© 2013 The Texas Lawbook.
By Patricia Baldwin
Lifestyle Writer for The Texas Lawbook
Laura Jane Durfee owes a lot to horses – her education, her marriage, her success in rodeo barrel racing, her drive as an attorney – but that’s getting ahead of the story about this associate in the Dallas office of Jones Day.
And while she outgrew the pony, Durfee admits that some things haven’t changed. “My free time is spent at the barn,” she says. This barn is located on the property she and her husband, Jeff, call home in Scurry, southeast of Dallas.
As a youth, her achievements in junior rodeo and on the high school rodeo team earned her a rodeo scholarship to Vernon College in Vernon, Texas.
Durfee helped secure the junior college’s place in National Intercollegiate Rodeo history. In 2003, the men’s and the women’s rodeo teams each won a national team championship, distinguishing Vernon as the first two-year school to accomplish the feat in tough competition. How tough? Durfee claimed ninth place with a time of 60.29 seconds on four barrel runs; the champion’s time was 59.38.
While barrel racing remains Durfee’s passion, women’s collegiate rodeo competition includes the three timed events of barrel racing, breakaway roping and goat tying. Barrel racing involves the rider and horse completing a clover-leaf pattern around pre-set barrels. Breakaway roping is a variation of calf roping, where the calf is roped but not thrown and tied. Goat tying requires the rider to race across the rodeo arena on horseback to where a goat is staked, dismount the horse and tie three of the goat’s legs together with a rope called a “string.”
As Durfee’s story continues, chapters chronicle a rodeo scholarship to Texas Tech University in Lubbock, where she again made the national finals and also met her husband-to-be who was on the men’s rodeo team. At Tech, she majored in journalism and wanted to work in print. However, she also started to think about law school.
Law school prevailed. The choice prompted other decisions.
“At the time, I had two horses who were at their peak,” Durfee recalls. Selling the horses meant losing her scholarship but also gaining the funds to finance her final year of college, as well as law school, at Indiana University.
The break from barrel racing, however, only lasted until Durfee could graduate from law school (magna cum laude) and return to Texas for a clerkship with Judge John D. Rainey of the U.S. District Court, Southern District of Texas, in Victoria.
She joined Jones Day in 2010, and she, her husband and their horses settled in Scurry. He owns a saddle business (specializing in calf-roping saddles) and runs the couple’s horse-breeding operation, which currently includes nine quarter horses. Their goal: Raise “the one” – that horse with the unique combination of genetics, training, the ability to run and the desire to win barrel racing events.
Jeff Durfee notes, “What most people don’t realize is that barrel racing, or at least at the level Laura Jane is striving for, is not just a hobby. It is a way of life, a full-time job, and a life-long commitment.”
In order for his wife to continue to compete, he loads the horses in the trailer and meets her at the barrel race. “She drives straight from work and changes out of her suit and into her boots and jeans in the living quarters of our horse trailer. Sometimes, we don’t get home until eleven or twelve – and this is during the week. But I promise, she will be right back there at the next one, doing the same thing all over again, no matter what. She amazes me every single day, and I am so thankful to share our lives together.”
The couple agrees that North Texas has made their balancing act easier.
He says, “Dallas is a wonderful city and big enough to support global firms like Jones Day. Yet, with a moderate commute, we can still live in the country with our horse operation,” he says. “There are tons of barrel races and rodeos close by. That is what we love about Texas. Without that, Laura Jane would most certainly have to choose between her big city career and her country life.”
The Jones Day associate, however, has found the firm supportive, and she is equally devoted to representing clients in complex commercial litigation.
Shawn Cleveland, a partner at Jones Day, comments, “Laura Jane is a great lawyer, and it’s interesting how many of the best lawyers you run across are renaissance people like her, with a lot of different interests. I think that’s in part, because to be a good lawyer, you need some of that creativity and intellectual curiosity and a different perspective than one that comes from thinking about legal issues all day.”
Of course, the law isn’t entirely forgotten at the ranch. Some of the horses provide humorous reminders, such as All Deliberate Speed, a.k.a. “Scotus,” named in honor, of course, of the Supreme Court of the United States.
Rodeo photo courtesy of PixelWorx, Canyon, Texas.
Do you have a special hobby – or other lifestyle interest – to share? Please email patricia.baldwin@texaslawbook.net.
© 2013 The Texas Lawbook. Content of The Texas Lawbook is controlled and protected by specific licensing agreements with our subscribers and under federal copyright laws. Any distribution of this content without the consent of The Texas Lawbook is prohibited.