Felicia R. Meyers

LOS ANGELES - Felicia R. Meyers joined one of California's largest family law firms in 2005; the shop now has her name on the door. Meyer, Olson, Lowy & Meyers LLP, is operated by Meyers and the three other female name partners as a 26-attorney boutique specializing in complex, high-asset marital dissolutions.

Before signing on at the firm, Meyers worked as a commercial litigator.

"I started in real estate and securities law before transitioning into family law," she said. "I felt that I didn't have a passion for civil litigation. Family law presented a different type of challenge, including learning all types of finances and how to read tax returns -- and how to deal with a person going through the worst time of their life."

Meyers added: "The human aspect creates a different dynamic. I came to love the challenge and the adrenaline."

In earlier remarks, Meyers outlined how the partners functioned so successfully that it inspired imitators: "I think a lot of firms have mirrored what our strategy has become over the years with the team approach, with this methodical way that we approach a case from beginning to end, with consultants, with experts, with how we take depositions. I think we set that tone."

Meyers got her bar card in the early 1990s, at a time when young female associates were routinely mistaken for court reporters and often addressed as "honey" or worse. Now, women lawyers are seen to have distinct advantages. "In family law, women do seem to have a sensitivity chip that men do not have, and that's not a gender bias statement but the truth," Meyers said.

Recently Meyers and her colleagues took on as a client a wife from a very wealthy family who had become depressed at the thought of getting the divorce she knew she needed after years of marriage. "As strongly confident women ourselves, we were able to provide her with something male attorneys could not: role models," Meyers said. "We got her a makeover -- clothes, makeup, hair -- and boosted her confidence significantly. And we got her a very good result."

In a painful case that gained national headlines a decade ago, Meyers and law partner Lisa Helfend Meyer were retained by the parents of a woman who had become severely brain damaged due to medical errors as she gave birth to triplets.

The woman's husband had divorced her and denied her visits with the children. But Meyers and colleagues persuaded a judge to allow annual visitations as in the children's best interest. "It was a heartbreaking situation, but at least the children could see their mother," Meyers said.

- JOHN ROEMER