Jamila Mensah ’06 always imagined she’d become a writer and academic, but fate had other plans. During her senior year at Rice University, she visited graduate schools planning to get a doctorate in African American studies. But the programs didn’t feel like the right fit. Mensah applied anyway, and was secretly relieved not to get in. Years later, her husband suggested she consider the law. After all, Mensah enjoyed reading, writing, and arriving at answers through extensive research.
It was a wise recommendation. Now, nearly two decades, three big law firms, and two children later, Mensah has skyrocketed to the top of her field as an employment law attorney. She’s a partner in Norton Rose Fulbright’s Houston office where she’s worked since 2014. Her practice spans all areas of employment law, including discrimination, retaliation, and wage and hour issues.
Mensah represents major corporations in federal and state court and before administrative bodies like the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Department of Labor, and Occupational Health and Safety Administration. She conducts internal investigations for clients on sensitive employment-related matters and counsels and trains employers.
Mensah’s work has earned her multiple awards, including a spot in the 2024 Lawdragon 500 Leading Corporate Employment Lawyers guide—which honors the top advisors on workforce issues including wage and hour, discrimination, and other claims—plus the 2022 Trailblazer of the Year Award given by the Texas Minority Counsel Program. She’s also co-chair of her firm’s Opportunities for Success Council.
We recently caught up with the alumna, who stays closely connected to Texas Law. She has a role on the Texas Law Houston Steering Committee and is close friends with five fellow Texas Law graduates who call themselves “the Legal Divas.”
You took a meandering path to the law. How did you end up in employment law?
When I didn’t get into grad school, I took an internship at a local magazine, Houston Style, then worked in the admissions office at Rice University, where I went to undergrad. Around then I said to my husband, “I feel like I should be doing something else, but I’m not sure what.” After he suggested law, as I traveled and recruited for Rice I started visiting law schools. My decision-making process was: I find law interesting, it can be very lucrative, and it felt academic. I was thinking more about what it meant to go to law school than to be an attorney. I taught myself the LSAT material—I didn’t want to tell anyone I was doing this in case it didn’t work out. I knew if I got into UT, I was going there. Now, I tell people all the time not to worry you won’t be good at law if you haven’t dreamt about it your whole life. People don’t necessarily dream about being an investment banker their whole life, and there are plenty of amazing investment bankers. Taking some of the mystique out of law is what I think gets more people to go to law school.
Once you arrived at Texas Law, how did you choose a specialty?
When I started at UT, I didn’t know any lawyers. The first ones I met were through law school. After my first semester, I knew contracts and transactional law was not something I wanted to do—my brain didn’t work that way. I wanted to be a litigator, but not a rush-down-to-the-courthouse-fighting-all-the-time litigator. With my first summer job, I got to sit in on mediations. What drew me to employment law were the issues at play—discrimination, people talking past each other and their true intentions not being clear. I felt like I knew exactly what to do in those situations. I could see both sides. Back at law school, I took an employment discrimination class. Also, my Federal Courts course gave me the sophistication required to practice in federal court. My second summer position, we were supposed to rotate groups. But I went to the head of the employment team and said, “For my 12 weeks I want to do just employment.” He said, “Absolutely, we were hoping you’d say that.”
At Texas Law, you also found lifelong friendships. Tell us about the Legal Divas.
Texas Law grads Laura Balza Mensah ’06, Nathelie Daniels Ashby ’06, Amber Rogers ’06, Genesis Draper ’06, and Jennifer Kinney Parnell ’06 are my five closest friends. We still have our group chat from over 20 years ago. It’s called the Legal Divas—that’s how we refer to each other to this day, and other people refer to us that way too. We’re all still in Texas. Laura is assistant dean for admissions at the University of Houston Law Center and she’s my sister-in-law now, Nathelie is general counsel for the nonprofit Common Future, Amber is a partner at Hunton Andrews Kurth LLP in Dallas, Genesis is a judge, and Jennifer is head of Global Litigation and Commercial Law at Brinks Inc. in Dallas. The people and the collegial nature of Texas Law definitely set my expectations for what I ended up looking for in a career and a firm.
You’ve said your personality is well suited to employment law. How so?
My natural state of being is pretty chill. Because of sensitivities around employment issues, like sexual harassment for example, you can’t just come in like a bull in a china shop. You have to have a good emotional sense about you. I’m able to calmly figure out what’s going on very quickly, then advise or fight.
What type of work are you doing these days? What kinds of cases do you see?
I see the worst of executives misbehaving, including sexual harassment and discrimination. No two cases are the same. It never ceases to amaze me what people decide to do at work. My job is also to advise employers when not to fight, and I help companies with training to ensure whatever issue they experienced doesn’t happen again. Sometimes I hear from people, “How do you sleep at night because you’re defending these big companies?” Setting aside that everybody is entitled to a defense, I will tell employers if they need to fire a manager, if that’s the case. I really like getting involved in industries I haven’t been involved in before. I do some luxury goods, and there are a lot of sensitivities there. They place a high premium on confidentiality given the clientele and the nature of their business, and they expect their lawyers to have extensive experience managing complex litigation, often at the executive level.
I’ve also been doing more investigations than litigation. It’s a mixed bag of issues related to discrimination and harassment as well as pay equity, whistleblower matters, and related topics. They’re designed to avoid litigation, and I feel my value-add with that type of work. It feels like a progression of my career.
That’s important. What’s been one of your most memorable cases?
I was doing a mediation in a case that involved discrimination claims. The other lawyer made an opening statement on behalf of her clients, then directed comments to me. She said, “We don’t understand how you as a diverse person yourself cannot see the things we see.” I had to, in the moment, decide I was going to do something different. I don’t normally do this, but I talked to the plaintiff. I said, “I’m not here to belittle your experiences or anything you think happened to you. My job is to advise my client on the law. I understand what it feels like to be treated unfairly, but that’s very different from whether my client has a legal obligation to right a wrong, and that’s what we’re here to figure out.” We ended up settling. The mediator afterwards said that reaction was how I got it settled. The experience showed me I can have empathy and still do this job.
What’s your best advice for today’s Texas Law students?
Stay open to what you want and don’t be worried if you don’t know what you want to do when you show up at law school. Don’t be afraid to ask questions. Don’t feel rushed into settling into what you do. And even when you decide, it’s just work—you can always change your mind.
For students interested in employment law, look for firms that offer employment law as a practice so you can see what it’s like over your summers. Know that human resources work or compliance are closely aligned with employment law and give you good background, too. I got a certification from the Society for Human Resource Management so I could be better at communicating with HR and understanding what drives HR departments.
How about outside of the law, how do you like to spend your time?
My husband and kids and I love professional wrestling, we’re super fans. We’ve been to WrestleMania twice and the Royal Rumble. Two years ago for my eldest’s birthday, she wanted to go to Las Vegas for the SummerSlam, so we did. It all started because my brother and I grew up watching wrestling religiously in the ’80s with our granny, and we just kept on. My husband and his brother did the same. I have a wrestling T-shirt collection. I just find wrestling wildly entertaining, and we can’t get enough of it.
So, is lawyering at all like professional wrestling?
Both lawyering and professional wrestling require a great mix of expertise, skill, charisma, and understanding of people. But for my unwillingness to jump off a top rope, I’d probably be a great wrestler!