Board Activities
Lawyers for the Creative Arts
Legal Assistance Foundation of Metropolitan Chicago
Steel Beam Theatre |
Biography
Ever since turning 40 a few years ago, Mary has been trying to become harder
to introduce, and, at 56, she finds she’s been succeeding. Her conventional
resume includes thirty one years of practicing law, first with Sidley & Austin
and then with Winston & Strawn, two of the largest firms in Chicago. She
was a partner at both in the advertising, trademark, copyright, entertainment
and sports law areas, and now is Of counsel to Winston, which gives her time
to write, do community service and pursue hobbies such as golf, sailing, tennis
and bridge.
Mary was raised in Crystal Lake, Illinois, then a small town forty five miles from
Chicago. Her mother was a librarian and her father a PhD in chemical
engineering, and that should explain everything. She has one sister,
Donna C. Steele, born eleven months and two weeks after her, who skipped
first grade so that the "Hutchings girls" were very much like twins—Donna
the creative one (the Founder and Artistic Director of Steel Beam Theatre,
St. Charles, IL) and Mary the logical one, and that should explain the rest of it!
She attended Prospect High School in Mt. Prospect, Illinois, where she loved
being editor-in-chief of the school newspaper and on the speech events team,
but was happy to graduate and move on to Brown University in Providence,
Rhode Island. She is "ever true to Brown" and grateful for lifelong friends she
met there, as well as the intellectual encouragement she received from an
inspirational faculty. She received both her bachelors (in public policymaking,
an interdisciplinary program) and her masters (in economics) in four years,
graduating Phi Beta Kappa in 1973. She then entered Yale Law School (having
just missed the Clintons), where she won second prize in the Moot Court of
Appeals competition--("My husband doesn't really believe in women in law,"
one of the judge's wives told her afterwards)--and chaired the Moot Court
Board in her last year. She joined Sidley & Austin in 1976 and was elected to
partner in 1983. Winston & Strawn recruited her in 1989 to help start their
intellectual property department. For more info on Mary the Lawyer, go to
www.winston.com.
Mary married William R. Reed, an internist, in 1982. They just celebrated twenty
five wonderful years together. It's his fault she's now a writer. In 1992, Mary
took a leave of absence from law to sail from Norfolk, Va. to St. Thomas, U.S.V.I.
with Bill in a 32 foot boat. (See Mary's book, Captain Aunt), which took 22 days
and nights. After three storms at sea and a few weeks of recovery at anchor
in the Caribbean, Mary resigned her partnership in order to reduce her
workload and refocus some of her energy on writing. She began to write
every day and to study with Enid Powell in Chicago and Fred Shafer in Evanston.
She has attended numerous writing conferences around the country, including
Breadloaf (Middlebury, Vermont), Tin House (Portland, Oregon) and Words and
Music (New Orleans).
Mary and Bill have a new, smaller sailboat, If, still ocean-worthy, which they
occasionally cruise up Lake Michigan and which they hope to take to salt
water some time soon.
Mary also believes in community service, and for many years has served on
the boards of various nonprofit organizations, including American Civil Liberties
Union of Illinois, YWCA of Metropolitan Chicago, Off the Street Club and the
Chicago Bar Foundation. She currently serves on the board of the Legal
Assistance Foundation of Metropolitan Chicago (and chair of its
fundraising committee); Steel Beam Theatre, and her longest-standing
service involvement, Lawyers for the Creative Arts.
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