Tell us about your community growing up. Looking back, how did they shape who you are now?

I grew up and have spent my adult life, so far, in Florida. But I was born and lived my first nine years of life in Africa—Liberia, to be precise. My mother was Guyanese, my father was American, and their friends and mine included Liberians, West Indians, Americans, and people from other countries, as well. I took ballet lessons from a Scottish woman named Kathleen Kemp (“Miss Kemp” to us girls). So, from early on, with this mix of cultures as my normal, I learned to appreciate and enjoy and relate to a veritable United Nations of people. If any one thing has served me well in life and molded my worldview, it’s that. My parents hadn’t had the opportunity to finish high school and go to college, and they often stressed to me as I was growing up how important it was to seek higher education and “get that piece of paper.” Though he didn’t live to see it manifest, my father passed on to me his love of history and politics and books. My mother instilled in me a strong faith in God, a strong backbone (which tends to stubbornness at times, if I’m honest), and the courage to march to the beat of my own drum.

Describe your journey to law school. What motivated you to apply?

I was five years out of college, with a Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration, 29 years old and a single mother with a 10-year-old daughter when I entered law school. At the time, I was only seeking a graduate degree that I believed would supply me the widest universe of professional opportunities. Practicing law was not something I wanted to do, believe it or not, but over the course of my law school journey, I became enamored with the law and set my sights on a legal career.

What was your law school experience like?

Candidly, my first few semesters of law school were tough, not because I had difficulty adjusting to being a full-time single mother and a full-time law student, but because, though I understood what I was learning in class, I couldn’t seem to demonstrate my knowledge on the exams. Then, through our Black Law Students Association (BLSA), I attended a fantastic seminar that helped me understand what professors are looking for when grading exam answers and gave great tips on writing. I also stepped out of my comfort zone as a “loner” and joined study groups, and I started seeking help and guidance from my professors as I saw my colleagues doing. After that, my grades improved, as did my confidence in myself.

What I really enjoyed while in school were the internships, clinics, and part-time law clerk work I did for a few solo practitioners. I chose to do those things over pursuing law review and moot court because I wanted to get as much practical experience as I could and develop a portfolio of “real world” work product to show prospective employers when the time came. It served me well in my post-grad job search and influenced the way I evaluated candidates for clerkships with me when I became a judge.

Did you know about appellate work in law school? If not, when and how did it first get on your radar and why were you drawn to it?

Aside from my first-year brief writing and oral argument classroom experience, I knew nothing about appellate work. Then in my last semester I took an appellate practice skills course taught by a retired state appellate court judge. I’d enjoyed research and writing but hadn’t thought about becoming an appellate practitioner until our moot OA in the appellate practice class. We argued to a panel of sitting judges, one of whom asked me after my argument, “Have you considered doing this for a living?” Talk about a sign from above! It led me to apply for the appellate court clerkship that started my career.

Tell us about one of your appellate cases that you found particularly meaningful.

This one’s meaningful professionally but more memorable personally. I represented Florida’s CFO in an appeal before the First District Court of Appeal, the court on which I’d previously been a judge for six years. The CFO was the appellant and on the other side was a phalanx of insurance companies and their amici. At issue was the validity of a statute that required the companies to conduct a retrospective review of their life insurance policy files to find potential beneficiaries where policy holders had died, and the insurers had let the policies lapse without searching for beneficiaries or paying out proceeds. It was a case that apparently many states were following. It also was a case in which I had to perform the oral argument before a panel of my former colleagues. And it had been ages since I’d last done OA. And the OA was set for the afternoon before I was leaving my law firm to begin my tenure as Secretary of the Department of Juvenile Justice. Not nerve racking at all! I did the OA, returned to the office, filed my notice to withdraw as counsel, and started my new job the next morning. As to the outcome of the case, the CFO prevailed, albeit in a 2-1 decision. (Subsequent history: The case went to the Florida Supreme Court and the parties settled after a bruising OA for the insurance companies.) See Patronis v. United Ins. Co. of America, 299 So. 3d 1152 (Fla. 1st DCA 2020).

How often do you encounter Black people in the appellate field? Why do you think that representation is important?

In the private sector, I haven’t encountered many Black lawyers doing appellate work and that could be owing to a general preference among lawyers to do trial or transactional work rather than appellate litigation or the nature of law firm work and structure where partners and shareholders tend to do the appellate work (and that’s a whole other conversation!). I have encountered more in the public sector (my daughter is one of several Black lawyers in our AG’s criminal appeals division). From personal experience and observation, the public sector (e.g., government agencies, state AG’s offices, US Attorney offices) provides fantastic opportunities for lawyers to get into appellate practice and to do some truly meaningful and often high-profile work. I don’t think we do enough to expose Black law students and young lawyers to appellate lawyering opportunities, which we need to be intentional about doing if we’re to see more choose that career path.

What advice would you give to a law student of color who aspires to be where you are now?

While you’re in law school, work on strengthening your research and writing skills—especially writing. Go and watch oral arguments; see who the lawyers are and connect with them to talk about their work and how they built their appellate careers. Join the student divisions of the voluntary bar associations in your area and start networking. Often, the bar associations will have events honoring or featuring the judges in the area; go to those events (take a classmate with you if you don’t want to go alone) and talk to/get to know the judges.

What’s one thing law schools and/or the appellate bar can do to ensure our highest courts are representative of all our communities?

That’s a tall order, I think, because there are various paths to judicial office, many variables involved in the processes, and not every lawyer is going to be willing to put himself or herself forward for election or appointment. But law schools can help build the bench, so to speak, by educating and encouraging minority law students about the value of judicial clerkships as a solid first step in their careers, by creating and supporting mentoring programs like TAP at the local level to connect students with appellate lawyers and judges in their areas, and by establishing relationships with the federal and state courts in their areas with an eye toward creating a pipeline for internships for students.