Fighting for Fairness in Business Law

Strict enforcement of the law sometimes rewards dirty-dealing and hypocrisy, which bothered T. Leigh Anenson as a business litigator. Her new book, Judging Equity: The Fusion of Unclean Hands in U.S. Law (Cambridge University Press, 2019), explores a safety valve in the legal system designed to correct injustice.

“I do not like the abuse of power, and the abuse of the law is very similar,” says Anenson, who now works as a business law professor at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business. “If you are going to exploit the right that you have in a way that is not intended, I just do not think people should get away with that.”

Writing the book has been a serendipitous journey for Anenson, who established herself as a student-athlete, logistics professional and international business consultant before launching her law career.

Anenson started with softball while growing up in the San Joaquin Valley. She was good. But she never liked the uncomfortable uniforms that went with the sport, especially in a region where summer days regularly top 100 degrees Fahrenheit.

“I looked across the field to the tennis courts, where everybody seemed more comfortable,” she says. For no better reason than to escape the polyester pants and knee-high socks, Anenson traded her aluminum bat for a tennis racket.

Despite her relatively late start in the game, she persevered and started winning matches. After high school she played tennis on an athletic scholarship at California State University, where she finished second at the conference championships.

The undergraduate experience led to law school in an unexpected way. Anenson was working in logistics at the Port of Long Beach when a former college roommate asked her to take the Law School Admission Test as a favor. “She wanted to be an attorney, and she paid me to sit for the LSAT with her to give moral support,” Anenson said. “I never dreamed of being an attorney myself.”

Anenson had not prepared for the exam. But as with tennis, she discovered a knack for the law. She scored high on the LSAT, earned a scholarship to law school and graduated magna cum laude with a juris doctorate.

The next logical step would have been private practice. But Anenson had started working during law school as an international business consultant. Among other duties, she helped European companies enter the U.S. market and U.S. companies navigate Europe. “This was just after NAFTA and the World Trade Organization were formed,” she says. “It was a very exciting time for international business.”

Only later did she focus on a litigation career in the Midwest that included one case before the Ohio Supreme Court. “I really had no intention to practice law in a traditional capacity coming out of law school,” she says. “That was something that was surprising.”

The Supreme Court case and others exposed inequities in the U.S. justice system that caught Anenson’s attention.

Courts allow for equitable defenses, which invite judges to set aside legal requirements and apply moral principles in cases where the law might not deliver a fair resolution. But Anenson searched for guidance on the doctrines of equity and found almost nothing.

“There was nothing in the law libraries or databases,” Anenson says. “There were no analyses of these doctrines.”

Her discovery of the gap led to an academic pursuit and additional degrees, with honors, including a Master of Laws and a PhD. Now as a Smith School professor, Anenson has established herself as a leading authority on the equitable doctrine in U.S. law.

Her book is based on several award-winning papers that she has published in top-tier journals. “I am writing the book that I wanted to have when I was a lawyer,” Anenson says.