A Dead End Is an Opportunity To Find a Different Route: A Conversation with Marie McCrary About Confidence, Course Corrections, and Small-Scale Advocacy

Marie McCrary is a two-time national champion in parliamentary debate. She is currently a lawyer specializing in consumers’ rights class action litigation. In addition to her legal work, Marie uses her debate skills as an advocate for her daughter’s medical needs within the health care system. She sat down with CoLab Debate’s Executive Director, Emily Cordo, to discuss her experience of advocacy in both her professional and personal life. 

EC: How did debate play a role in your path to becoming a lawyer?

MM: As young as age thirteen I knew I wanted to be a lawyer. I know this now because I wrote it in a diary. So I started making decisions in school to help me become a lawyer, including signing up for debate. Also, I chose Latin as a language. That’s not actually useful, but that's what my fifteen year old brain was thinking when I started high school. As an adult, now, I know thirteen year olds, and I'm like, "You are way too young to decide something so big." 
But I did, and so I did high school policy debate. Luckily for me, as soon as I started debate, I absolutely loved it. It was an immediate passion, and that confirmed to me that I wanted to be a lawyer.

Was part of the appeal the competition or the opportunity to make like-minded friends, or were you really focused on the skills-building aspect of debate? 

In high school, I was often the only kid in the squad room after school, reading and sorting evidence. 
So debate was initially more of an individual experience for me, but in college, debate was very much a team experience. You were learning from all of your teammates, and at debate tournaments we worked together to develop positions and cases during the prep time. 

At the same time, I found a lot of value in relationships with students on other teams. Something unique about college debate, not true for me in high school, was that I knew my competitors a lot. 
I was friends with them, both at tournaments and offline, and I kept in touch with many of those people. One of them I recently hired for part-time work at my law firm. That was somebody I knew from another team. He went to my wedding, I went to his wedding. So my relationships with people from other teams have affected my personal life and professional life. 

There's a resonance between debaters forming relationships, as a result of debating against the same teams over and over, and practicing law. Repeat encounters with opposing counsel create an opportunity and incentive to form constructive relationships despite the structural conflict. 

Absolutely. In my practice that absolutely does happen. There's a narrow defense bar for attorneys that are handling consumer class action defense, and there are a handful of opposing counsel that we have a very strong working relationship with. There's mutual respect. When we find out that they've been engaged by the defendant in one of our cases, we're glad because we know that while they're going to litigate hard, they're going to be fair and have a respectful relationship. That’s similar to how I felt toward my debate opponents. We were friendly and also competitive, and you can do both of those. 


How did debate influence your experience of law school and being a novice attorney? 

The main way that it showed up was during the Socratic method. 
In law school, the way that you learn is the professors pick on someone, asking them a bunch of questions about the case, including devil's advocate type questions, to explore how well they understand the judge’s reasoning. One time I was getting drinks with classmates, after a day when I was the target in the Socratic questioning. My classmates asked me, "How do you know the answer to every question?" I said, "I don't! 
I just know how to sound like I do." That was the result of eight years of me being, for example, a fifteen year old talking about policy in Iraq. I didn't actually have any idea what I was talking about, but I came across as authoritative on the subject. Debate created that level of confidence.

I had a peer, early on in my legal career, who was a smart attorney, but she didn't come across in her delivery as confident. 
I tried to tell her that she talked with questions instead of statements, and it was a really big problem because she didn't get the respect that she deserved, just based on her presentation to partners. So, both in law school and when I started practicing, communicating with authority earned me opportunities and trust. 

Even as a woman who was very competitively driven, I do think that women undersell themselves a lot, particularly in the legal profession. Men are more likely to get their foot in the door by overstating their qualifications, and then figure it out on the job, while women are more likely to undersell their qualifications, despite having the same skill set. I think it’s important for women to keep in mind that you should sometimes get in over your head and that's okay. That's better than holding yourself back from what you're capable of actually doing. 

Were there any ways debating made it harder to be a lawyer?

The one thing was being a fast talker. 
I had transcribers in depositions tell me to slow down. And I don't even think I'm that fast, not compared to the truly fast debaters. But untraining myself from that was a bit of a challenge.

Me too! Being done with debate doesn’t mean you can stop worrying about judge adaptation.

