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Patricia Cruz had a hard day the day before her interview with Modern Counsel. The assistant vice president and senior legal counsel, who has been in-house with telecom company AT&T since 2014, said it was just one of those days. We all have them. When she got home, she tended to some unopened mail.
She found impact stories from one of the organizations that AT&T (and Cruz personally) has partnered with over the years. These were stories of individuals whose lives were fundamentally improved by pro bono efforts made, in part, by AT&T lawyers, outside counsel partners, or Cruz’s support itself. The lawyer’s day was suddenly better.
“There is such a strong culture of service at AT&T organization-wide, but there is something special in the legal department specifically,” Cruz explains. “Whether it’s drop-in legal clinics or AT&T’s partnership with the Equal Justice Initiative, our general counsel, David McAtee, has helped drive such amazing work that positively impacts communities lacking access to justice.”
Service is a critical part of Cruz’s own practice. Between college and law school, Cruz served as a full-time volunteer in Puerto Rico. She taught English and math to adults studying for the GED in the mornings and acted as a Girl Scout troop leader in the afternoons.
At firm Jones Day, Cruz sought out pro bono work, including a case she considers her proudest professional accomplishment. The new lawyer took on an asylum case for a young man from Guatemala; a lengthy process, but one that eventually resulted in the refugee being granted asylum. Cruz still keeps tabs on her former client, who now leads a happy life as a real estate agent.
“It was a tortuous journey up and down through the immigration courts,” Cruz remembers. “But eventually, that persistence paid off. That’s something I learned during that case. Excellent oral and written advocacy is so important, but so is sheer persistence. We drowned the Board of Immigration Appeals with an enormous evidentiary record and eventually won.”
At AT&T, Cruz has found an organization with a deep commitment to similar efforts. A Texas Lawbook feature details the efforts of General Counsel David McAtee and a whole host of AT&T lawyers.
“After Bryan Stevenson, executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative, gave an inspirational presentation at one of our legal conferences, our general counsel announced he was going to take on some pro bono work on behalf of EJI. David asked if anyone wanted to join him,” Cruz recalls. “There was a massive response, and a bunch of AT&T lawyers wound up traveling to Montgomery to learn about the work that EJI does.”
Lawyers broke up into different teams, focusing on prison conditions and death penalty cases. Cruz was a critical member of the team that partnered with outside counsel firm Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton to seek justice for Joseph Wood. He was an inmate at Alabama’s St. Clair Correctional Facility who was strangled to death. After a long battle, the team was able to secure a settlement for Joseph Wood’s family. Cruz says the work she did with the Equal Justice Initiative made her a better in-house professional.
“Bryan Stevenson talks a lot about how you can’t understand a problem if you aren’t close to it—you need to get ‘proximate.’ You need to speak with people directly and work to truly understand where they’re coming from. Similarly, in-house counsel can’t give high-quality legal advice if we don’t have an intimate understanding of the problems our business partners are facing. And I think pro bono experiences like these have made us better legal partners to the business.”
Cruz says she believes the AT&T legal team has a reputation for not hindering business progress, but instead, finding ways to mitigate risk while advancing the broader business objectives. The AVP says that partnership routinely comes down to being willing to listen first and offer advice second.
“Listening is how you build trust,” the lawyer says. “That’s how you build a relationship. And that’s how you help people achieve their objectives. You have to understand their problem, and you’re not going to if you immediately start trying to solve something you may not really understand.”
It’s no surprise that Cruz tends to view her practice through servant-based leadership lens. The lawyer’s decades of service and deep Catholic faith have helped frame that perspective, even as it’s evolved over the years.
“There is such a strong culture of service at AT&T organization-wide, but there is something special in the legal department specifically.”
Patricia Cruz
“I realize not all organizations may have a culture of pro bono service like AT&T, but I assure you, there are so many great organizations that could benefit from financial help,” Cruz says. “As I’ve advanced in my career, I’m working to ramp up my financial contributions because I don’t always have the bandwidth to contribute my time. I hope lawyers remember there are so many wonderful nonprofits doing incredible work that need financial support in addition to direct service.”
Part of Cruz’s lack of time to take on new pro bono cases stems from the fact that the longtime Scouting volunteer is now the mother of very busy Scouts. She’s hoping to teach her own children about the value of service, and how one person’s commitment can change the lives of so many others.
“From the beginning of an engagement through its resolution, Patrica is the consummate professional. She sees around every corner, strategizes for success, and achieves fantastic results. She is a lawyer’s lawyer, and a pleasure to work with.”
–George S. LeMieux, Former U.S. Senator and Chairman of the Board of Directors
