Recent News

October 20, 2006

Anderson to be installed as president of Foundation

The reporters were standing around the federal court offices, waiting for a big firm lawyer to file an answer to the Pete Rose suit against baseball commissioner Giamatti. Finally, one of the press corps asked, "Isn't it running late?" Well, no. The attorney had been there, filed and left. Vorys Sater Seymour and Pease had sent one of its associates, who walked in and walked out without confrontation. The media wasn't looking for a "girl."

That was Sandra J. Anderson in her early years in the profession, and she told the story at one of the first meetings of the Women in the Law committee, illustrating so well the struggle for recognition women were having even late in the 1980s. She chaired the committee for two years, served on the Columbus Bar board of governors and was elected to the office secretary-treasurer, progressing to becoming the first women president of the Columbus Bar in 1996-97.

Her year in office was also the "year of the zebra," when the Bar Directory featured exotic animals, giraffe and oryx, and Anderson was concerned that her colleagues would think she had exerted her influence, publishing personal art from her recent African camera safari. Actually, the pictures came from the Wilds and the terrain was southeast Ohio.

The early step to Anderson's distinguished practice, which includes ADR as well as litigation and appeals, was her undergraduate degree in communication from Ohio University. She holds her law degree, magna cum laude, from Northwestern, where she was a member of the Order of the Coif, an editor of the Law Review and a member of the National Moot Court Team. (It is rumored she has an elaborate wardrobe of purple sweater shirts.) Before joining Vorys Sater Seymour and Pease, she served as a law clerk in United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. At present, she chairs the Advisory Committee on Local Rules for the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio and is a member of the Board of Commissioners on Grievances and Discipline for the Supreme Court of Ohio.

Anderson, once again, takes on a leadership role as she is installed president of the Columbus Bar Foundation. Organized in 1950, the Bar Foundation considers grants, initiated with a letter of intent, for programs that further its mission: access to justice, administration of justice, and the training of new lawyers through scholarships and continuing education.