Len Simon ’73 and Candace Carroll ’74
Going to bat for things that matter
A member of one of the first Duke Law classes to include substantial numbers of women, Candace Carroll ’74 says that she loved law school. “It was the first place I had ever been where it wasn’t a drawback to be assertive. I had spent my whole life being told all the traditional stuff, including that men won’t like you if you’re too intelligent and have too many opinions. Law school was the first place I found where, if you were smart and you knew the answer, and you could argue, this was prized.”
Len Simon ’73 also recalls his time at Duke fondly. “I got a great education and met a lot of wonderful students and faculty members. Walter Dellinger, George Christie, Bill Van Alstyne, Bill Reppy, John Wiestart, and David Lange were all there ‘back in the day,’ and they have all been resources for us over the years if we had a question or needed a reference or an introduction to someone. That’s been a wonderful thing.”
The fact that Simon and Carroll met during her first year and married during the summer after her third cemented their connection to the Law School. “This place has been a big part of our lives,” says Carroll, a partner with Sullivan Hill Lewin Rez & Engel in San Diego. “We both made a lot of friends in law school, and a lot of people we care about are connected to the School.” She and Simon, now of counsel with Lerach Coughlin Stoia Geller Rudman & Robbins in San Diego, where he was formerly a managing partner, have made a point of staying connected in ways that have enormously benefited the Law School and Duke University. Carroll recently completed a six-year term on the Board of Visitors (she is now a life member), both have returned as visiting professors, and they have long supported public interest fellowships with a scholarship fund. Carroll represents the Law School on the University’s Financial Aid Initiative Committee, and this spring she and Simon took on a leadership role with that Initiative by making a gift to the Law School of $1 million.
“I can’t think of a better reason to have such an initiative than for financial aid,” says Carroll, who attended Duke Law on a full scholarship after working her way through undergraduate school at George Washington University, dropping out repeatedly in order to work and earn another year’s tuition. “I’d like to see people be able to go to school the way I went to law school, not the way I went to college, even if they don’t have the money.”
Simon adds that “Duke is at its strongest, whether it’s the undergraduate school or the Law School, when it can accept the very best class possible — and the most diverse in terms of geography, socio-economics, race, religion, and politics — and can provide financial support for those who couldn’t otherwise come.” He hates to see school loans deter bright and motivated law graduates from taking on public interest jobs. “If they want to be tax lawyers on Wall Street, I think they should do that. But I know there are others who would be inclined to do something that is a better fit for them and better for society, but are stopped by loan repayment issues. Because Candy and I have been very fortunate in our law practices, we thought that two good places to be charitable were scholarships and public interest activities at the Law School.”
A class action specialist, Simon has always handled “big cases,” enjoying the layered issues and nuance involved in complex litigation. After a clerking for a federal judge in Los Angeles — and gaining admission to the California bar — he joined Arnold and Porter in Washington, D.C., spending the next seven years as a corporate defender. He switched sides when he joined Lerach Coughlin predecessor Milberg Weiss Bershad Hynes & Lerach’s San Diego office in 1983, representing plaintiffs in such high-profile lawsuits as those which followed the collapse of Charles Keating’s Lincoln Savings & Loan and the default on $2.25 billion in municipal bonds issued by the Washington Public Power Supply System to finance nuclear power plant construction in Washington State. Simon, who has also made sports law a specialty, says he prefers to litigate plaintiffs’ cases.
I like the opportunity to choose the battlefield that I’ll be on and take on a substantial company in its own field, and make a substantial recovery for those who have been wronged by the company. As plaintiffs’ counsel, we choose what cases we take, and what issues we follow.
Simon was co-lead counsel on behalf of investors in In re American Continental Corp./ Lincoln Savings & Loan Securities Litigation. The investors he represented were largely retirees, many of whom had lost their life’s savings in the collapse of Lincoln Savings & Loan, the most notorious of the “S&L” scandals of the 1980s. “Most lost $50,000 or $100,000, and that was all they had,” Simon recalls. “They thought they had put it in the bank, and it disappeared.” Simon and his team went to trial against Keating and his lawyers, investment bankers, real estate appraisers, and accountants, among others, “but everybody who had any money settled the case before the jury came back.” The investors recouped a remarkable $240 million on $288 million in losses — a far higher recovery than in most class action lawsuits.
