You may have noticed that I’ve been cross-posting some interesting articles by retired trial lawyer (and friend) Sylvia Demarest. At the request of some of her Substack readers, she has written a more detailed account of her background which is reprinted below. – Natylie

By Sylvia Demarest, Substack, 7/24/25

Introduction –A Repeat from Part 1–or scroll to Part 2.

I started this Substack in April of 2025 to discuss why a citizen’s movement was needed to reform our economic system. I wanted to share some of the knowledge and observations from my life, a life during which I was privileged to live the promise of the American Dream. I say this because, like so many people my age who had grown up in rural America, I went from 18^th Century poverty as a young child, to 20^st Century professional success as an adult, during a “Golden Age” of opportunity in the United States. As time went by the country changed, and the opportunities I had were taken away. I wanted to write about how and why this happened, and what could be done about it.

When I started this Substack adding my name did not seem important, and the first essays were posted with just the Substack’s name. When other sites began to repost the essays, I was asked to include my name. Now subscribers have asked me to share some of my life and professional experiences. I am happy to do so. I started this Substack to build a community for reform. Building such a community requires trust. Building trust requires transparency. This essay explains who I am, where I come from, and what I worked on during my legal career. I am too old to lead a populist movement, but I can help educate people who can lead such a movement. I sign these essays as a guest writer because I plan to post other essays by guest writers.

I am a retired female trial lawyer. I graduated from the University of Texas School of Law in 1969. I was born in August of 1944 to a French Cajun family of farmers, trappers, and hunting guides, I grew up in small rural community in Southwest Louisiana south of Lake Charles called Grand Lake. I was the first generation to speak English when I entered 1^stgrade. My family was poor but stable, my parents had a 3^rd grade education. Even though we were poor, I do not feel I was deprived, quite the contrary. I treasure my background, my family, and my heritage. My early childhood was the 18^th Century part of my life until around age 7 or 8. I remember when we got electricity, a paved road, and running water. I may have been in Law School by the time my older brother installed indoor plumbing. The local school I attended was rural, and very small. There were 13 people in my high school graduating class. My education in the basics was not the best, as you can probably tell by reading my essays. My primary focus before college was reading and sports.

Part 2: College, Law School, and Practicing Law

California dreaming

I had an older sister and an older brother. They were both on their own by the time I was born. My older brother’s name was EJ. When I was around 10, he and his wife built a home near my parents. EJ was a caring brother, always very concerned about my welfare. He did a lot of things for me I did not know about at the time. My sister’s name was Flora Belle. She had polio as a child and limped as a result–but her limp was so elegant you really did not notice. She and her husband also built a house next to my parents. Belle was interesting, funny, and very intelligent. We would visit for hours talking about the world and politics.

EJ worked in the oil fields. At some point he and his family moved to California, to a town called Coalinga where he continued to work in the oil industry. Coalinga stands for “coaling station A” on the transcontinental railroad.

College was free in California at the time (not today!) so EJ offered to let me live with his family and attend the local junior college, that way I could put off having to borrow money. The week after I graduated from High School in 1962, I left for California on the Sunset Limited–a train from Lake Charles to Los Angles.

Unfortunately, living with my brother’s family did not work out. I realized this and tried join the military. Joining the military was a common way for low-income kids to escape poverty. I got turned down and advised that my psychological profile was not consistent with military discipline! I eventually left my brother’s home. I did not want to ask my parents for money or try to continue to live with my brother. My college history professor offered to let me live with his family, but I decided to move to the bay area and find a job. No one knew where I had gone or how to reach me for several months. The reality of life in a big city made me realize that if I was going to have any success in life, I had to get back to Louisiana and go to college.

I found my way back to Lake Charles, called my Dad from the Greyhound Bus station, and asked him to come pick me up. His first words were: “We thought we would never hear from you again.” I had been stubborn and irresponsible, and had unnecessarily worried people who cared about me, but the experience had grounded me in the reality of the world. It kept me in school until I finished and was licensed to practice law. Meanwhile, I knew, if I failed, I could always go home.

