lawyers weekly

i’m scott holmes. i’m a member of durhamfriends meeting. when i describe who i am, i guess it’s parent, spouse, quaker, lawyer.i don’t know in what order, but i am a trial lawyer and that’s a very peculiar groupof people to be. it means in my work, i had to wear a suit, and for many years i had towear a tie. that always felt uncomfortable in a sense of my yearning to connect withfolks. immediately i was shutting myself off to most of the people in the world.there came a point in my spiritual journey where i had been to north carolina yearlymeeting and i had hung out with some old-time quakers who were doing plain-dress. it planteda seed in my mind that i was not clear with the tie.the first few days at work i had this kind

of nauseous feeling when i put on the tie,like, “this isn’t resting easy with me.” i thought maybe i should start thinking aboutasking for a clearness committee and talking to people who know more about this and makingsure this is really a spiritual thing and not just some kind of a bug or a stubborn,bone-headed idea i’ve got. so i put the tie on, wore it, but it was kindof heavy, and then the next day it came time to put on the tie and it was kind of heavier.by the third day, i was like, “you know what, i don’t have time for a clearnesscommittee. i’m just not going to put on a tie today, i’ll just experiment with itand see how it goes.” and it went great! it was awesome. i was instate court. i was in some lower courts where

i’ve been pretty much all my professionallife. all the lawyers knew me, all the judges knew me. “oh, he forgot his tie,” or idon’t know what they thought. but no one asked me any questions. i got a complete freepass, not having a tie in court. i was like, “this is good. this is great! maybe i canpull this off and nobody will notice! that would be so cool!”but then i had federal court the next day and that judge, he stopped court immediatelyand called me up and said, “have you ever been in federal court?”he took a recess to give me time to think about this and he said, “we’ll see whatyou really think and we’ll come back on the record here after lunch. we’ll takeit up at that time.” and the impression

was, “you need to go get a tie on.”i had another encounter with a judge who made some kind of comment when we were arguingabout it that, “well if you were wearing a dress i wouldn’t let you appear in thiscourt,” and i was like, “well why not?” and he didn’t understand that. i said, “wellif i’m qualified and i’m licensed, if i’ve done everything i need to do to bea lawyer and my client wants me to, how can you not let me practice in a dress?”and so what i started learning really quickly was that it wasn’t about simplicity, itwas more about equality. that the tie is this symbol of male power and i started learningfrom my female attorney friends as they were laughing at my experiment—how women attorneyshave to think about their dress everyday.

there’s no standard costume that they canjust put on and not have anyone question them about their appearance in court. is the dresstoo low? is it too high? is it the right color? is it this or that? is it the right placefor the right court? and there’s this second guessing that happenswith their dress that is oppressive, which is inherent in being a woman. they have tolive up to this standard and the guys have the free pass because the guys make the rules.and so i started really learning more about oppression and what its like to be treatedunfairly because of something completely arbitrary because of something like a tie.so what i learned was the tie had more to do with the power and privilege of male patriarchythan it did simplicity.

that whole time i was experiencing what iimagine many folks feel who are spiritually led to do things that aren’t normal. itwas this wonderful sense of peace. this wonderful sense of untouchability. it was like i wasin the matrix and none of the bullets could hit me. “the rules suddenly don’t applyto me, judge. i’ve got this other power that’s higher, and do what you’ve gotto do, but i’m good.” i came back without a tie and the judge said,“you may appear as you are,” which seemed kind of presumptuous of him to tell me thati can appear as i am but let me know that i was off the hook and i wasn’t going togo to jail. meanwhile my poor client is sweating bullets, like, “what the hell lawyer didi get that can’t show up with a tie on?”

of all the things that are wrong with my costume,somehow the tie ended up being it. another is i wear hats all the time, but i had noproblem taking my hat off in court. that’s another tradition, of removing hats. that’sa more clear, historic quaker problem with removing the hat than it is with the tie,so i’m hoping that i never get the leading to keep my hat on, because that would be aquick way to go to jail.