Follow the Green Brick Road

My career never followed the traditional trajectory of my colleagues. I had some rough and tumble circumstances to deal with as I started, which was in Houston at the turn of the century at a mid-sized litigation firm. In my second year, I took a job at a firm in Austin, where I wanted to be, but the practice area and the firm differed from what I thought. I went back to commercial litigation at a small firm, and after a few happy years there, a series of other life circumstances set me bouncing between jobs and cities for a few years. In 2008, when my friends at the big law firms were getting laid off and freaking out, I had already been nimbly scrapping around, litigating new areas of law at each firm. This scrappiness in the face of otherwise bleak situations would continue to serve me well throughout my career.

In 2015, I arrived at a crossroads. After a decade of journey-woman work, I dedicated myself for four years to a firm where I performed all the necessary backflips to become a partner and to conform to the ideal of plodding toward partner at a decent law firm. I did every bidding of my boss toward this goal, only to have that same boss frame and fire me after years of running his practice during his midlife crisis. I was unceremoniously poured out as a 40-year-old single mom trying to find a new job. You may think asking what my husband does in an interview is illegal, but that happened every time. It was impossible to get another job as an associate. I was told to my face I was too old and probably too distracted as a single parent. I finally landed a job due to my first boss that I tried a case with, but ended up in a different section with an abusive boss, so after a year of that (and frankly, lousy paralegal work instead of trial work) I was done. I wasn’t sure what was next—and I had two kids to support alone.

In 2015, I was in my beloved Austin, where I read the bill testimony of mothers in support of the Texas Compassionate Use Act, which was for children dying from epilepsy to have access to medical cannabis after all other medications had been exhausted. I read what their lives were like taking care of these children and how they had to leave the State, their families, churches, schools, and communities to seek treatment or did not have the means to do so. As a teenager, I volunteered for four years at Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston and wanted to be an art therapist for terminally ill children. The statistics class of the psychology major scared me away from that.

But I remained driven to help children. And my own daughter had epilepsy. At age one, I took her to the top two hospitals in Houston and was given conflicting diagnoses and treatment plans. One said to medicate her but advised the drugs would negatively affect the development of her brain and organs. The other said it could be a juvenile form she outgrows that we simply monitor. That is what this petrified 32-year-old mother decided to do. My daughter is now 19 and has not had a seizure since she was 11. This experience showed me that the doctors were guessing at both her condition and how to treat it. This experience also lit the fire for me to decide to advocate for legalization so that doctors could have another tool in the toolbox that did not have devastating side effects. I hoped that as a mom lawyer in a suit and pearls, I could change perceptions and minds at the Capitol.

I set out to educate myself on cannabis laws, which at that time were brand new. Colorado and Washington commenced recreational sales in 2014. Rarely do we get to see the dawn of a new industry. I thought, here is an entirely new area of law that is not owned by any old white man at the top yet. Perhaps as a woman, I can become an early expert and authority here—another rare opportunity. I wanted to position myself as a leader for long-term success.

I attended conferences and met some lawyers in Colorado to work with, getting me experience on cannabis issues in various states, which were one by one in different stages of legalizing for medical or recreational purposes. At the time, only a handful of lawyers knew anything about cannabis law. Advising cannabis businesses was risky and considered aiding and abetting a federal crime. It was an exciting time to fly into different states as a cannabis law expert and, as time went by, to become the authority I set out to be.

In 2017, a Houston magazine (quoting a Texas lobbyist) called me the First Lady of Texas Cannabis Law. There was certainly no lawyer in Texas thinking about cannabis yet. Texas law was not changing in the 2017 Legislative Session, so I moved to Colorado to meet the movers and shakers, to get barred, and to gain experience and knowledge to bring back to Texas whenever Texas legalizes (hint—we are still waiting—I thought I was five years ahead of my time, not ten!!). I had more challenging experiences in the mean streets of Denver, but I learned a lot in the literal cannabis trenches at a time when the industry was cutting-edge and high-rolling. I would not trade the experience, but it almost broke me.

In 2019, I worked on getting Texas’s hemp law passed, which brought me back home to Austin. I tried partnering with someone, and then I tried working with a couple of law firms, which did not work out either. My career was going well in that I was appointed to all kinds of leadership positions and won many awards for my trailblazing work. I had accumulated a lot of clients and notoriety in a super niche of the law. After the fallout from the last doomed law firm partnership, my friends asked me, why do you think you need to be with a firm anyway? You’ve got the skills, reputation, and clients!

Good question. What I lacked was self-esteem, probably, and being a solo parent also made going out entirely on my own seem extraordinarily risky. Cannabis work is very up and down, and the clients don’t have much money. Plus—it’s still not legal in Texas!

I finally took the leap of faith in 2021. All my solo friends assured me it would be fine and take about a year. They were right. In my second year, thanks to Texas opening up medical cannabis dispensing applications, I made more money than I ever had as a lawyer and didn’t have to share it with anyone. It was daunting because I had no real resources to get started and no safety net. But I learned that when I only need to make enough money to support myself, instead of supporting other people at a bigger firm, I can achieve that pretty easily, and the expenses are lower than bigger law firms would have you believe. I also thought that a bigger firm would have other attorneys to handle different areas of law for the client, but because I have such a broad litigation background, I know a lot about many things already. What seemed like bouncing around back then now feels like an education for which I’m grateful. When I need expert help (which is rare), I can hand-pick the professional to take care of my client instead of being relegated to whatever mediocre lawyer the law firm has on staff. In short, none of the perceived reasons to be with a larger firm have turned out to be true to service my clients fully.

In my case, the path to my own firm involved a winding road across two decades, including bushwacking a still-developing area of law and making a lot of my own opportunities. There was often no road, and I followed my instinct and dreams alone. I endured a lot of judgment, ridicule, and skepticism in the beginning, but now, over half the country has legal cannabis, and all the big firms have jumped in. There has been a lot of adversity and challenge in my journey, personally and professionally. However, I stayed the course, and now I know the glee and satisfaction of being my own boss with complete independence to dictate how I spend my day. I have close, loyal relationships with my clients, many of whom I consider friends. I love being able to be me and serve my clients my way.