I returned to Louisiana in the Summer of 1963. I worked as a waitress to save money so I could go back to college that spring. I was working as a waitress when I watched Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his “I have a dream” speech in August, and when it was announced that President John F. Kennedy had been shot. In college in Coalinga, my history class had followed the Cuban Missile Crisis in October of 1962. Now, JFK had been murdered.

The University of Southwest Louisiana at Lafayette

I enrolled at the University of Southwest Louisiana at Lafayette (now the University of Louisiana at Lafayette) in the Spring of 1964. I was completely ignorant of college life, and without much money. I worked in the college cafeteria serving breakfast, lunch and dinner to earn money.

My first task was to figure out how to fit in. I flipped through the college annual and saw the debate team and Professor Roy Murphy. I had no experience or training in public speaking, but I knew I could talk, so I took Speech 101 with Prof Murphy. When I gave my first speech, Prof asked me to stay after class. He invited me to join the debate squad. I also got a job in the speech department, doing odd jobs for the professors.

We went to nationals that year. The debate team took a train all the way from Lafayette to Washington State, across the west, and through the Columbia River valley to Tacoma Washington. It was my second long train trip and I had seen a lot of western USA.

Through Prof Murphy and the debate team, I discovered my natural talent for public speaking. This led to my decision to become a lawyer and attend the University of Texas School of Law, I entered law school in 1966 without a college degree under the pre-law program. I graduated and was licensed in 1969. Prof Murphy told me he did not have to teach me how to debate—as they say, I was a “natural”.”

A Short Summary of My legal career

Because of my age and my sex, I experienced a lot of “firsts” in my career. In law school I was the first female teaching quizmaster teaching legal advocacy, the first female Hildebrand Moot Court Finalist, and the first female on the National Moot Court Team. This is because there were very few women in law or in law school at the time. Today’s enrolment is very different; women make up half the student body.

As I was finishing law school at UT, I decided I wanted to be a trial lawyer; a field of law women did not go into at the time. This turned out to be a very wise decision. The situation is very different today; there are literally thousands of great female trial lawyers in Texas and across the US. This was not the case in 1969.

My first job was as a “Reggie” under the Reginald Heber Smith Community Lawyer Fellowship Program. The Fellowship was in poverty law and lasted 2 years. We went through a training program at Haverford College, which was disrupted by complaints from minority Reggie’s. After that, the program operated out of Howard University in DC.

The Reggie program focused on analyzing local and state legal issues that negatively impacted poor people and figuring out a way to address those issues through litigation. This meant I was in court, filing cases, arguing motions, and trying cases, almost immediately. At the conclusion of my Reggie, I became a staff attorney at the Dallas Legal Services Foundation in Dallas, now part of North Texas Legal Services. When the executive director position became vacant, I ran for and was elected Executive Director in July of 1973. I served for 3 years until 1976 managing a program of 20 lawyers.

During my legal services career I worked on, and tried, several civil rights cases, involving desegregation, single-member districts, equal education, and freedom of speech, to name just a few. In 2023 the Dallas Bar Association gave me and Edward Cloutman the Martin Luther King Justice Award for the civil rights work we did during the 1970’s.

After my legal services days I went to work for a local trial firm, the Law Offices of Windle Turley PC. I worked on and tried product defect cases including several post-crash fire cases involving automobiles and 18 Wheeler Trucks. I was head of the Products Liability department and served on the firm’s board of directors. I was a frequent speaker and writer at continuing legal educations seminars. I also wrote a law review article on The History of Punitive Damages in Texas based on my work in the Maxey v. Freightliner case.

I started my own firm in 1983 and practiced law there, with several partners, until I retired from the practice of law several years ago. In 1983 I was elected President of the Dallas Trial Lawyers. Over the years, I have been named a “Legend of the Law” by the Litigation Section of the Dallas Bar Association, and a “Legal Legend” by the Dallas Trial Lawyers Association.

