New Law Firm Will Just Have to Mentor Itself

The business was started by four black women who won’t discriminate in helping clients.

By Kevin Turner
Jacksonville.com

The partners in the new Jacksonville law firm Dorrell, Gale, Middleton & Wright say they want prospective clients to know that in addition to being African-American women who are parents of young children, they’re also qualified to handle virtually any case.

In an age when some attorneys specialize in narrow areas such as divorce or foreclosure, the partners of the new firm, which opened in January, say they want to be seen as a one-stop legal shop for anyone in Jacksonville – regardless of their race, sex, age or income.

“We are a full-service law firm. Between the four of us, we run the gamut,” said Dana Dorrell, a former Jacksonville Jaguars Roar cheerleader.

Dana Dorrell (from left), Angela Mathews Gale, LaFonda Gipson-Middleton and Regina Wright have formed a law firm they hope will help clients in search of more personalized service. But they’re parents of young children as well, and plan to lean on each other for support. They tried to seek similarly focused law firms for advice, but there weren’t any. “We’re the first of this size in the region,” Mathews Gale says.

LaFonda Gipson-Middleton, Angela Mathews Gale, Regina Wright and Dorrell come from different private practices and can handle civil cases ranging from personal injury to family law.

“We don’t want to restrict ourselves,” Mathews Gale said.

Duval County Judge Pauline Drake recommended they give the partnership a try to help further the visibility of successful African-American women in Jacksonville.

“It was my desire to put together a full-service firm of African-American women from all areas of law,” Drake said. “They put a lot of thought into it – in terms of their work to set it up. They really had the ambition and desire to do this.”

With Drake’s encouragement, the four discussed the idea in March 2009, they said. The idea took and they opened their new firm in The St. Joe Co. building.

“We met for lunch and found we still liked each other after a year,” Gipson-Middleton said.

All four say they’re aware that starting up a new law firm is a leap of faith. Gone is the pay security and services that come with working for a larger firm, they say. But they’ve brought clients with them, and they hope referrals and marketing bring in new clients.

Drake said the four are models for others.

“This sends a message to other African-American women that this is an achievable goal,” Drake said. “I think young women today need to see positive role models to give them something to aspire to. This is good news.”

In putting the new firm together, the foursome said they tried to seek out advice from other law firms partnered and run entirely by African-American women in the region, so they could anticipate pitfalls.

But they soon realized there weren’t any others.

“We’re the first of this size in the region,” Mathews Gale said.

Service comes first

Besides their experience, the four said they aim to give their clients a level of personal service and contact that larger firms aren’t able to match due to their high workloads. For example, Dorrell said she often got clients in her former practice who said they had come from large firms and were frustrated they couldn’t ever reach their attorney on the phone. Some said they didn’t even know who their attorney was.

All four partners are members of the Daniel Webster Perkins Bar Association, a Jacksonville attorney group dedicated to the African-American community; the Florida Bar; and the Jacksonville Bar. Wright, the first African-American woman to practice law in Columbia County, comes from Jacksonville’s Fourth Judicial Court as a division chief dealing with juvenile and repeat cases. Dorrell has taught business law at the University of Phoenix; Gipson-Middleton was given an award in 1999 for trying the most cases while she worked for the public defender’s office; and Mathews Gale, a former staff attorney with Jacksonville Legal Aid, is an expert in pro bono guardianship cases.

Parenthood in play

And all four women understand the demands of parenting. Gipson-Middleton has a 19-month-old boy; Mathews Gale has twin 3-year-olds; Dorrell has a 3-year-old boy; and Wright has a 5-year-old girl and 3-year-old boy. Working with others who understand the demands children can make on work time help keep the firm flexible because they can provide coverage for each other, they said.

But as far as the public’s perception is concerned, all four say they want the public to look beyond their commonalities and view them as attorneys.

“We want to ensure that is not the focus,” Mathews Gale said. “We don’t want to give that impression.”

The foursome will have an open house March 25 in their office in Suite 130 of the St. Joe building to introduce themselves to the community, said their publicist, Teresa Durand. It will also mark about a year since their fateful meeting, she said.

Dana is graduate of Alabama State University and Thomas M. Cooley Law School.