still outstanding. I think it's good for the community as a whole to see this and, in particular, the minority community because then they realize there's an opportunity still for growth," she said.

"T. Andrew Brown is going to become the next president of the Monroe County Bar Association, that's a first in this community for an African-American. ... There are some people who may say, 'Well, it's about time,' but, for many people, it's all about the timing. It's a coming together of skills, qualifications and opportunity and I think that's what happened here at Harris Chesworth. "

Jackson began working of counsel to the firm in August 2005, and she serves as the town attorney for the Town of Riga, as a Hearing Examiner for the City of Rochester and as an arbitrator for the Rochester City Small Claims Court. She holds a graduate certificate from the Cornell University School of Industrial Labor Relations.

Jackson is admitted to practice in the federal courts, Connecticut and New York. Her practice also is centered on matrimonial/family law and criminal law.

Jackson has taught law for more than 14 years, and actually went to law school in order to teach because doing so enabled maintaining a "neutral" status in terms of her work as an arbitrator. For many years she was an adjunct faculty member at SUNY Brockport, Cornell University School of Industrial Labor Relations and Rochester Institute of Technology and was an assistant professor at St. John Fisher College.

She is a member of the MCBA, where she has served on the judiciary, membership, fee arbitration and diversity committees, as well as the Rochester Black Bar Association, the Greater Rochester Association for Women Attorneys, the New York State Bar Association and the American Bar Association.

In the fall, she is running on the Republican ticket for the office of Henrietta town justice.

Jackson left behind a successful practice of her own to join Harris Chesworth because it became increasingly difficult for her, as a solo, to "keep and maintain everything you need for clients. Their needs change and their demands change. "

She holds a great deal of respect for the firm and its partners, she said, and takes pride in her affiliation with them.

"It's exciting because the firm is growing and I work with a group of great attorneys from every aspect. "

She also appreciates the ways in which the firm is mindful of family needs and how fellow attorneys there help each other when family-realted duties call.

"The men in the firm also spend time with their families," Jackson said. "I think that's the advantage of being in a firm of this size. ... I think all of the partners have children, some have teenagers like I do. I've had flexibility with class schedules, with picking [her daughter] up, being able to spend time doing school activities. The firm has been very good to me. "

Such flexibility is important for the success of women attorneys, especially, Jackson noted, regardless of their race.

"Women, in general, have more on their plates. If it's not child care, it could be family care, a partner or a spouse may need to be taken care of. Or perhaps family events sometimes dictate where and when a woman is at a certain point in her career, like a relocation.

"I think women as a whole don't sometimes have the opportunity [to become partners] but they also don't have as much flexibility, and that's key when you're practicing law and you're on a partnership track. You have to be flexible. It means working nights, it means working weekends. When you do trials, you don't have the luxury of saying, 'I can't be here until eight o'clock. ' You have to work hard and it does mean sacrifice. "

She said that women have more career options today with a law degree than they did in the past, and that also is a factor in how many women seek the partnership track.

"You can teach. You can do mediation, arbitration. You could write. You could do just appeal work from home. I think, in the past, those options weren't there for women, but they're now being explored. Women are no longer pigeon-holed into only being on a partner track or not and 10 years ago that wasn't the case," Jackson said.

Such flexibility is "vital," she noted, "because you can be a good attorney ... and people will no longer look at your gender or your race. What they will look at is, 'This is a good attorney I want on my side representing me in court,' and, when it comes down to it at the end of the day, that's what it's about. "