WJA 2023: Heather Hatley

Partner

Franke Schultz & Mullen

Heather Hatley had a stint working in corporate America, but she found she liked the law better.

“I went to Catholic school my whole life pretty much,” said the 36-year-old Kansas Citian. “Social justice is a big tenet, standing up for what’s right and helping those who can’t help themselves.”

A graduate of St. Thomas University in Miami, where she was named to the Dean’s List and earned an award for top grades in trial advocacy, Hatley initially found herself in the arena of civil rights by working against police abuses in Florida. Later, she would go into insurance defense work. Since joining Franke Schultz and Mullen in 2014 as an associate, she has risen to partner and practices a wide array of law from personal injury litigation to premises liability actions.

She is appreciative that her current practice isn’t “pigeonholed”.

“What I like here is that I am constantly learning new things,” she said. “No two cases are really ever that similar. I have dabbled in a vast array of different types of cases.”

Named last year as an Up & Coming Law Firm Leader by Missouri Lawyers Media, Hatley currently serves on her firm’s Hiring Committee and Mentoring Program.

She thinks that there remains a fair amount of work to be done in promoting gender equity in the legal field.

“There may even be more women going to law school than men but as soon as you walk across that stage at graduation, the numbers drop dramatically,” Hatley said. “When you start talking about litigation specifically, which is what I do, the numbers are abysmal.”

She said the problem represents a “huge disparity” however, one recent matter may be a harbinger of some degree of improvement.

“You very rarely run into a female on the other side of the table,” she said. “I have one case right now which is the first case I’ve had in ten years of practice where all the attorneys are female.”