Law Blog Pt. 2

Vanessa Winton is a family and employment lawyer that works at the corner of Richmond and Montrose. Vanessa started her adult life as a teacher and when her father died she decided to quit her job and go to law school. She had always wanted to be a lawyer but it just hadn’t happened yet but when her father died it gave her an extra push to explore her dreams and not wait until it was too late. She graduated from South Texas College of Law in 2014 and worked for big law firms right out of school. She worked at these big firms for about 3 years until she decided to open her own practice so that she could become her own boss. Vanessa looked at her time in the big law firms as training so that she could open up her own business. She thought is was very important to open her own firm so that she could create a legacy for her four year old daughter. Vanessa’s private practice opened up in July and is starting to pick up pace very quickly.

Vanessa does a lot of different kinds of work but the main things she does are divorces, adoptions, child support, defend people who are facing jail for not paying child support, and also represents employees who think they have been discriminated against in any way. So far she has not had to be in court many times since opening her own practice but she will soon have to spend a lot of time at the courthouse. She decided to become a family and employment lawyer because when she was working with firms she missed being able to help people directly like she did as a teacher. She thought that working directly with people and being able to help them would be much more rewarding than working on saving large corporations money.

In the conversation I had with Vanessa I really started feeling like the field of work she is in is something I really want to pursue. I want to become a lawyer so I can help people and since that is what she is able to do I really like the idea of it. I am also someone who loves kids and families so being able to protect children and be more focused on that aspect sounds amazing. Since Vanessa works so close to the school she said she would be happy to have me come and shadow/intern with her once school starts up. I plan to talk to her more about the idea of having an internship with her once I have my class schedule.