September 29, 2006 Host: Judith Earley Guest: Cheryl Coon
Attorney Cheryl Coon discusses the career path that led her to the Audubon Society of Portland, OR. Duration: 19:24:09
Judith: Good morning; we are here today with Cheryl Coon, the Conservation Program Manager for the Audubon Society of Portland. Good morning, Cheryl.
Cheryl: Good morning, Judith
Judith: Well, my first question: how long you have been an attorney?
Cheryl: Well, let's see; I graduated law school in 1977 and began practicing pretty much right away; so, what are we talking about? I guess we are talking about 29 years!
Judith: What made you to decide to go into the law?
Cheryl: You know, the very first thing that I did was, when I was in high school in Philadelphia, I volunteered for community legal services, which was a kind of a legal aid office, and I translated for their Spanish-speaking clients.
Judith: Oh, ok.
Cheryl: I intended to go into that kind of work, and the fact that I ended up going into environmental work was really just sort of the way the wind blew me.
J- Ok, so did you have any kind of interest or background in the environment, initially?
C- Only as a personal value, and certainly I did it as a personal value. I was particularly interested in ocean fishes.
J- Ok...Now is that how you decided on your LLM degree?
C- Well, to explain that, what happened was this: in my career, the very first place that I ended up working was a large, Philadelphia law firm. That firm was representing the government of the Virgin Islands, the U.S. Virgin Islands, in a bankruptcy case. They sent me to the Virgin Islands to take a deposition, which I do not think is a wise place to send a first-year associate! I fell in love with the Virgin Islands. During the weeks that I spent there, I was offered a job, there, by the Attorney General of the Virgin Islands, and that job involved doing all environmental work for the three Virgin Islands. After doing that for several years, I wanted to get a deeper background in the science-side of marine law and decided to get in the advanced degree.
J- Ok. Now how did you get your initial position with the Philadelphia law firm?
C- The first summer after my first year of law school, I clerked for a small, Boston law firm. The second summer, I actually clerked for this large, Philadelphia law firm, until I actually had a job offer before I started my third year of law school.
J- Oh, ok. Now jump ahead, you had the job in the Virgin Islands and you decided to go back and get the training in marine law; where did you go from there?
C- Well, there were only two programs in marine law. One of them was at the University of Washington. I had never been to the Northwest, and it sounded appealing. While I was there, the new senator from the State of Washington was interviewing for somebody who would handle ocean issues. I interviewed with him kind of on a lark because I was planning to return to the Virgin Islands, but when he offered me the job, it seemed like a great thing to do.
J- Ok. Now is that when you became a congressional attorney?
C- Yes, that took me to Washington DC, and I began working with the Senate Commerce Committee; what was called the Ocean Policy subcommittee, and from there, I eventually moved over to the House of Representatives where I had been offered the job of Staff Director and Chief Counsel of a subcommittee for the Science, Technology, and Space Committee. Kind of what you might call a roving sort of career.
J- But it is very interesting, I mean, such a variety.
C- Yeah, yeah, and I had a, you know, tremendous time in DC. I got to the point where I was, you know, after about six years, interested in living somewhere that felt like our home and so I started to think about where to move. I did not have any particular ties, and I had really loved the Northwest so I decided to move to Oregon or Washington.
J- Ok, now, did you get your position with the Audubon Society before you moved?
C- Oh, I have only been with the Audubon for less than a year. I got a position with the Attorney General's office for the State of Oregon doing natural recourses work, and I spent actually more than a decade doing that. Then I actually thought I was sort of taking a break from the law, and I took a few years off and wrote a book...and the book has nothing to do with law. It was about a completely separate passion of mine, which is children's literature. The book is for teachers and parents about how to use children's books; efficient books to help kids with different issues, ordinary and more difficult than they face in their lives. For example, if you had a child who was starting kindergarten, I would be, in my book, giving you a selection of the best children's books for a particular age group that authentically depict the child having that experience, as a way to provoke communication between the parent and the child and reassure them that they are not alone.
J- So you must have read a lot of children's book?
C- I did; I read 3,500 children's books and it was so much fun.
J- Oh my goodness. Now what age groups does this book cover?
C- My book, which is called Books to Grow With, covers the preschool through elementary school years; so basically ages two to about 12. Then, with my book launched, I did a lot of book tours and things like that and then I was kind of...ready for the next thing.
J- Wow, this is so interesting. Ok, now where did you go from there?
C- Well, you know, I went to Craigslist. Do you guys have Craigslist?
J- Yes, we do.
C- Is Craigslist national?
J- Yes, I think it started out of San Francisco, but it is national.
