Betsy Gray (’77 law) grew up next door to Jean Toal (’68 law), the esteemed former chief justice of the South Carolina Supreme Court. Many years hence, Toal would become a late-career mentor to Gray. But even in childhood, Toal set a fearless, trailblazing example — one that Gray took to heart.
“When we were kids, Jean ran with the boys,” says Gray, a prominent senior litigator. “There was a treehouse in the neighborhood that the boys had commandeered exclusively for themselves — no girls were allowed. Jean wasn’t having any of it. She broke the barrier. She got into the treehouse.”
Toal later coined the phrase “Don’t pull the ladder up behind you” as a charge to women lawyers to help other women — and it’s a phrase that still resonates with Gray.
“The South Carolina Women Lawyers Association adopted the concept. We called it the Ladder Principle,” Gray notes. “Jean was out there doing all the firsts that so many of us had not yet achieved.”
Today, Gray is a founding member of the Robinson Gray law firm, where she focuses on professional liability and ethics, and commercial, probate and estate litigation. Over nearly five decades, she has received more professional accolades than she can count. In December, Gray received the Chief Justice’s Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Legal Profession.
In a letter of thanks to Kittredge, Gray expressed that there were not many opportunities for women when she started her legal career: “I knew I had to be better than everybody else. I worked really, really hard. I graduated with honors. That set the tone. I had to be better than everybody else just to be even.”
A pivotal time
When Gray began law school in 1973, classes operated out of the old law school situated between Assembly and Main streets. The building was sparkling new at the time, long before construction of the new Joseph F. Rice School of Law, which opened in 2017.
“I was in the first class to attend in that older building,” she says. “There was a huge first-year class. There were four sections with almost 100 students in each section. Of that class, there were maybe 20 women.”
In the 1970s, despite having “come a long way, baby,” career-seeking women were often quietly guided toward clerical or service professions. When Gray joined the McNair Law Firm in 1976, she was the 12th lawyer to join its ranks. She had two mentors there who had a strong impact on her and, interestingly, they were both men.
“Terrell Glenn was a partner who had a huge influence on my life, both professionally and personally,” Gray says. “Bob Dibble taught me how to be a careful lawyer in terms of fact-gathering and analysis.”
Throughout her career, Gray has benefited from mentorship, both giving and receiving. The rewards are priceless. One of the many women she has taken under her wing once shared with Gray how life-changing her support had been.
"I worked really, really hard. I graduated with honors. That set the tone. I had to be better than everybody else just to be even."
“She said I had kept her in the practice of law,” Gray recalls. “She had been in the midst of having small children, and it was hard for her. I had two children, but I also had lots of hired help, and my parents lived in town.”
When Sheryl Sandberg’s bestselling book, Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead, came out in 2013, Gray and a few colleagues started a group of about 10 younger women lawyers who would discuss their career goals and the challenges.
“We met monthly for about two years, and we have stayed in touch ever since. It was the most rewarding thing for me, but I think it meant a lot to those women, too,” she says. “We used Lean In as a framework, talking about how to deal with issues facing women in the workplace. It was a remarkable experience.”
The right type
Like most people in the ‘70s, Gray learned to type, an essential skill for anyone, from students to office workers. After she became a lawyer, she kept the skill to herself to avoid being pigeonholed. People assumed that a woman in the courtroom had to be there in some clerical capacity.
“Early in my practice, when I first started interviewing, there was a male lawyer who asked me if I could type. I was offended and said, ‘I bet you don’t ask the men that,’” Gray recalls. “I have a coffee cup that says, ‘Not the Court Reporter.’ It has changed a lot since then.”
Today, advancing technology has necessitated lawyers to develop new skill sets associated with research, data analysis, transcription, document management, accounting and more.
Gray got her first glimpse of technology use in court while successfully representing the Legislature in a huge, 101-day school funding trial in Manning in 2003-04. It was eye-opening.
“That was the very first time I had a case where the thousands of documents were in a computerized ‘document management system.’ It was so new,” she says. We used the internet in the courtroom in Manning to present evidence at the trial. Justice (Jean) Toal came down to watch how the technology was being used.”
An advocate for technology in the judicial system, Toal spearheaded an effort to get broadband in every county court in the state. According to Gray, Toal succeeded.
“What I have learned over the course of 48 years in practice is that technology is a tool that can make you a better and more efficient lawyer,” she says.
From her early days in the neighborhood to the Manning courtroom and throughout her career, Gray has seen challenges as opportunities to be taken as they come, always keeping in mind a mantra passed along from her mother.
“She said you have to live your life with your bags packed because you never know if you will have to leave,” she says. “Don’t put things off until tomorrow.”