Insights

Remembering My Grandma’s Advice on International Women’s Day and All Days

By: Ellen D. Marcus

This International Women’s Day I think of my legal career and write in gratitude for my paternal grandmother Lee Spinell Marcus (1908-2007). In 1932, when this portrait was done, she would have been 26 years old and living with her immigrant parents (who fled Russia during the pogroms) in Borough Park, Brooklyn.  She used to tell me that she “always wanted to be an actress!” but that would have been frowned upon by her family.  No one was encouraging her to go into the family textile business, either.  That was for her brother to do.  Perhaps because of this, Grandma relished that I had opportunities she did not.  She was my biggest fan (it helped that I was her only grandchild) and often urged me to “just be yourself!”  In fact, when I was a young lawyer, it became a kind of mantra.  For years, I dismissed the advice as trite, but over time I’ve come to understand her wisdom.  Where nearly all my wonderful mentors were men, trying on their rhetorical styles for size proved a poor fit.  I began experimenting with just being me during hearings where everyone else in the courtroom but the court reporter and me—the judge, clients, colleagues, opposing counsel, and witnesses—were men.  Eventually I learned I was a more effective advocate for my clients that way.  For one thing, just by being different than everyone else (not so tall, not so plodding, perhaps more emotive, mindful of body language, and always overprepared) people tended to take notice of what I was saying.  Plus, it just felt better to be me.  Grandma knew it all along.