Virginia Love, an avid cyclist, will face not one, but three mountains on May 6 as she tackles the 100-mile arm of the 3 Mountain 3 State Challenge. The grueling trek will take her through Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia, and over Suck Creek, Sand and Lookout Mountains, and involve a climb of over 6,000 feet.
To train for the event, Love has been biking up to 120 miles a week. She’s also been scaling mountains, of one form or another, since she was 15.
Motivated by fear
Love was born in the U.S., but grew up in the Orient. When she graduated high school at the age of 15, she returned to the States while her parents remained in Hong Kong. Looking back, she says she was “a lost child.”
“I was suddenly alone in what was tantamount to a foreign country. I arrived in the U.S. at the height of our racial problems, and I did crazy things, not because I was wild, but because I didn’t know the rules of society. I didn’t know whites weren’t supposed to sit at the back of a bus,” she says.
Love began taking classes at Furman University in Greene-ville, S.C., but she was living without a support system, so at the age of 17, she got married.
“He was a port in the storm, and I ended up working to put him through college. By the time I was 22, I had two kids, a job in a factory, and had finished only a year-and-a-half of college. Then, when my son was two months old, my husband went to San Francisco to find himself,” she says.
Love says she realized she could either spend the rest of her life eking out an existence in manufacturing, or she could complete her education and do something more substantial.
So, with her mind set on the future, she took a full load at UNC Asheville while caring for her children and working full time.
“People ask me how I was able to do that. I tell them fear. It was a huge motivator,” she says.
Love wanted to teach philosophy, so when it was time for her to attend graduate school, her brother lured her to San Diego, Calif., with the promise of a free place to stay. However, he saw no monetary value in a philosophy degree, so once Love was settled in, he started charging her rent as a tactic to persuade her to pursue something more practical.
Although Love moved out and took a full-time job, she eventually caved in to her brother’s demands.
“He said I had obligations to my children, and that I had no right to decide what I wanted to do with my life. I got tired of him pressuring me, so I decided to show him I could be successful,” Love says.
Love had no idea what being a lawyer would be like; however, given her coursework to date, she saw law as her only option.
“I couldn’t suddenly decide I was going to become a medical doctor. Besides, philosophy had taught me to think logically and critically. That was a skill in which many law students were deficient,” she says.
Love applied to the Univer-sity of Tennessee at Knoxville, where a good friend was taking classes. The school not only accepted her but also offered her a sizeable academic scholarship, so she packed up her kids and her belongings, and moved back across the country.
Little did Love know another tall mountain lie ahead of her.
They’re turning them into lawyers now?
Love tackled law school with her characteristic resolve. Much like her training today for the 3 Mountain 3 State Challenge, she believed preparation was the key to her success, so exams were not tests of her knowledge, but an opportunity for her to devote herself body and soul to a single cause. Her study methods were so precise, she’d create 50 pages of notes for each exam.
There was just one problem: she was working without a compass.
“I had no idea what I was going to do with law. I just knew it was more marketable than philosophy,” Love says.
While Love typically de-votes herself wholeheartedly to her endeavors, there was another reason she worked as hard as she did: she believed she had to in order to earn the same degree of recognition as her male peers.
Her plan worked. When she won a Moot Court competition, the judge who presided over the contest told her she had a talent for litigation.
Still, just like Love had no idea what she was going to do with the law, the law had no idea what to do with her, either. Love studied to become a lawyer in the ‘70s, when men still dominated the legal profession, and when attitudes about women that seem shameful and backward today were a part of the cultural fabric of the U.S. So, when she landed an interview with Baker Donelson during a placement consortium, and told the man who interviewed her she wanted to go into litigation, his response was one for the ages.
“He said litigation was the only place where he wouldn’t put a woman, as we didn’t have a good rapport with judges and juries. I asked him how we were going to develop a rapport if we were never given the chance,” Love says.
While the lawyer’s comments would understandably offend a woman today, Love understood Baker Donelson’s position.
