TBJ MARCH 2023
It Begins With Encouragement
How San Antonio-area bar presidents
Donna McElroy and Danielle Rushing Behrends
define leadership.
Interview by Eric Quitugua
Photos courtesy of Noah Kerwin
San Antonio-based attorneys Donna McElroy and Danielle Rushing Behrends
are both leaders of bar associations headquartered in the Alamo City and
first-generation lawyers originally from Louisiana. McElroy, with 36
years in the law, is president of the San Antonio Bar Association. In
her sixth year as an attorney in Texas, Behrends is the immediate past
president of the Bexar County Women’s Bar Association. The two find
commonality in leadership styles and how they view the pathway to the
helm in the profession for women. For McElroy and Behrends, that track
emphasizes identifying group goals, earning buy-in from peers,
self-advocacy, and mentorship. The two spoke to the Texas Bar
Journal about leadership and what comes next.
ABOVE: Attorneys Donna McElroy and Rushing Behrends
Donna, can you tell me about your path to becoming president
of the San Antonio Bar?
DM:The path to the San Antonio Bar was
really through the Bexar County Women’s Bar Association. I was on that
board a couple of different times. The San Antonio women’s bar started
about 25 years ago. I was asked to be a board member, and I was at the
stage of my career when I had a little more time and a little more
flexibility, so I said yes and worked my way up through the ranks.
What focus do you have at the San Antonio Bar?
DM: We’ve been working on DEI initiatives.
Related to that, Dawn Finlayson was supposed to be president the year
before last, but she died of cancer. Her belief was we need to encourage
people to pursue legal careers and stay in San Antonio because we feel
like we have talent that leaves us. So we started the Dawn Finlayson
fellowship scholarship, and we give scholarships to undergrads, law
students, and court reporters who are first-generation in their field,
have an economic need, and give an indication they’re interested in
staying in the San Antonio community. That’s a big part of our focus
now—is trying to build up this scholarship fund.
Danielle, can you tell me about your path to the Bexar County Women’s
Bar?
DB: I was involved with the St. Mary’s
Women’s Law Association in law school and its mentoring program. After I
graduated from law school, I started working for a commercial litigation
boutique here in town and the female partner at that firm was a past
president of the women’s bar. She encouraged me to get involved. I
started at various committees, and I ended up running and was elected as
a director. From serving as a director, I went through the officer chain
and now I’m in my year of presidency. I have one more year on the board
as an officer. That’s how I got involved—starting small, getting
involved in webinars and luncheons, and working through the family
committees. It was a great way to meet some of the young female
practitioners who had families and get to know people right out of law
school.
What are some of your initiatives?
DB: One of the struggles we’ve had—San
Antonio as a whole and not even necessarily the women’s bar—is meeting
members where they are post-pandemic. What we found was that people
still want to do family events, and so we focused on those throughout
the year. We still do CLE luncheons. But one of the new things is a
focus on DEI initiatives. We were able to secure USAA as a sponsor this
year, and we’ve been able to do a lot of DEI initiatives that require
some extra funding that we just didn’t have in our budget coming out of
the pandemic. So we’ve been able to reach a new subset of members,
specifically female, diverse lawyers in our San Antonio legal community.
It sounds like DEI is big at both bars. Can you tell me about the need
for more diversity initiatives? What are some of your
observations?
DM: From the San Antonio Bar Association’s
standpoint, we just didn’t feel like the membership reflected the
diversity of the community. We put together a DEI committee last year.
You have to start thinking of other people who represent diverse ideas
and invite them to be part of the organization. So that’s part of the
effort we’ve put together.
Danielle, is that similar to what you’re noticing over at the
women’s bar?
DB: We have a wonderful group of diverse
female lawyers, and our membership just wasn’t reflective of all the
subsets, whether it be diverse for the members but also in practice
areas. The women’s bar came up with a DEI mission statement. We’ve been
able to carry that through. That was something the two presidents in
front of me felt strongly about, and I wanted to take it to the next
level. Obviously, we have the opportunity to partner with USAA and we
hope to do it again next year to be able to reach those people who might
not otherwise come to different women’s bar events.
What do you think, given your experiences in law, is part of the cause
for the gulf in gender representation? I know at the Texas Bar, only
about 38% of Texas-licensed attorneys are women whereas 62% are men.
What do you think is part of the cause there and how do you think your
bar or your firm are finding ways to address that?
DB: I think the profession as a whole,
especially for females—young female attorneys—the number one thing I
think from a private practice perspective that we hear is burnout. Or
simply not being able to juggle family responsibilities with work
responsibilities. What the women’s bar is doing specifically is trying
to make it to where we’re developing our female leaders and also
educating them on not having to leave the profession. The LEAD Academy
is an arm of our foundation and a lot of that is developing the
potential of women but also making sure that they understand you don’t
have to leave the profession. There are a lot of alternate career paths.
You can also go part-time.
