She's happy to be a 'chip off the old block'
Originally published Aug. 11, 1991
From the time she could reach into her father's office desk drawer and find the candies he hid there for her, Greta Van Susteren knew she was going to be a lawyer, too.
A famous lawyer it turns out.
The fiery, five-foot-three, 37-year-old is one of the nation's most outstanding young lawyers, according to the American Bar Association's Barrister magazine, which profiles her in its summer issue.
"I liked sending it to my mother. I wish my father could have enjoyed it. And it is good publicity. I've been very lucky. I get a lot of publicity," said the Washington D.C. attorney who won her first murder case at 27. "I knew I had arrived when my phone number was worth a couple of packs of cigarettes at the city jail."
The daughter of Margery and the late Outagamie County Circuit Court Judge Urban Van Susteren admits she rather gets a kick out of proving so many people's predictions wrong. "Contrary to the nuns' suspicious, I didn't turn out to be an axe murderer. One brother at Xavier said I absolutely wouldn't live until the age of 21," she recalled gleefully.
"I got four Ds from Xavier in my sophomore year, and it wasn't the end of the world, was it? I hated school until I got to college." There, she graduated with honors.
She recalls her father reflecting on her career successes: "And I always thought you were the dumbest of the three children," he told her. "I was always getting into trouble. At Xavier, I was the first girl suspended, to my knowledge, I still have the disciplinary notice. 'Insolent.' 'Insubordinate.' That's how I got my vocabulary up - reading my disciplinary notices."
The suspension cam about when she and three girlfriends were discovered buying cigarettes at a nearby mini-mart during the school day by a Xavier nun.
"Because my father had gotten kicked out of St. John's in Little Chute, he wasn't terribly upset." But her mother wanted her back in school, so the judge took her before the principal. "She reads this long list of priors to my father - which he didn't know about because I had intercepted them all in the mail. And he turns to me and says, 'Oh, Greta, shame!' - real serious you know, but meanwhile he's kicking me under the table. He enjoyed life and this was not such a horrible crime," she said, grinning.
"I'm not defending myself against the nuns anymore - now I'm defending others."
The youngest of the judge's children, she doesn't mind at all being dubbed a "chip off the old block."
Her older sister, Lisa, is a physician in Washington, D.C. Her brother Dirk is an editor with a newspaper in Montpelier, Vt.
"My father always used to say Lisa should give up that medicine foolishness and be a lawyer. I sort of agree with him."
There is nothing more challenging, exciting or fascinating than being a trial lawyer, she insists.
She married John Coale, a nationally-known civil litigation lawyer. They are partner sin the firm Coale, Allen & Van Susteren."My husband is a wild man. Dirk says I married my father. Only, he's like my father magnified."
She went to University of Wisconsin-Madison to earn her B.A. in economics in 1976, then on to Georgetown University Law Center to earn advanced legal degrees in 1979 and 1982.
"I got Potomac fever and I stayed."
She maximizes her opportunities for trial work, and that often means working for the lowest of the low and without pay.
On her feet, before a jury, matching wits with others in a volatile environment is a real high for her, she said. "It is like being an air traffic controller. You've really got to be fast. It's like living on the edge. I also do a lot of civil litigation, but everybody knows about the blood-and-guts stuff I do. That kind of thing generates publicity."
She will take the cases of those accused of some pretty unspeakable stuff. "Not the kind of thing you like to see in the hometown paper," she said. "As a criminal defense lawyer I have no problem with that. I'm very aggressive, very effective.
"You never ask them straight out: Did you do it? It puts you in a weird position as their attorney, so lots of things are left unsaid."
Van Susteren sees her work as a defender of the Bill of Rights.
"Those rights are important to you and me in order to protect them, you have to protect the unsavory elements, too."
Yes, she has probably been responsible for putting some guilty people back on the streets. "As a citizen, I am very disappointed when the prosecution doesn't do his job. I did mine."
Her caseload is approximately half civil and half criminal. One in four cases is pro bono (without fee). "I do whatever happens to interest me. I happen to be lucky enough to have a husband as a partner, so I can do what is interesting. What it all boils down to is trial work."
Recently, a company hired her in a commercial arbitration case against Johns Hopkins University. "I beat a 330-member law firm. Johns Hopkins hired the biggest, savviest law firm it could thinking they could roll over me. I guess they learned otherwise."
The feisty Van Susteren is also an adjunct law professor at her alma mater and does commentary on prominent criminal cases for D.C. television networks to boot. "There are not that many prominent criminal defense lawyers, and the fact that I teach at Georgetown gives some aura, correctly or incorrectly, of respectability."
She does TV for the same reasons she takes the cases she does. "It's exciting. It's challenging. It's crazy."
Today, her work takes her across the country, so she frequently pops in on her mother and the hometown. On a recent visit, she was heading for a California case.
"Chaotic" is how she describes a typical day in the life of Greta Van Susteren. She and her husband share an eight-acre property full of pets about 22 miles north of Washington. She's up at 4:30 a.m. and at her D.C. office by 6:15. Each morning at 7 she calls her friend and mentor William Greenhalgh, a Georgetown law professor. "He is an expert on Fourth Amendment rights. He is the professor that all the students fear at Georgetown. About 7:15 or 7:20, I go back to my work. And about 6 or 7 at night I go home and all the animals stand there waiting for me."
She does more of her own research than most lawyers do these days. "It may not be the most efficient thing, but you learn more by doing it yourself."
She'll take just about anything. "But I won't take a case that's incredibly dull. I won't take a client with whom I can't work. And I don't take drug cases anymore. I'm so sick of drug cases. Drugs have just had a devastating effect on D.C."
Her toughest cases are defending those accused of the most heinous crimes - a client who tortured a young lawyer to death, a cop killer who shot his victim in the back while he was pleading for his life.
"The hardest thing about all of them is the family - the victim's family. The project so much hate towards me. And that's the hard part for me because I know these people have suffered so," she said.
The real high comes with winning.
"My finest moment, in terms of what I enjoyed the most, was arguing before the Wisconsin Supreme Court for my father."
The Wisconsin Department of Revenue accused the late judge of trying to "defeat the tax system" with his habitually late filings of tax returns. His daughter argued he was not trying to defeat the system; he was just being himself - "habitually late with his life."
He died in September 1989 at age 74, just as the case was about to go before the court. She won it for him in January of 1990.
"He spent every single nickle he ever earned on his children. I just regret he wasn't around to see the fruits of his labor," she said sadly.
Her win-loss record is heavy on the win side. "Civil I almost always win. You don't bring it if you can't win it. And criminal - it''s more than half, but I've never figured the percentage," she said. "I have stolen some verdicts. I can't help but enjoy the fun of being clever, you know." she said mischievously.
Barrister's editorial board saluted her and her outstanding peers, writing: "On the occasion of the 200th anniversary of the Bill of rights, Barrister again profiles 20 young lawyers who have done something with their lives and legal skills that has made a difference."
Her greatest hope is that the same will be said of her in years hence. "I hope I'm still fighting interesting cases. I hope I'm still winning. And I hope I don't have blue hair."