“The firm was nervous about hiring a woman. They were worried that their conservative business clients would be offended by being relegated to a mere female. They were afraid I was going to run off clients,” she says.
Despite these reservations, Baker Donelson hired Love, making her the first woman attorney at a major firm in Chattanooga.
“At the time, Baker Donel-son was the largest firm in Tennessee, and they had no women lawyers, so they felt like they were a target for a lawsuit if they didn’t hire a female. I was in the right place at the right time,” she says.
Baker Donelson placed Love
in estate planning; believing people who needed that service would be more accepting of a woman. But she also did a fair amount of corporate work. And her first client was a handful.
“When I was introduced to the client, the man said, ‘Oh my God, don’t tell me their making them attorneys now.’ And that was precisely what they had been afraid of happening. But the partner who introduced me backed me up. He told the man I knew more about his deal than anyone else, and that he was in good hands,” Love says.
While Love won that battle, she still had a war to fight.
“The client was from New Orleans. He was a good ol’ Southern boy, and he’d call me ‘honey.’ But I won him over. I ended up being his attorney for years,” she says.
Although Love was initially less than enthusiastic about estate planning, it ended up being a good area for her, as it created opportunities for public speaking, which helped her to attract clients.
“One of the things that hurts women lawyers is they have a hard time attracting clients. But estate planning lends itself to public speaking because people are worried about paying too much in taxes, so I was proactive about earning my credentials and getting out there and speaking on sophisticated estate planning topics,” Love says.
As a result, Love became known as an expert in her field, and through referrals, developed a sizeable clientele. Eventually, her name appeared in Best Lawyers, where it has remained for the last 20 years.
While cultural forces might have pressured Baker Donelson into hiring Love, once she had the job, she had to keep it. And not only did she keep it, but six years later, her firm made her a partner.
Thirty-three years later, she’s still with Baker Donelson, and is considerably more enthusiastic about estate planning.
“A lot of what I do involves teaching people about tax law so they can make better decisions about how to structure their estate. And I really enjoy that aspect of what I do. I also like helping clients think about the kind of legacy they want to leave their children,” she says.
However, to call Love a successful lawyer would be to miss the bigger picture.
I am not what I do
When Baker Donelson hired Love, she became one of seven female attorneys in Chattanooga. Today, there are well over 150. Cultural attitudes have changed as well, and Baker Donelson is now at the forefront of local efforts to increase diversity in the legal profession. Yet Love does not see herself as a trailblazer, but as someone who simply worked hard to do well.
Her only fear today is that people will identify her with her profession. She is an attorney, but also much more.
“I’m a mother, a grandmother, and a cyclist. I garden, I love to read, and I keep up with philosophy. I believe in being as multi-dimensional as I can be. And that’s easy for me because my ego isn’t tied to what I do,” she says.
Love also likes to travel. In 2008, she told her children she’d take them anywhere they wanted to go. While she was hoping they’d choose somewhere she’d never been, they selected Bali, Indonesia, where she grew up, and which she describes as being her favorite place in the world. It was an extraordinary trip that involved a detour to Cambodia.
“It’s hard for me to stay in one place for long. I get bored,” she says.
Perhaps Love is happiest when she has a goal, whether it’s visiting a country to which she’s never been, or biking across 100 miles of unforgiving roads. Unlike her male counterparts, her happiness is not tied to her job, but to her next challenge.
That wouldn’t be a surprising for a person who once wanted to teach philosophy, but who became a pragmatist and, as a result, took a different path. Maybe Love senses there’s something in her life that remains unfinished.
Or maybe she’s living out the Socratic maxim that “the unexamined life is not worth living.” While the weight of her responsibilities might have taken the opportunity to teach philosophy away from Love, it did not take the philosopher out of Love.
She is, at heart, an existentialist, which means she believes human beings are responsible for their own choices. So, Love rarely looks back at the choices she’s made, but toward the mountains that stand in front of her.
And like her male colleagues and clients came to understand over the years, those mountains will learn Love is not easily intimidated.