The Lord Does Know the Desires of Your Heart: Perseverance Rewarded

(Written by Angel Zimmerman, a WIL Committee member and chair elect of the Kansas City chapter.)

I just wanted to personally thank all of the women who have gone before me.  Their efforts and examples are before me now, and will be during the next two weeks. This is a monumental time for me.  This week we close as Valentine, Zimmerman & Zimmerman, P.A. and open on July 1, 2013 as Zimmerman & Zimmerman, P.A.

After 22 years in the making, and much longer than that if you count childhood dreams, I will become the managing partner of my own firm, which includes 4 attorneys and 20 staff.

I started working collection law in college, transitioned to a larger firm in Topeka, helped an attorney break off from that firm, then managed the new firm for a decade, all while putting my husband and I through law school. 

I want to thank my sister who tirelessly worked with me on our new firm logo.  The logo story deserves to be told.  She developed the old firm logo when I became a partner – she said branding is important.  We included Mr. Valentine’s "V" checkmark which he puts on any page he has read. As part of the buyout, the branding is to remain with the firm, which was easily done by taking the "V" out. 

I recently spent a great deal of time, as the Kansas Women Attorney Association president, planning a conference. The theme for that  conference was “Well Behaved Women Seldom Make History”. After researching several things for that conference six months ago, I realized our new firm logo wasn’t telling the story it could.

I am proud to say that now the logo tells the whole story: our senior partner is selling to my husband,  then my husband is selling his majority interest to me. 
We will be a woman owned law firm!

The firm colors are changing to yellow and black, which have become signature colors in my life over the last couple of years.  If you look closely the bullet dots are hexagons to represent bees.  Members of the LDS church will know  the symbolism associated with the bee. It also represents President Gordon B. Hinckley’s Be’s and the Young Women values, upon which I still set my yearly New Year's resolutions.

But here is the real significance. During the movement to bring women the right to vote, the suffragettes came to Kansas and adopted the sunflower and the color yellow for their symbol.  Men in favor of women voting would wear yellow carnations and men opposed would wear red.  So with that background, I introduce to you our logo. It contains so much of what I hold dear, and of course, the scales of justice –there is hardly a day you won’t see me wearing them – I am so very proud to be an attorney.