Resilience and Grit
Retired Chief Justice Catherine Stone By Sara Dysart
Cover and article photography by Mewborne Photography shot on location at the Hopscotch art gallery in San Antonio.
I
f you were raised by a single mother, realized that education was the key to a different life, and took friend and mentor’s advice to “leave while they still love you,” then you may have a lot in common with retired Chief Justice Catherine Stone. Although she reached the highest echelons of our profession, Catherine and her life story are thoroughly relatable. After retiring from the appellate bench in 2014, Chief Justice Stone joined the law firm of Langley & Banack, Inc., where she leads the Appellate Practice Group and the Alternative Dispute Resolution Practice Group. She offers full appellate services, including appellate and trial briefing and strategy, oral arguments, brief editing, and review. She has also leveraged her decades of judicial service in her Alternative
Dispute Resolution Practice, providing valuable insight to litigants and counsel in mediation and arbitration settings. How did this distinguished jurist and advocate get from an early childhood in Biddeford, Maine, to San Antonio, Texas, to become the Chief Justice of the Fourth Court of Appeals and now one of the most acclaimed Texas appellate attorneys? Resilience and grit! When Catherine Stone and I started St. Mary’s University School of Law in the fall of 1978, approximately one-third of our law school class was women. Looking back on our experiences, they seem to have been in tune with the mantra, “We have come a long way, baby!” followed by the refrain, “We have much further to go!” Catherine recalls that, in the late 1970s, women law students and lawyers were treated differently November–December 2021
|
San Antonio Lawyer® 5