Carroll, after a clerkship on the D.C. Circuit, spent seven years with the National Labor Relations Board in Washington, D.C., enforcing and defending the Board’s orders in federal appellate courts around the country. “It was a wonderful job and an extraordinary experience for somebody just out of law school,” she says. “At a large law firm, I would have waited 10 years before anyone let me argue in a federal circuit court, but at the Board I argued in most of them. I came out knowing more about appellate practice than most people ever learn.” She also found the NLRB a welcoming workplace for women. “The federal government generally, and the NLRB in particular, had been at the forefront of hiring women when we first started coming out of law schools. The Appellate Court section at the NLRB was probably half women. I still have friends who date from that time.”
When they moved to San Diego in 1983 with three young sons in tow — then five-year-old Daniel and year-old twins David and Matthew [T’04] — Carroll joined a small firm, the predecessor of Sullivan Hill, whose two partners specialized in bankruptcy and civil litigation. She accordingly focused on those practice areas for several years, and tried to maintain a part-time schedule as her children were young and Simon’s cases took him all over the country. It proved to be almost impossible, she recalls.“When you’re a litigator, you can’t just walk out of the office at 3 p.m. If your response to a motion has to be filed the next day, you can’t go home. I finally told Len, ‘I can’t do this.’” Resolved to stop practicing at least temporarily, she was persuaded to stay by one of the firm’s partners. “He said that I must not just go home and stop practicing, that I was a really good lawyer, and the firm would do whatever it could to accommodate me.” Cutting back to “almost nothing” for a couple of years, Carroll decided to focus on her appellate skills, and established a successful appellate practice with much more predictable deadlines.
While not ready to retire, in recent years Simon and Carroll have cut back on their traditional practices. Simon takes cases that interest him, such as a current Title IX claim of discrimination against a San Diego high school brought by its girls’ softball team, and a suit against Enron (and others) for energy price manipulation. He discovered a passion for teaching when he taught Complex Litigation and a seminar on the litigation process at the Law School in 2002 — Carroll worked with the Moot Court program — and has taught complex litigation or sports law every semester since at the University of San Diego Law School or the University of Southern California Law School. Simon and Carroll will return to Duke for the spring 2007 semester, when he will teach class actions and she will teach advanced legal writing and analysis.
Carroll and Simon are generous with their time, expertise, and resources to projects and organizations they are passionate about. A “huge” sports fan by his own admission — baseball and Duke basketball being favorites — Simon is on the board of the San Diego Padres and a part owner of the Lake Elsinore Storm, the Padres’ Single-A farm team. Carroll, who became a sports fan “out of self defense,” holds season tickets to the San Diego Opera, which Simon attends with her. Both are active in Democratic politics, and both serve on the board of the San Diego ACLU affiliate, for which they have litigated cases pro bono. Carroll is also on the ACLU’s national board, and is a frequent speaker on ACLU issues such as security vs. civil liberties and domestic surveillance. “I care very deeply about the rights that the ACLU defends,” says Carroll, who also served for a decade on the board of San Diego Volunteer Lawyer Program, for which she has handled asylum cases. In addition, she is a past president of both the San Diego County Bar Association and California Women Lawyers, a state-wide bar association.
Duke is at its strongest, whether it’s the undergraduate school or the Law School, when it can accept the very best class possible … and can provide financial support for those who couldn’t otherwise come.
“I care a lot about women succeeding in the law,” says Carroll of her involvement with California Women Lawyers (CWL), which comments on legislation, evaluates judicial candidates, offers networking opportunities for women in law, and honors outstanding women judges. “Not only is it very difficult to have a family while you are practicing — certainly if you’re litigating — but for many women law practice itself is uncomfortable because our legal system, and especially our law firms, are male paradigms which women would have set up differently. For me, raising children was the most fun and most rewarding thing I have ever done, but women suffer enormous conflicts between raising children and practicing law, often believing that they’re not doing either one successfully. CWL’s honoring of outstanding women jurists is therefore terribly important. It calls attention to women who have succeeded in the law, and lets women know that you can succeed, you can have a family and also practice, and eventually become a judge.”
Carroll demurs when she and Simon are called “leaders” for their active involvement in issues and institutions they care about. “I wouldn’t call it leadership — you would think that everyone would do it. If you want to make the world a better place, then you have to go to bat for the things that matter.”