As an attorney, Amber Harden (’07) practices real estate law, estate planning, and probate law. As the co-owner of a quickly growing law firm, Harden said she constantly draws on the skills she learned during her time at the Tombras School of Advertising and Public Relations as a public relations major.
Her dual background in communication and law helped push Harden Law Firm into the number four spot on the Rocky Top Business Awards from the University of Tennessee Alumni Association. She also claimed the highest-ranking spot in the awards—which recognize the fastest-growing businesses owned or ran by alumni—for a woman-owned business.
“I think having a communications degree is a huge plus in the business world, especially if you’re going to be running it. Every day you have to deal with people and random issues that come up, you’re thrown a lot of things every day. The research, analyzing, logical approach that you learn in communications is extremely useful across the board,” Harden explained. “While it’s not advertising or PR, it’s still useful because you’re trying to get what you say across to people and a lot of people today seem to have trouble doing that.”
While becoming a lawyer hadn’t been her initial plan, the economic recession that coincided with her graduating from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, pushed Harden to explore other opportunities. In fact, it was Professor Michael Palenchar from the Tombras School who had once said in class that people with PR degrees often did well in law because both fields require good research skills.
“He was a great professor, I really enjoyed his classes, and I felt like I learned a lot. I always had that in the back of my head, ‘Oh I could do law school.’ He planted that seed for me and that’s why I had that idea to go this direction in the first place. He had a positive impact there,” she said.
After finishing law school, she wanted to be an immigration lawyer, but the first job she landed was with a firm that provided an array of services. It was there that Harden began managing the real estate, estate planning, and probate portion of the firm’s work, which turned out to be an area of the law she genuinely enjoyed practicing.
After about seven years of working there, Harden found out she and her husband—who she met in law school—were expecting triplets. She took a year off and in that time the couple decided their work-life-balance would be easier to manage if they started their own law firm together.
“We know a lot of lawyers who are married and have practices together; if you’re married, you might as well start a business together,” she said, noting that they manage the firm together, but their law work tends to be separate enough that they’re not stepping on each other’s toes all the time.
Though the Hardens started their firm to have more control over their time, they were pleasantly surprised when it quickly grew from just the two of them working out of a basement office to a full office with four employees. Harden said she initially used her PR chops to conduct marketing for the firm, but she’s since outsourced the job due to Harden Law Firm’s growth.
Nonetheless, her grasp of advertising, marketing, and PR continues to inform the way she communicates with people and often can give her the upper hand. While many people think of lawyers in the courtroom, Harden said most of her work is either communicating with people or doing legal writing—both of which she feels more than comfortable doing after attending CCI.
“I use storytelling a lot in the writing; even though legal writing is heavily based in the law and applying the issues and the facts in the case, there is an artistic style to it and you have to present your best case or scenario, and I think my writing is better than 90 percent of the attorneys I encounter,” she explained. “I have a better understanding to write an appeal to people, and even though I have to keep it technical, there is space to add in more of that persuasive aspect that law school doesn’t teach you. They tell you to be persuasive, but they don’t teach you how to do that.”
While law school isn’t the path for everyone, Harden is grateful that it was the right one for her and that her education at UT prepared her well for it. The real lesson, she said, is that recent graduates shouldn’t get discouraged by a poor job market or other obstacles.
“I firmly believe if you move towards your goal even in baby steps, that you’ll get there, but the road may look different than you think,” she said. “When you’re young, you think 10 years is so long, but looking back, those years flew by. Looking back, I really accomplished a lot and set myself up for the type of life I want. So, keep moving forward, don’t get discouraged.”