Appellate lawyer Kendal Simpson works where she wants, when she wants and how she wants.
What that means for the mother of four and counsel at litigation boutique Reese Marketos is that she only works on the matters she wants to, she’s usually done for the day by 2 p.m. to pick her son up from preschool, and she spends some workdays in her home office in Collin County and others in either the firm’s downtown Dallas office or Plano offices.
Simpson has handled her share of high-profile appeals, even while working part time. As a fourth-year associate in 2013, she handled oral argument — and won — in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit for Reese Marketos’ insurance client in a dispute against T. Boone Pickens and Oklahoma State Athletics. (“I wound up at a counsel table with Paul Clement and opposite of Jim Ho, and we split our time evenly. Who does that happen to?” she said). Currently, Simpson is leading an appeal in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit of a trial court’s dismissal of a False Claims Act case her firm is litigating against a group of South Texas doctors and skilled nursing facilities.
Unlike many Big Law models, where it’s common for part-time attorneys to end up putting in about 85 percent of the hours they billed when they were full-time for half the pay, Simpson says her compensation is directly correlated with the work she does and she only takes on the work she wants to do without any fear of political backlash in the office.
And now, Simpson wants to offer this practice model to other high-achieving women lawyers who need more flexibility in their jobs without the repercussions. After returning to Reese Marketos in 2021 from a six-year pause in her career, Simpson recruited trial lawyer Margaret Terwey, who had left Big Law to focus on raising her children. Simpson says she’s looking to build a bigger team of women at the firm on this hiring structure.
“This is the balance that made me happy and also the balance that people told me could not happen — that you’re all in or you’re all out, and both are fine but you’re going to have to pick one,” Simpson said. “I want women to know that, especially in the world of complex commercial litigation, that does not have to be true.”
In the following Q&A with The Texas Lawbook, Simpson lays out the nuts and bolts of her part-time arrangement, elaborates on why it’s been a success for both her and her employer, and offers advice to other women on how to pursue these kinds of opportunities in the legal field.
Editor’s Note: This Q&A is the product of phone interviews in 2023 and 2024. It has been edited for clarity and brevity.
The Texas Lawbook: Can you tell me a little bit about your background, your decision to take a break from your practice and later your decision to return to it?
Kendal Simpson: I left my legal practice in February of 2015, when I had three itty-bitties very close together. When my third was born, my oldest was 2 years and 7 months. In May 2014 my mom passed away, and that was kind of an inflection point for me. It shifted my perspective for a while. I didn’t want leaving the practice of law to be a knee-jerk reaction, so I waited until the end of the year to decide that I needed a break.
I live in Collin County, and when the pandemic hit, since our schools were pretty lax, I made the choice to keep the kids at home and basically became a full-time teacher for three girls and had a fourth child in the meantime, so I had a toddler and three school-aged children. After a year of that, I decided I would like to see a light at the end of the tunnel of not being at home full-time. I had stayed in touch with the guys at Reese Marketos over the years, and very intentionally so. When I reached out to them, they said, “When do you want to come back?” I came back in the fall of 2021 and hit the ground running.
Lawbook: What does your part-time arrangement at the firm look like in terms of where you work and when you work, and how do you and the firm decide what you work on?
Simpson: When it comes to which assignments I take I’m always asked, never told. It’s approached as, “Hey, do you think you have ability to work on this?” There have been multiple times where I say no, they say, “OK great. Thank you so much.” I don’t think I’ve ever been met with so much gratitude for saying no. The other thing about it is it’s not just a question of my availability; it’s, “Do you want to work on something like this?” I drafted a motion to dismiss for a partner on the front end of a case, and he asked, “Depending on how the motion goes, how involved do you want to be in building it up?” I wasn’t interested. I said, “If you have an appeal, call me when you have that. Other than that I’m not interested.”
As far as what my location looks like, I can work from wherever I want. Right now, I’m sitting in my office at home. We have an office on the Plano-Frisco border on Legacy and an office in downtown Dallas. I have an office space in both. I’m allowed to work wherever I want to, and there are no expectations about where I should be.
I get paid for the work that I do, and when I don’t work the firm’s not put out, and I get to have a moment of, “OK, this week I’m a stay-at-home mom,” which I did for six and a half years and loved every minute of it. I don’t want to let go of that completely.
Saying this out loud, none of it sounds real, but it is.
Lawbook: How has this arrangement been going for you?