Absolutely. One thing that contributed to my debate success was that my partner and I were willing to adapt to whomever the judge was. 
Some teams would think that the judge was inferior for whatever reason, and they would debate the same way they always did, and then get frustrated that the judge “wasn't smart enough” to follow their argument. I never looked at it that way. Some judges would say, “I decide on the flow,” and some judges would say, "Persuade me.” And you should have the ability to do both, and not think “My way of debate is superior, and I won’t change my style for other judges.” Throughout life you're exposed to different people with different styles and preferences – whether it's a colleague, boss, or judge. You have to be willing to adapt to the circumstances you're in. When I think of how debate affected me, that is not the first thing on my list, but I do think, as I reflect on the last twenty years, that I'm glad that I learned to adapt based on my audience, because that's an essential life skill. 


Have you had the opportunity to use that skill outside of your practice of law?

I have a daughter who was born with a genetic disorder that resulted in developmental delays, and my first moment when I realized that I had to be an advocate to get he rthe support she needed to thrive was when she was nine months old. It was time to do the developmental screener, and she missed every one of the milestones. When I pointed it out to her pediatrician, the pediatrician said, "Well, she just turned nine months old." 
And I thought “What is the point of the screener, if a child fails every one of them and they just say, ‘It's fine!’” That didn’t make any sense to me, so I went around her. I sought out early intervention, where they would evaluate my child's development and then recommend intervention if she qualified for services. Of course my daughter did, because she missed all of the milestones. From then on, I had to continue to be an advocate for her. Anything that I wanted her to experience medically required me to push. I didn't expect that at all. 

How did your debate training prepare you for medical advocacy?

One factor was taking ownership. Debate fosters a sense of autonomy and your ability to make things happen. That knowledge, that I had been fostering since I started high school debate, made me realize that I had the power to go around the doctor. Doctors’ positions of authority mean most people feel like what they say is the final word, but I believed that it wasn't. I used my debate skills, and the things I learned about navigating the early intervention process, to do things like ask for a different therapist if the therapist didn't fit our family or research alternative therapy styles to try. I learned how to empower myself in the system, and I have advised other families about how to do the same thing. 


I also have a healthy dose of skepticism as a result of debate. Look, medical issues and child development are nuanced. I wasn't sure that I was right, but I was sure that the answer was more complicated than what I was getting from my daughter’s pediatrician. Ultimately, we did end up obtaining functional medical support and early intervention for her, and now she is very close to being on track with what you would expect developmentally of a five year old. She's very well supported and happy in her life, and has grown a lot and developed her skills on her timeline in a way that I initially only hoped was possible. 

It sounds like a big part of the medical advocacy process is assembling the right team and then motivating them to cooperate with you to achieve your goals for your kid. 

Yes, and I plan to take those lessons and this kind of advocacy into the educational setting as well. It's a delicate balance. You might have an IEP or a 504 plan in place, but it's one thing to get that plan, and it's another to actually get the teacher and the support staff to follow the plan. I’ve spoken with lots of other parents about what happens when you have a plan, and yet the teacher does not do it. Navigating that is really community-orientated. Just because I’m right, just because the plan says X, doesn't mean it's going to happen. 
You have to get the buy-in of the teacher, and that process is complicated. 

You have to walk this line of being a firm, strong advocate for what your child needs, for what everyone has agreed they need, and not doing it in a way that alienates the teacher or makes the teacher feel that you're not taking into account the needs of the classroom. Those competing interests are very challenging. If your child needs an accommodation that the teacher thinks disrupts their classroom, what do you do? You know what your child needs, and the teacher knows what the class needs, and you have to jointly problem-solve to find something that works for everyone. That requires you to not be a pushover, because there's 25 other kids in the class who may also have a parent advocate, but you also can't be an unreasonable jerk, because then the teacher can write you off for being too demanding. Community building, and being an advocate in the context of the environment that you're actually in, are really important skills. And it's an ongoing process. It isn’t enough to get one teacher on board; you have to keep revisiting it as the child’s needs change and their teachers change.

In debate it’s expected that you’ll push your advocacy to the limits, but as an advocate in the real world sometimes the hardest part is finding a balance between persistence and diplomacy.

Absolutely. I have a background in advocacy, and I have confidence, but I do think that balance is very difficult. My advocacy background makes me much less bewildered by roadblocks, and I am continually refining my skills in pushing back  in a way that is not offputting to others. For example, I wanted to get a particular test when I was pregnant, and my OBGYN would not order it. The reason I discerned, after some research, was I'm part of an HMO and it wasn't part of their pre-approved list. At first I was really frustrated with my doctor–I felt like I hit a wall–and then I did research and found out there's a website called requestatest.com where you can basically order your own test from an internet doctor who approves the test and orders the lab work. So I was able to get this test because I did the research. It’s the debate mentality: to not give up, to find an alternative route to where I want to go. I then had to present the results of the test to my doctor in a way that would help her provide me medical care in my pregnancy without harming our relationship, since I had refused to accept her no.