C- Ok, so I went to Craigslist and I looked for a job. I had it in my mind that I wanted to work for a nonprofit, partly because I never had done that. It seemed to me that I had worked for private firms, small, and large; I worked for state and federal governments and I worked in Congress, but the one thing that I had never done was a nonprofit so I looked into the nonprofit section of Craigslist and I saw this job.
J- That is amazing.
C- ...and got the job.
J- Wow; and so you have been there less than a year?
C- Yeah, I have only been here since the end of January.
J- Ok, now are you considered their general counsel?
C- Unofficially; they have no official lawyer. As a nonprofit, they couldn't afford to pay one, but I am sort of the go-to person on any legal issue. Mostly where I use my legal expertise is in our endangered species work; our ocean work.
J- Tell me about that.
C- Well, we actually have a major campaign about achieving marine protection along the West Coast; sort of in the model of national parks and national refuges that are on land, but in the ocean. We also have a real active program with regard to a number of listed species, such as spotted owl, marbled murrelet, and piping plover, meaning that we do get into litigation when necessary.
J- Now what are some of the more difficult challenges of that type of work?
C- Well, representing fish and wildlife, being on that side of it, is always a Don Quixote kind of a quest. You recognize that you are fighting with the big boys, and they have far more resources than you do. You win things, and then you see a lot of effort to weasel out of the wins. I think that you have to have a passion for the work and a stomach for frustration, and you have to recognize when you are burned out and take a break. That is what happened to me. That is really why I took off to write the book. I had come to the point where I was so discouraged, particularly as a result of handling the salmon cases, that I just needed to take a break to get some optimism again. I think you really have to watch for that or you will burn out and you will be bitter and cynical.
J- Now after the last two law positions that you had, what do you see as some of the most important environmental issues?
C- Well, I am very interested now in alternate energies. We are going to be getting involved more and more in wind power and weight energy. You know, I think that finding other sources of energy is critical for the survival of the world, and as we look for those, some of us have to play the role of alerting everybody else to what the impacts could be on fish and wildlife. I mean, hydropower is the perfect example. Everybody thought hydropower was a wonderful, new, clean energy source. What it turned out to do was wipe out the salmon population. As we look back on that, it would have been nice if we had foreseen those things and focused them right at the outset.
J- Right. So can you talk a little bit about, I know you have already touched on it somewhat, working in a nonprofit agency versus working in a for-profit environment?
C- Well, I went and spoke to a group of law students earlier this week, and what I wanted to say was "you better learn how to work a copy machine." When I worked in a private law firm, I had a paralegal and a secretary dedicated to my work. I would never have touched a machine, but here at a nonprofit, everybody is very equal. There is no support staff. You need to know, and be ready to know, everything from fixing your computer to putting toner in the copy machine to filling out expense forms. It is just stuff that, as a lawyer, you might not have thought you would be handling, and that is just reality. One thing that I sometimes thought, and this is not true of lots of law school students, but some who come here are offended if they are asked to do things that they think are not lawyer work; but that is the essence of a nonprofit; everybody does everything.
J- Yes, I worked in nonprofit agencies for awhile, and it is true; everybody pitches in.
C- The other thing, of course, is that you are always fairly consumed with making money to pay for the next thing. That is real different than being salary and being absolutely certain that you are going to be getting your check. It is not that getting your check is in jeopardy here, but it is true that you have to think about, you know, next year's funding cycle for your program.
J- How many employees do you have at the Audubon Society?
C- We have, I think, something in the order of 25. The Portland Audubon is the second oldest in the United States. We are 102 years old and we are one of the largest.
J- How are the Audubon Societies connected? Are you all autonomous?
C- No; some of them have a stronger relationship with the National Audubon than others. We are pretty independent.
J- Well, do you have any final advice for law students or attorneys who might be interested in environmental advocacy?
C- I do; I think it is incredibly important to get a background in being a lawyer first. I think it is a mistake to go directly from law school into working for a nonprofit, unless that is all that you ever are going to want to do. What you are going to discover is that the business law stuff and the corporate law stuff that you did when you first were with a law firm will be incredibly valuable to you. It is important to know how a private firm operates because in most cases you handle, they are going to be your opponent. You want to know their mentality and what it is like inside them, and you want that substantive background in business law. It is really, really useful. The urge to go directly into your field of interest is totally understandable, but when I look back at where I got some of my best training, it was not necessarily at the jobs I enjoyed most.
J- That is very interesting. That makes a lot of sense, it really does.
J- Well thank you so much for your time Cheryl. I really appreciate it. That
was very interesting.
C- Well, it was fun talking to you.
J- Ok, well you have great day and good luck on your out-of-town mission.
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