Simpson: It’s been going really well. In the last year, I’ve handled a state appeal and two federal appeals entirely on my own — one out of the Third Court of Appeals in Austin, another one out of the Fifth Circuit, and one I’m wrapping up briefing-wise in the D.C. Circuit. I have the authority to do as much of them as I want and pull in whatever extent of assistance I need. I get to lead the appeals, and when they are granted an oral argument, if I have the time and wherewithal to handle them, they’re absolutely mine. And if I don’t, somebody steps in and helps. That’s exactly the kind of balance I need right now.
What’s been interesting for me in the last year is that because I love my arrangement so much, it might be the first time in my life that I’ve had more drive and more will to be working more and I just don’t have the capacity yet. As much as I would like to be able to take every single opportunity that comes my way, it’s quite the blessing and the privilege to have so much opportunity that I have to say no sometimes.
My practice has developed more working part time than it would have full time at a big firm because I’ve been given and trusted with opportunities that I never would have seen anywhere else.
Lawbook: You first joined Reese Marketos in 2011 as an associate and rejoined as counsel in 2021 after a six-year hiatus. Is making partner off the table?
Simpson: This is probably the first time since I’ve started practicing law that I’ve modified my expectations for myself and my own personal and professional goals. When I started this job, I thought, “I don’t care if I ever make partner. I don’t care what my title is. I want to do the work that I love to do and I want to be able to see my kids grow up, and if I can check those two boxes, I’m good. Nothing else matters.”
Because my goals have evolved and I want to give more to this job, I do hope that someday I’m considered for partnership. And I’ve been told that’s absolutely on the table. What I hope women glean from my path is that when you go part time, you’re not relegating yourself. You’re not imposing upon yourself a ceiling. May it take longer? Sure. But will you also get to experience the benefits of balance that others don’t who are on a shorter timeline? Yes.
Lawbook: How did you decide to grow the firm by adding more women who are in similar life phases who need a more flexible schedule?
Simpson: Not everyone is wired same way. I was the daughter of a woman who had no desire to stay at home — ever. And that’s fine because for my mom, working was what filled her cup, what kept her sane, what she loved to do and what made her happy. There are also women who have no desire to work when they have kids. That’s fine too. If that fills your cup, do it that way. But I think lots of women are in the middle of the spectrum who sincerely want to be able to pursue both, who find sanity in both and a balance in both. I think it’s that opportunity to pursue both at the same time, in a way that fulfills you through both, that has not been the norm.
About a year into being back, I went to one of our founding partners, Joel Reese, and told him that beyond supporting my family and having that intellectual exercise throughout the week, part of me coming back is that I want to do something bigger than myself, and that there is no reason I should be treated like some unicorn that is uniquely deserving of this arrangement that I have. I wanted to be able to extend that opportunity to other high-achieving women in the law and wanted to see if the people I work for were amenable to that.
Lawbook: How has this hiring model been going, who have you hired so far and who else are you looking to hire?
Simpson: It’s gone very well. I was given carte blanche to go out and find candidates and bring them to the partners on a case-by-case basis and see if they are a good fit. Several months into this effort we made our first hire on this structure, Margaret Terwey, who had led a successful career at Vinson & Elkins before spending several years at home to raise her young children. I reached out and asked if I could take her to lunch. She’s been here over a year and has been killing it. Her work is phenomenal and everybody raves about her. I remember being told at one time that complex commercial litigation simply was not a practice that could accommodate women like me. Margaret exists much more in the trial space than I do, and I think she’s a living, breathing, walking example of that simply being untrue.
I’m still aiming to build a bigger team of women, and our firm is committed to doing that. We actively look for women who are seeking out those opportunities. The goal is to identify female candidates on paper who have achieved a lot and shouldn’t be required to give that up because they decided they want to have kids.
Lawbook: This seems to fall in line with something an in-house lawyer recently told me when it comes to intentionally hiring working moms: “If you want something done, give it to a busy woman because she’ll get it done.”
Simpson: Exactly. As a mom of four I can tell you efficiency forced its way into my life, whether I like it or not. It is a survival tool. But it is one I really enjoy mastering. That efficiency, that will to work and get things done in a very finite amount of time is a hallmark of both my and Margaret’s practices and what we’ve been known for among our colleagues at RM. You can give me an assignment and I’m going to turn it around, it will be really well done and I will get it to you in a pretty quick amount of time because I don’t have a choice.
Margaret and I come in while our kids are in school. I’ve been operating on the truncated hours of preschool. I drop my son off at 9 a.m. and I have to be out of the office in time to pick him up by 2. I pack my lunch every day when I pack my kids’ lunches. I’m more than happy to sit at my desk with my lunch in a quiet room before I come back to the crazy that is a household of four young children.