Did debate give you that capacity for strategic flexibility?

Definitely! Even twenty years ago, the debate community was already so progressive that if the case was gay marriage… how do you oppose that? Of course there should be gay marriage! The popular opposition was that we should have civil unions for everyone, because marriage as an institution is bad. You had to be flexible in impossible situations. You were forced to learn that a dead end is just an opportunity to find a different route. 

That is such an important mindset for students who want to engage in community impact work. These powerful, rigid, dehumanizing systems don’t usually fall under the weight of a single blow, it takes time and determination to change them. 

Absolutely. I just listened to this podcast called The Retrievals. Season two was about a woman who was so inspiring, I was really blown away. This woman was advocating for women who were experiencing pain during C-sections. She experienced it herself, and she then took that into community advocacy. At first, she was just telling her story, which is really empowering, sharing stories and experiences. 
Then she did a survey and pulled in more experiences from other women and was able to say, "Look, I'm not alone in this." Then, she wanted to find a solution, and she said, "Let's have pain management guidelines for doctors." And the first doctors she spoke with said, "There’s no way that would fly." But she didn’t give up and eventually they did create guidelines. Then the British standards made it to the United States, and we adopted them. 

This was literally just a woman who was a smart patient, not a doctor, and she researched all of it and became an expert in the field of c-section pain management. One of the things that debate teaches you is your own capacity to develop expertise independently, and not to always go along with the doctor or other authority on the situation. So I agree with you that that's really important. My success in a lot of areas has been the result of not taking no for an answer and asking what's another way of getting there? 

Debate trains you to research with breadth and depth, until you can communicate on a subject with enough confidence in your own expertise that somebody else pushing back isn't going to rattle your confidence in the solution you’re advocating. 

Yeah, absolutely. That skillset started, for me, in debate. It’s something I take for granted now, but it's been applicable in my practice. For example, when I was a fairly junior attorney, I took six days of back-to-back depositions of Proctor and Gamble employees, in a case related to flushable wipes. I didn't know anything about plumbing and toilets before, but I spent a lot of time deep diving into it.

Hopefully no pun intended! 

Ha! I tried to keep myself clean in the process! But in the depositions I was talking to the expert as if I was his peer. Was I? No! But my deep research and preparation meant I walked into it with that level of confidence and the witness responded positively to that energy.

I imagine that as a thirteen year old debater dreaming of practicing law, deep diving into sewage systems research wasn’t what you pictured. How has your advocacy changed over the years? 

When I started law school I had very idealistic visions as to what I wanted to do with my legal career. I was a summer associate at the ACLU and thought that I’d end up doing some impact litigation. I have felt some shame over ultimately not choosing the most world-changing career. But talking to you guys at CoLab Debate and reflecting on this more has helped me realize that the line to doing good in the world doesn't have to be a straight line in a single path. You hit a dead end, and go around it. 

Because of decisions that felt necessary to make in the moment, I was not on the path to pure do-goodery with my legal career. After law school, I started out working at a big law firm, and then my second job was working for public sector labor unions. 
That was still in a law firm, but it was more aligned with my values. It wasn’t fully aligned, but I started righting the ship a little bit. 

My road to doing work that felt more meaningful wasn't direct, but every time I had a choice I did try to get myself back to that path. It requires thinking about yourself truly, and exploring options.  At this point, my legal work is in consumer advocacy, and I am doing impactful things and holding companies accountable for their wrongdoing and living a life where I can have a family and support them and my community in meaningful ways. 

How would you advise young lawyers who want to make a similar course correction towards public interest work?

As early as possible, start thinking about what you want your life to look like. A lot of people, myself and others, get on this path of thinking “That’s what I have to do,” and then you start grinding it out. You need to take a step back and think, “Is this the life for me? 
Do I want to be grinding it out five years from now, ten years from now, fifteen years from now?” If the answer is no, then start making decisions early on that start to align you with what you actually want. 

You don't have to feel like a failure, or just give up, if you don't get directly to the place that you think you're going to get. You can still have smaller positive impacts on your community, even if it's not in a big way. There's this idea of wanting to have this very glamorous job, like running a nonprofit, right out of school. That’s not a reasonable expectation for everyone, and you can still make your way there indirectly. The sooner you can make the decision about what you want for your life, not just your career, the sooner you can start making choices that point you in that direction.