The LEAD Academy is a great example to be able to show people that you can go through leadership programs and pull out your best potential and see what works for you but also being an advocate for yourself at your workplace. I think those are critical pieces of information that female lawyers don’t always take to heart.
DM: I’ve been practicing over 30 years. When I first
started practicing, there were just a handful of in-house positions. If
you look at the numbers within law firms that say why is there a gap, if
you will, between men and women, a lot of women are taking the
opportunity to say, “I’m going to go in-house” because they believe that
their life is a little more controlled. Because when you’re in private
practice, we’re in the service business. If we’ve got clients who have
urgent matters that need to be attended to, somebody at the end of the
day has to service those clients, and I think whether we want to admit
it or not, many women still take on the lion’s share of the work at
home. That just becomes very difficult to balance for many women.
Danielle, you mentioned earlier that it can be hard for some women to
advocate for themselves in the workplace. Can you tell me more about
that?
DB: The LEAD Academy helped me realize how I
wasn’t an advocate for myself at the workplace. I think coming to the
table, there are so many different ways you can advocate for yourself,
whether it’s in the evaluation process or long-term career planning. The
way I’ve approached it is you have to be comfortable, and you have to
have the buy-in of the people you work around. When I think of work-life
balance on a scale, I consider the people I work with my family. I have
my work family. I have my home family. Because I spend a lot of time
with them. I know the people that I work with are going to go to bat for
me.
DM: Right. They’re going to be your advocates.
What are some of the challenges to your respective paths to
leadership?
DB: This goes back to—this is not
Dykema-specific—being in private practice; we’re client service-focused.
We want to give 100% to our clients. We want to develop ourselves to be
the best attorneys that we can be. We want to be the best leaders that
we can be. All of that boils down to every single person has 24 hours in
a day and how do you allocate that and make sure you’re developing
yourself as a lawyer, developing yourself as a leader, being there for
your team, being there for your family and friends. How do you juggle
all of that? At the end of the day, you make time for things that
matter. Women’s bar matters to me. It’s been influential in my career
thus far. It all boils down to time. You have to make time for things
that matter. Donna and I have done that. Anybody who wants to get
involved, you just have to know that yes it takes time, but you get out
of it what you put in.
DM: The other thing that I would add is I will tell you
I have never felt like there was a gender challenge. Some people ask
that sometimes. “Did you feel like it was a challenge for you to come
through leadership because of your gender?” And I’ve never felt that
way.
How do you become effective leaders?
DM: I think it’s helping the people around
you accomplish the goal you’re setting as a group. Be open to listening
to different voices, number one. And number two, these are volunteer
boards and so everybody who’s on these boards is busy so you’ve got to
nudge people to make sure you’re getting where you want to be with
respect to your goals and what you’re looking to accomplish.
DB: I think that’s right. One thing I’ve
seen the women’s bar do specifically the last couple board retreats is
we take a step back in January and we say, “OK, this is what we
accomplished last year. Where do we want to go as a new board this next
year?” We look at our mission statement and say, “OK, this is our
mission. Where do we want to spend our time, our talent, and our
treasure as an organization this year?” I think you have to have the
buy-in from your team but also focus on your mission.
If you’re talking to a woman who is thinking about becoming an
attorney, what advice would you give her as she’s contemplating getting
into a career in law?
DB: I do this all the time with St. Mary’s
law students. I love to meet with them and do one-on-one mentoring. I
was a first-generation law student. I had no idea what going to law
school meant. I knew zero lawyers going into law school. I think if I
had a little more preparation or exposure, I would have been set up
differently. I want to expose them to other practitioners in our legal
community. If they want to move to a different market, I want to tap
into my resources. It’s all organic, but I want them to understand they
need to broaden their network and get involved. And part of that is also
getting involved in organizations like SABA and the women’s bar. That’s
my number one piece of advice when I talk to people—you need to get
involved and you need to get to know people in the area you want to
practice.
DM: I tell them to understand the importance of relationships inside and outside of your firm or wherever it is that you’re working. I tell people they’ve got to be responsive. If you’re going to volunteer on a board just because it’s non-billable, you’ve got to be responsive and do what you said you’re going to do in that volunteer capacity.
And by the way, I’m also a first-generation lawyer. And I was not
from Texas even when I showed up in San Antonio. So having somebody to
help you understand the community and the lay of the land is very
important.
Is there anything else you want to add in regards to
leadership?
DM: The only thing I would say to people is
don’t be afraid to raise your hand. Don’t be afraid to raise your hand
and say, “Hey, can I help on that?” That’s how you get into the chain,
so to speak. Danielle was talking about working on committees and then
getting involved in leadership. I think sometimes people are afraid to
raise their hand because they think, Well, they’ve got somebody else
in mind. Raise your hand. People react to those who want to get
involved. The more involved you get, the better chance you have to get
into those leadership roles.
DB: We’re always looking for people to say “yes.” TBJ