During my legal career, I had the opportunity to work on many significant cases at the trial and appellate level. I will discuss just one in this essay. Does vs. Father Rudolph Kos and the Catholic Diocese of Dallas. This case was tried many years ago, and a verdict was reached in July of 1997. It remains the largest verdict against the Catholic Church for the sexual abuse of children by Catholic Priests. Several individual cases had been filed, and they were consolidated for trial. Although we each represented our own clients, I had the pleasure of trying this case with my mentor, Windle Turley.

As I worked on these abuse cases I realized that no one was documenting the crisis or working to preserve important documents and information. I decided to begin a priest-perpetrator database and to collect as many relevant documents as possible. I was fortunate because my legal assistant, Patricia McLelland was a librarian and database expert. Over the years we collected information on the crisis and the priests who had been publicly accused of abusing children. At the conclusion of the Kos case, I donated that database to Bishop Accountability along with 100 bankers boxes of documents. BA continues this important work.

BA plans to donate the archive to a university. On the 20^th anniversary of the Kos case the Texas Law Book did a review of the case and published several articles. One was about the database Trish and I put together: Sylvia Demarest’s Gift of Disturbing Data

I have also traveled extensively, including to Russia. I volunteered for many years with the Center for Citizen Initiatives and its extraordinary founder, Sharon Tennison. I traveled to the USSR in 1988 as part of a legal group. I also traveled to Russia with Sharon, including visiting Crimea in 2017 and meeting with the Crimean Parliament. As a result of my travel, my reading, and research, I learned a great deal about Russian history, as well as geopolitical issues around the world: including Russia, Europe and West Asia. Sharon Tennison spent her life working to improve US/Russia relations. Her book, “The Power of Impossible Ideas: Ordinary Citizens’ Extraordinary Efforts to Avert an International Crisis”, discusses her important work and is highly recommended.

My entire career was spent representing ordinary people against entrenched interests. I was fond of saying–“My job is to assail the citadels of power and privilege on behalf of the poor and the powerless”. As a civil rights attorney I sued public institutions that discriminated based on race or ethnicity. As a private attorney I sued corporations over negligence and defective products, doctors and hospitals over medical negligence, and the Catholic Church over the abuse of children by Catholic Priests. I continued my childhood reading habit. I own an extensive library, keep up with current events, and read dozens of books a year.

My Dad and the local bank

My Dad was an honest good-hearted man. Over the years he had developed a relationship with the local bank, borrowing and repaying small sums of money as the need arose. My twin brothers were eight years younger than I. One brother got my Dad to co-sign a note for a double wide trailer. My Dad co-signed thinking he was pledging one acre of land, but after he signed, the bank, without telling my Dad, added a pledge of all the family property, including my parent’s home.

My brother defaulted on the note and the bank filed to foreclose on the property. It was in the mid 1980’s and I was practicing law in Dallas. I am not licensed in Louisiana, so I hired a local lawyer, Randy Roach, to contest the foreclosure. Randy saw that the pledge had been added after my father signed the note, and counter sued to cancel the pledge. The case went to the Louisiana Supreme Court where we lost a 2-1 decision.

My Mom had not been part of the case, and Louisiana is a community property state. I advised the bank that I would litigate again, this time on behalf of my Mom. The bank settled. Had I not been able to contest the foreclosure my parents would have been homeless. Banks did this to people all over rural America.

Conclusion

I started this Substack because I am a populist in the tradition of the 18^th Century populists who focused on economic fairness. I practiced law as a populist because I always represented ordinary people against powerful interests. To learn more about the history of populism, read my essay The History of Populism and Populist Policies in the US.

I hope this essay is helpful to anyone interested in learning who I am, why I am a populist, and why I write these essays. Please share, comment, and get your friends to subscribe to this Substack. Thank you for reading this brief autobiography.