Lawbook: Why do you think this type of hiring model for women is not as prevalent at larger law firms?
Simpson: I was in Big Law for only about 1.5 years. I was never a partner or in a management position to give you a nuts and bolts answer to that. But I think that from a very uninformed perspective — with that disclaimer in mind — they have more bodies and they have more resources, so where’s the need to create more flexibility on their end? Attrition is built into big firm business models. When they lose a body, it’s very different from when we lose a body. The impact is different. The ability to absorb that impact is different, so there are hiring differences.
When we decide to hire someone, it’s usually a months-long process of getting to know them. I learned really early on in my career during my judicial clerkship that when you go to an office with five people in it, it runs a lot better when people get along, trust each other to do quality work and rely on each other. Those kinds of relationships really require a different hiring approach than when you have 300 bodies under the same roof and have 500 more bodies that would jump at the chance to be able to take one of those spots if someone leaves. It’s not necessarily a bad thing; it’s just the reality of running a large business versus small one.
Lawbook: When you look at your firm’s new hiring model, how do you think it promotes diversity, equity and inclusion in the law?
Simpson: I think we can look at the industry as a whole and realize it is still a boys club. I don’t think anyone can walk into a major law firm in Dallas and say, “Oh my gosh there are more women here than men.” What I think it allows us to do is not just increase the number of females you see on any given day when you walk into our office, but as we continue to hire younger lawyers, we will retain more women without breaks like the one Margaret took because she didn’t realize there is a way to continue practicing. When she left her practice, it was not a well-known alternative to work in Big Law even on a part-time basis. I think this hiring model will keep someone engaged who can’t do what Margaret and I did. I think it keeps someone in their practice longer than they otherwise would have stayed and under terms that keep them loving what they do.
That’s the other aspect of it. When we are the sex expected to do it all — that is unsustainable. And this model is about sustainability. This model is about women being able to sustain a skillset that they worked so hard to develop while also not neglecting other parts of life.
Lawbook: What’s your advice to other women out there who want a similar part-time structure to what you have?
Simpson: A lot of these programs exist at different firms of different sizes and of different calibers. I think the biggest challenge for women is understanding that it is crucial for you to understand the arrangement you want and for you to communicate that very openly, transparently and directly with the employers you want to work for.
My mentor, Pat Heard, who was my legal research and writing professor in law school, always told me, “You’re never going to get what you don’t ask for.” When I went into my first interview at Reese Marketos, I just remember having her voice in the back of my head, and I’ve never been more candid in an interview than I was with Joel Reese and Pete Marketos. I walked in as this bouncy little 27-year-old blonde who was seven months pregnant and I was like, “I don’t want to do doc review. I don’t want to do discovery. I want to be writing, and when I say writing, I mean important writing. I want to be working on dispositive motions. I want to ultimately transform my career into one that focuses on appeals, and I want to be the one doing the briefing. That’s the quality of work that I want if it means I’m taking away time from my family, and if that doesn’t work for you, that’s fine. I was going to stay home anyway. This is icing on the cake for me.” And they were like, “OK, we can make that work.”
That said, those of us at the firm who have this arrangement were all very intentional about how we set ourselves up to be able to be valued enough before expecting that kind of arrangement to be workable. Your first step always has to be achieving excellence in what you take on. While you’re in the phase of your life that you have time to put your nose to the grindstone, do it. Say yes to everything, and the things that you say yes to, do them very, very well. The arrangement I have and want to be able to extend to other women requires trust, and the best way to build trust is by showing that you are capable. So build your résumé, do everything you can to show people you are good at what you do, and then don’t be afraid to ask for what you need. Nobody’s going to make a situation work for you if they don’t know what you need.
Talk to women in the community, do your research on these firms, work with recruiters, and be creative in thinking outside the box of where you want to work. Is it the U.S. attorney’s office, which, by the way, posts part-time positions in their appellate section? Is it a boutique law firm, is it Big Law? Then start matching these types of firms and those types of work environments with the criteria you have for yourself.
If you’re not in an arrangement that works for you, you’re not going to be happy, and if you’re not going to be happy, you’re working, not building a career. And there’s a difference.
Lawbook: What would you like the legal profession to look like for women by the time you retire?
Simpson: By the time I retire, I would like my arrangement to be a standardized opportunity — not one that women have to assert for themselves. That this is something you can naturally move into without having to necessarily advocate for it. My hope is that it will not have to take you and I having a conversation and you having to write an article for women to understand that this exists, it is real, and they can have it — that it’s available in a much more widespread and visible way.