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    July 26, 2023 Women In The Law

    'A Trending Color': Pink is a brand for Barbie-loving lawyer

    By Debra Cassens Weiss

    An immigration lawyer who uses pink to brand her law firm says she was "elated" and "excited" when Inside Edition approached her for a story that compared her and her employees to the pink-loving Barbie featured in the new movie released July 21.

    “I’ve never shied away from the color pink and how I appear,” lawyer Kathleen Martinez told the ABA Journal.

    The all-female staff at the Martinez Immigration firm wears all pink, all the time, according to Inside Edition. Like the movie Barbie, the firm has “beauty, brains and a sparkle of pink,” one employee told the television show.

    Martinez drives a pink Maserati and has a pink office. She has more than 30 pink suits and dresses.

    Martinez confesses to the Journal that her employees don’t have to wear pink every day. But she thinks that they were attracted to her firm because they came from situations similar to hers—they thought that they were not accepted or treated well because of how they appear.

    Martinez formerly worked in firms in which she was treated differently and told that she wouldn’t be successful because of the pink suits that she wore and the way that she dresses. When she founded her firm in 2020, it was important to send a message that she will do well despite her style of dressing.

    “When I started my firm,” Martinez told Entrepreneur.com in an August 2022 story, “I chose to brand ourselves with the color pink to break the ceiling limiting smart, professional women from expressing themselves. We embrace our femininity, and it hasn’t prevented us from success.”

    Martinez started at as a solo, but she needed employees as her posts on TikTok and Instagram gained a following. She attracts female employees “who like being girlie, like the color pink, like the message,” Martinez says.

    Martinez founded her immigration firm when she moved to Dallas with her husband, she told People magazine last fall. She was inspired to become an immigration lawyer because of his experience moving to the United States from Mexico at age 10.

    Martinez’s husband appears on the Martinez firm website wearing a pink suit that he bought. He endorsed the idea of pink branding to help people remember Martinez as he helped her build the website.

    “Our clients find that we stick out from other immigration lawyers, and our clients specifically remember us because of our pink brand,” Martinez told Entrepreneur. “Female clients hire us because they like our feminist agenda and can relate to us when it comes to gender inequality and discrimination.”

    One of Martinez’s clients sent her an Elle Woods Barbie, named for the law student character played by Reese Witherspoon in the 2001 movie Legally Blonde. Martinez say the movie is a favorite. She can relate to Woods, who experienced “a simplistic barrier”—the belief that you can’t prioritize appearance without seeming dumb.

    She planned to see Barbie this week because it was impossible to get tickets last weekend.

    Does Martinez have trouble finding pink clothes? At first it was difficult, she says.

    But now, pink “is a trending color,” she says.