Law Firm: Sidley Austin LLP in Houston, TX
Military Branch: Texas Army National Guard
Rank: Sergeant
MOS: 19D (Cavalry Scout) & 35M (Human Intelligence Collector)
Station: Bryan, TX; Kosovo; Taylor, TX; Afghanistan; San Antonio, TX
Years Served: 2004-2011

Tell us about your time in the military. I began my military career in 2004 as a Cavalry Scout assigned to the Scout Platoon of the Headquarters Company, 1-112 Armor in Bryan, Texas, but I served for part of 2005 and all of 2006 in Kosovo with B Company, 1-141 Infantry Regiment.  In 2007, I transferred to A Troop in Taylor, Texas, still with the 1-112th which had been redesignated as a Cavalry Regiment.  In 2008 I changed my MOS to Human Intelligence Collector to assist with filling out the 636 Military Intelligence Battalion for a deployment to Afghanistan, I served with A Company of the 636 in Afghanistan during 2009.  Upon return to Texas I was assigned to B Company, 636 Military Intelligence Battalion, stationed in San Antonio, Texas.

Tell us about your transition from the military to the practice of law. My path to the practice of law was a little convoluted, which eased the transition in many ways. In my younger days, I attended college but never settled on a major and ended up leaving school before I joined the military. So, on leaving service I had to spend two and a half years completing my undergraduate degree before attending law school and then starting practice.  That prolonged period and the fact that I was a member of the National Guard helped minimize any issues with transition, and meant that my most difficult period of transition centered more around returns to civilian life after deployments.

How do you think your military service impacted your legal career? What are some lessons you apply to your practice today?  Being a member of the National Guard means having a civilian job that you work other than the weekend drills each month and annual training in the summer (plus hurricane activations and, between 2001 and 2015, frequent deployments in support of the Global War on Terror). Juggling those responsibilities helped prepare me very well for the flexibility needed to succeed in my legal practice in Big Law. In addition, my military service gave me time to mature and develop as a person (which an older me can now admit my younger self very much needed), imparting skills that I would not have had if I started legal practice in my 20s and expanding my toolset for client service beyond what many new lawyers have. One other notable skill that I think the military developed for me is creativity in problem solving. In many ways, enlisted service in the military gives you a specific job and you get the luxury of not having to worry about other distractions (such as cooking meals, laundry, etc.) while on a deployment. But, your assigned job very often involves needing to achieve a stated objective within specified boundaries and with a limited toolset, none of which are what you would ideally think would be provided to achieve that stated goal. And so, you have to get creative to find ways to reach your goals while remaining positive. In many ways, negotiating complex M&A deals for clients can utilize the same skills in that we have to find ways to reach mutually agreeable situations despite practical restrictions, personality conflicts and sometimes seemingly impossible timelines. And finally, I think my service overall helps me to keep a positive attitude at times when things otherwise seem very difficult because, even if it is late and I am drafting a contract, in the back of my mind is always the thought that it could be worse, and I could be doing those same activities on a small laptop in a tent on hilltop in the middle of nowhere.

What drew you to the practice of law?   When I was deployed to Afghanistan, my small team was assigned in support of a brigade from the 10th Mountain Division working in the eastern part of the country to establish a new base.

As part of that effort, we worked fairly regularly with a colonel who was a reservist and lawyer in his civilian career. He was in charge of much of the project planning and contracting for the base expansion and I got to know him fairly well over the six months we were on that base, listening to stories about what he did as a transactional lawyer back home and what that entailed. The job called to me and my interests in a way that nothing I had tried before that really had (I had switched majors three times in my initial undergraduate pursuits before leaving school and joining the military), so I researched it further and decided that transactional law was something that I thought would fit my personality and skills, and that I wanted to pursue. 

I got lucky in my decision to attend Northwestern University for law school because they offered a wider range of transactional courses than most law schools and a significant number were taught as practical courses by adjunct professors who were partners in firms in the city. This gave me a great foundational skillset upon graduation. 

Sidley has helped me expand that transactional skillset over the years and all signs say I made the right choice when I decided that transactional law would be a fit for me, because I continue to enjoy it still.