Women In Law Virtual Roundtable Q&A with Kay Gunderson Reeves

Kay Gunderson Reeves serves as of counsel to Waters Kraus Paul & Siegel. For more than 30 years, she has represented victims of asbestos exposure and those injured by dangerous drugs or other toxic substances. She graduated with high honors from the University of California at Berkeley before receiving a master’s degree in public administration from Troy State University (European Region), and later her law degree from the University of Texas at Austin. Kay is a member of the bar of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Here’s what Kay had to say during our Women’s History Month Women In Law Roundtable Q&A.

Waters Kraus Paul & Siegel: How do you see the field growing and changing in the future, not just for women attorneys but all lawyers?

Kay Gunderson Reeves: The big uncertainty is, to me, the intrusion of AI into the profession.  I think this jeopardizes the value placed on almost all attorney work, not just that performed by women.

WKPS: What personality characteristics or skills do you possess that you believe enabled your career to flourish?

KGR: Tenacity. Patience. Bookishness. Ability to relate to clients and experts in a very basic, human way, and to courts in a very credible one.

WKPS: Many issues that our firm tackles – like helping talc-exposure victims and survivors of birth defects and sex abuse – have unique implications for women. How important is the legal field to ensuring fair treatment for women and protecting their rights? Why is it important to have female attorneys involved in this litigation?

KGR: Lawyers will be critical to the protection of the rights of women. The early days of the current administration confirm an all-out assault on many rights and it is the courts that will provide protection more than the legislature, if only because they can, in an appropriate case, act swiftly. None of the rights women have managed to obtain were obtained without litigation or legal advocacy before government—not the vote, not reproductive rights, not gains in the workplace, not property rights. People are generally well aware of the legal efforts made by Planned Parenthood, for example, but legal assistance—in court or in the halls of government—was required to achieve all of these gains. People don’t remember that it wasn’t really that long ago that women were at a severe disadvantage with respect to property rights and their own finances. (When I moved to Texas in 1982, the bank wouldn’t let me open a checking account without the signature of either my father or my boyfriend!) Litigation was required to confirm women’s equal rights to property, for example. See Kirchberg v. Feenstra, 450 US 455 (1981) (holding unconstitutional a Louisiana statute that gave a husband, as “head and master” of property jointly owned with his wife, the unilateral right to dispose of such property without his spouse’s consent). Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sought medical records from Washington state health providers to try and determine if Texas women had traveled to Washington to obtain legal abortions, implicating their right to travel and to privacy. Those rights will be protected with lawyers – like Washington’s former attorney general (now Governor) Bob Ferguson.

WKPS: Is there a practice area you focus on that particularly affects women? Why is it important to you? What positive impacts have you been able to make through your work?

KGR: Most of my work impacts the lives of women, though rarely in a direct, “this is the point of the case” way. When we obtain funds (through settlement or judgment) for the injuries caused by exposure to asbestos or from a catastrophic event, for example, those funds are there to provide financial support to injured women and to the spouses of injured or deceased men. The security provided by a settlement or judgment that allows these women to keep a roof over their heads, to care for children if they are still in the home, and to obtain necessary medical care is tremendous.  To free them from a life—sometimes a long one—of want, lack of security, lack of medical care, etc.—impacts their lives in a profoundly positive way. When we recently obtained a settlement for our clients who were severely burned (and killed) in a volcanic eruption—they participated in a shore excursion sold to them by a cruise line—we were able to replace the earnings that the breadwinner (who died from his injuries) would have brought into the family, and to obtain money for medical care, appropriate housing, and necessary assistance with activities of day-to-day living. The burden we lifted from the traumatized surviving wife and the surviving severely burned daughter was really indescribable. I’ve also had the opportunity to work on the firm’s successful fluoride litigation, which seeks to protect infants and children from the learning deficits that can arise upon ingestion of fluoridated water. Protecting children is always going to be an issue that is of paramount importance to women.

WKPS: What is the most interesting change you’ve seen in the legal field since starting your career?

KGR: Technology—some good (online researchable treatises, Zoom) some not so good (don’t get me started on AI).

WKPS: What is one piece of advice you’ve received that you would pass women law students and new lawyers?

KGR: ASK. ASK to attend depositions, conferences, trials. ASK to be able to work on particular projects…ASK for what you want. The answer won’t always be “yes,” but don’t wait for an invitation. As a friend of mine frequently says (when asking for what I might consider to be the sun and the moon), “If you don’t ask, you don’t get.”

Check out our Waters Kraus Paul & Siegel Virtual Roundtable Q&A: Women In Law for more interviews with our attorneys.