In the summer of 1969, between her second and third years of law school, Miers worked as a clerk for Belli, Ashe, Ellison, Choulos & Lieff, the San Francisco law firm founded by
Melvin Belli. Miers was immersed in
tort law. Her supervisor was Robert Lieff, then a partner in the Belli firm and later a founder of the nationally prominent plaintiffs' law firm
Lieff Cabraser. In a 2005 interview with the
San Francisco Chronicle, Lieff stated that Miers "saw what we did for people who needed to get a lawyer and were only able to get a lawyer by a
contingent fee." After graduating from law school, from 1970 to 1972 Miers was a
law clerk for the Chief Judge of the
U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas,
Joe E. Estes. She was admitted to the
State Bar of Texas in 1970 and admitted to the DC bar in 1997. In the late 1990s, while Miers was on the advisory board for Southern Methodist University's law school, she helped create and fund a Women's Studies lecture series named after pioneering Texas lawyer
Louise B. Raggio, who was a mentor to Miers. Raggio, who died in 2011, knew Miers for nearly 40 years, since Miers was a student at Southern Methodist University. Miers was one class behind Raggio's son at SMU, and Raggio became a mentor for Miers; years later she served as a close advisor to Miers during the Texas Bar race. "I was interested in having a woman president," Raggio says. "She was an electable woman, a woman with a big firm behind her. Women's groups supported her because they wanted to show that a woman would be a competent president." From 1972 until 2001 Miers worked for the Dallas law firm of
Locke, Liddell & Sapp (and predecessor firms before mergers). She was the first female lawyer hired by the firm and later became its president. When the merger that created Locke, Liddell & Sapp took place in 1999, she became the co-managing partner of a legal business with more than 400 lawyers. In 2000 the firm settled a lawsuit for $22 million that accused the firm of having "aided a client in defrauding investors". According to the
Class Action Reporter, Miers "said the firm denies liability in connection with its representation of Erxleben. 'Obviously, we evaluated that this was the right time to settle and to resolve this matter and that it was in the best interest of the firm to do so,' Miers said." From 2000 to 2001, Miers chaired the
ABA's Commission on Multi-Jurisdictional Practice. She did not run for reelection in 1991 after a restructure of the city council converted Miers's at-large seat into a single-district seat. Miers met
George W. Bush in January 1989 at an annual Austin dinner affair for legislators and other important people.
Nathan Hecht, a mutual friend and Miers's date, made the introduction. Miers subsequently worked as general counsel for Bush's transition team in 1994, when he was first elected
governor of Texas. She subsequently became Bush's personal lawyer and worked as a lawyer in his
2000 presidential campaign. While head of the State Bar of Texas, Miers joined an unsuccessful effort to have the
American Bar Association maintain its then-official position of neutrality on abortion. The ABA had adopted abortion neutrality at its 1990 annual meeting in Chicago after strong opposition by the State Bar of Texas to a pro-choice position. By the summer of 1992, at its annual meeting in San Francisco, the issue was again pending before the ABA assembly. Miers, who had not been involved in the Chicago meeting, supported ABA abortion neutrality in San Francisco. At the San Francisco meeting, the ABA Assembly and House of Delegates voted to take a pro-choice rights position, and the state bar of Texas dropped its plans to ask the ABA's policy-making body to hold a referendum of the group's 370,000 members on the issue. Since September 1994, Miers has contributed to the campaigns of various Republicans (at about the same time she began to work for George W. Bush), including
Kay Bailey Hutchison,
Phil Gramm, and
Pete Sessions, with recorded contributions to Republican candidates and causes totaling nearly $12,000. Her earlier political history shows support for the
Democrats during the 1980s, with recorded contributions to Democratic candidates and causes, including the
Democratic National Committee, the Senate campaign of
Lloyd Bentsen and the
1988 presidential campaign of
Al Gore, totaling $3,000. Her last recorded contribution to a Democratic cause or campaign was in 1988.
Ed Gillespie said that she was a "conservative Democrat" at the time. In April 2007,
Locke Lord Bissell & Liddell announced that Miers was returning to the firm. In her new role at the firm, Miers has registered with the
United States Department of Justice as an agent for the
Pakistan Peoples Party and the
Embassy of Pakistan. ==Government service==