Pepper’s passion for the law is no act

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Pamela Pepper isn’t villainous by nature, but she wouldn’t mind stepping into the shoes of an infamous literary scoundrel for a day.

Before she attended Cornell Law School, Pepper strongly considered becoming an actor.

But the judge, who was appointed to the federal Bankruptcy Court in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin in 2005, has no regrets about her career choice.

She has been able to play several roles, albeit in the legal profession, including turns as both a federal prosecutor and criminal defense attorney.

After graduating from Cornell Law School in 1989, Pepper served as a U.S. prosecutor in Illinois where she worked her way up to the Organized Crime and Drug Enforcement Task Force before becoming an assistant U.S. attorney in Wisconsin.

Prior to joining the bench, she spent eight years in private practice doing mostly criminal defense at the federal level.

Pepper showed off her range in this week’s Asked & Answered.

Wisconsin Law Journal: If you could develop one CLE course for credit, what would it be about?

Pamela Pepper: The Art and Science of Human Interaction. When it comes down to it, law is about dealing with people.

WLJ: What was your least favorite course in law school and why?

Pepper: Trusts and Estates. To this day, I don’t understand all that stuff about fertile octogenarians and life estates and per stirpes.

WLJ: What is your favorite website, and why?

Pepper: Okay, I know I’m supposed to list some legal site, or The New York Times or The Economist, but my favorite website is the site for Real Simple magazine: realsimple.com. I am constantly — and fruitlessly, I must confess — looking for ways to organize and streamline my chaotic life.

WLJ: What is the one luxury item you cannot live without?

Pepper: I feel quite trivial and undignified admitting it, but perfume. I can go out of my house in mismatched socks, with my hair standing on end and no make-up on, forget my glasses or my cell phone, etc. But I wear something that smells nice, to me, anyway, every day.

WLJ: What is the one thing attorneys should know that they won’t learn in law school?

Pepper: Treating clients, opposing counsel, judges and others with respect. Also, listening to other people rather than just talking to, or at, them, and trying to be patient. These skills can be as important as knowing the law or having it on your side.

WLJ: What is the first concert you went to?

Pepper: You’re asking me to remember back into the Mesozoic Era, but I’m thinking it was Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Born in the USA’ tour.

WLJ: If you could trade places with someone for a day, who would it be and why?

Pepper: I was a theater major in college and I wanted to be a stage actor. From an actor’s standpoint, I always thought one of the most challenging roles to try would be the role of Iago in Shakespeare’s Othello. Iago is, of course, a bad guy, and often you see him portrayed as this cartoon-like villain who snarls and sneers and is generally greasy and slimy. I’d love to trade places with an actor playing Iago, just to give it a try and see if I could do it.

WLJ: What is your motto?

Pepper: I never really thought of myself as having one, but I suppose it would be some cross between (John) Donne’s “no man is an island,” and my own mother’s “there but for the grace of God go I.”

WLJ: What is your favorite movie about lawyers or the law and why?

Pepper: I’m supposed to say, ‘To Kill a Mockingbird,’ and I do love that movie and the book. But I must be truthful or be haunted by the specter of Atticus Finch and answer ‘My Cousin Vinny,’ just to hear Marisa Tomei say from the stand, “But wait, there’s more!”

WLJ: If you hadn’t become a lawyer, what career would you have chosen?

Pepper: Well, I’d like to have chosen being an actor, as I indicated above. I’m not at all sure, however, that that career would have chosen me back.

Jack Zemlicka can be reached at [email protected].