Challenges & Rewards for Women in the Legal Profession: A Conversation Between Hilarie Bass and Patricia White
About Hilarie Bass:
Hilarie Bass, who was recently appointed as a Co-President, previously completed an eight-year term as the national chair of the 600-member litigation department, and serves on the firm’s Executive Committee. During her more than 30-year career, she has successfully represented clients in commercial cases in jury and non-jury trials involving hundreds of millions of dollars in controversy. She is currently Lead Counsel for the Homebuilder Group in the Chinese Drywall MDL, having served as Lead Liaison counsel in prior MDL’s. She is currently an unopposed candidate for President-Elect of the ABA. In 2011, she completed her term as Chair of the ABA Litigation Section. Hilarie is widely recognized for her pro bono work on behalf of two foster children which led to the elimination and holding of the unconstitutionality of the 20-year-old ban on gay adoption in the State of Florida.
About Dean Patricia White:
Patricia D. White is the University of Miami School of Law’s eleventh dean. Her decade of service as dean of the Arizona State University Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law, prior to joining the Miami school, elevated her to national recognition as a leader in legal education and made her the longest serving dean in the history of that college, as well as the first woman to serve as a law dean in Arizona.
The National Jurist magazine has named Dean White as one of the most influential people in legal education in 2015 and 2014, and in 2013 she was the top woman on the list.
Dean White was cited by the well-known legal blogger Brian Leiter as one of nine transformative law deans in the first decade of this century. Dean White has won many awards, including the 2012 Equal Justice Leadership Award, given by Legal Services of Greater Miami for her commitment to public service, and the Judge Learned Hand Award for distinguished public service, from the Arizona chapter of the American Jewish Committee.
Dean White was educated at the University of Michigan, where she received degrees in philosophy and law (B.A. 1971, J.D. 1974, M.A. 1974). While attending law school, she was also a graduate student in philosophy and an associate editor of the law review. She began her legal practice in Washington D.C. at Steptoe & Johnson and then moved to Caplin & Drysdale. Dean White was hired onto the Georgetown University Law Faculty in 1979, and in 1988 joined her alma mater, the University of Michigan. While at Michigan, she was of counsel to the Detroit firm Bodman, Longley & Dahling, and served for a year as Tax Advisor to the Economic Study Committee of Major League Baseball. In 1994, she joined the law faculty at the University of Utah, and was of counsel to Parsons, Behle & Latimer. She is a member of the bars of the District of Columbia, Michigan and Utah, and is an elected Fellow of the American College of Tax Counsel.
During her career, Dean White has worked in the areas of tax law, the legal profession, torts, bioethics, philosophy of law, and trusts and estates, and has published in prominent law and bioethics journals. To all her endeavors, Dean White brings an impressive combination of practical experience, dedicated professionalism and philosophical acuity.
