© 2012 The Texas Lawbook.
By Mark Curriden
Senior Writer for The Texas Lawbook
President Obama and Mitt Romney love to regal followers with tales of hardship and overcoming huge obstacles before their eventual success.
But their stories don’t come close to matching Suzanne DuBose’s life experiences.
In 1994, DuBose was a single mom of a newborn daughter. She had no job, no money and no education. She struggled to buy diapers and put food on the table. She had to sleep in her car because she couldn’t afford a motel room. She had to search her car for pennies to pay a tollbooth operator.
Two years later, while working full-time as a paralegal and handling all the duties of a solo parent, DuBose went to college full-time and eventually law school.
Today, DuBose has a corner office in a downtown Houston skyscraper, where she is a new shareholder at Godwin Ronquillo.
The 2004 graduate of Texas Tech Law School is a successful business litigator whose diverse practice ranges from representing national and regional financial institutions to individual and corporate clients in a wide variety of business disputes. She even tackles family law cases every once in a while.
“Being a single mother has impacted how I am as a lawyer because it taught me the art of juggling,” says DuBose. “In order to be a truly effective trial lawyer, you have to have the ability to handle a multitude of cases and a multitude of clients and their needs simultaneously and, more importantly, you have to learn to do it on very little sleep.
“Secondly, raising Lexi on my own has taught me compassion and empathy. Having those qualities has certainly made a difference in the way I practice law,” she says. “While I may have finally made it to the corner office at one of the most renowned and respected law firms in Texas, it certainly hasn’t always been ‘corner offices’ on the ‘top floor’ for me.”
Prior to joining Godwin, DuBose was a partner at Shannon, Gracey, Ratliff & Miller in Houston. She also was an associate at Hirsch & Westheimer.
“Suzanne is an outstanding litigator with an impressive background as lead counsel in a number of diverse cases,” says Donald E. Godwin, founder and chairman of Godwin Ronquillo. “We are exceptionally pleased to have an attorney with her experience joining our team in Houston.”
Godwin Ronquillo is a 70-lawyer litigation firm with offices in Dallas, Houston and Plano.
“My struggles taught me to be compassionate and empathize with my clients when they are presented with a legal or personal issue, whether it is a small business owner faced with defending a frivolous lawsuit where the attorney’s fees and costs alone could drive the company into bankruptcy or a property owner who has to refinance his property in order to rebuild it because his insurance carrier refused to timely pay a valid claim for damage to the property,” she says.
While a significant portion of DuBose’s practice focuses on business litigation, she enjoys handling some smaller, more personal matters for people, too.
For example, she currently represents a parent whose 26-year-old son died while in the custody of Fort Bend County authorities in December 2010. The young man was allegedly tasered several times and reportedly administered medication involuntarily. Only 72 hours later, while still in police custody, the young man was pronounced dead.
“The interesting legal conundrum we face is the ability to obtain the records related to the custody of the deceased and the treatment provided to him, or lack thereof, due to an often cited exception to the Open Records Act/Texas Public Information Act,” says DuBose. “While a case is under investigation, the government doesn’t have to turn over their records, videotapes, and any other evidence they have in their possession, custody or control as long as they allege the incident is still ‘under investigation.’
“The problem is that the alleged investigation they are conducting may magically last longer than the timeframe which the parents have to file a lawsuit due to the statute of limitations,” she says.
DuBose says being a single mom also taught her basic skills and senses that she employs in the courtroom regularly.
“There is no better way to learn how to deal with an agitated exhausted judge or obstreperous and dilatory opposing counsel,” DeBose continues, “then by learning how to handle a four year old yelling at the top of her lungs smack dab in the middle of a grocery store because you won’t buy her a piece of candy and you don’t have the luxury of using the infamous phrase ‘ooohhh you are in trouble now, I’m telling your father when we get home!’
© 2012 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.