Finding the After

April Jones had a pretty simple wish list: Cat. Condo. Convertible. Not necessarily in that order.

“A condo with a fireplace,” she clarifies, then shrugs. “It was the ’90s. Condos were all the rage.”

Jones, all cheekbones, laughs deep and laughs often as she recounts the time, as a young attorney in San Francisco, she tried to hide her second pregnancy from the firm’s partners until she was ready to tell them. She’d confidently bound up the stairs to keep pace with them. “The whole time I’d be chatting, ‘Yes, I agree. That’s a great plan, sir.’ But the second I’d round that corner by myself, I’d be bent over at the waist, breathing so hard,” she says, gasping for effect. 

Those three Cs on her wishlist were a product of what she thought she wanted. “I was going to work for a big firm, make partner, and I was going to walk down the steps of a courthouse after trials saying to reporters, ‘No more questions, no more questions,’” she says. 

It felt like a certain kind of Hollywood power. Except Jones, a skinny, tough, smart-alecky kid who grew up in South Central LA, eventually decided to trade Southern California and all its flash for Colorado, where she built a different kind of dream—one that still includes a cat, who, today, takes a few bored laps before dramatically collapsing in a heap on Jones’ desk. There aren’t any posttrial flashing bulbs from the media—Jones is a family lawyer who handles mostly divorce and custody work—but, in founding Denver’s Jones Law Firm, she has tapped into a different kind of power by growing a firm her way. 

“One of the partners at that firm in San Francisco where I clerked painted her office walls pink,” Jones remembers. “I don’t even like pink, but there was something about this woman doing this, in this environment full of men, that really stunned me. I still remember seeing those walls for the first time and thinking, ‘What will my pink-wall moment be?’”

She found out this year. For its 25th birthday, Jones Law got some new walls. A lot of them. And she and her team painted them any color they wanted. “I bought the whole darn building,” Jones says. “Twenty-five years in and our thing is, ‘We’re just getting started.’”

Jones ended up in law school after considering more than a few other paths. “Should I consider communications? Oceanography? I let myself think of all the what-ifs,” Jones says. “I eventually got a letter from the registrar’s office saying, ‘Either declare a major or get out.’” She decided on law school because she had no indication she couldn’t. “It was always clear to me from my mother, who taught public school in Compton, that I could do whatever I wanted,’” Jones says. 

Not that it was easy. There is a decidedly unfunny undertone to Jones’ anecdote about keeping her pregnancy a secret. “At that firm, the partner pulled me aside and was like, ‘You know how when you’re Black they tell you you have to work harder than everyone else?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah …’ And he was like, ‘I’m going to need you to work twice as hard.’ And I’m like, ‘OK.’ So when I got pregnant again, I thought about that moment and was like, ‘There is no way I can tell this man I’m having another baby.’” She pauses. “Isn’t it interesting? Even in the retelling of that story, there’s no stress or emotion for me. It doesn’t even feel inappropriate. That’s just the way it was.”

She left that firm to go out on her own with another Black attorney who had also recently learned she was pregnant. “We both wanted to practice law and have kids, and we did the best we could,” says Jones, who, at one point, had three children under 4. 

The two built a general practice in San Jose. “A lot of personal injury was coming through the doors. When it rained, we’d be like, ‘Oh, there’s going to be a garden-variety fender-bender today.’ They’d pay the policy limit of $5,000, and we’d get $1,666, our third. I still remember the number,” says Jones. “It was crazy to put in the effort it takes to take whatever case comes in, research it, learn it, and show up over and over, and consider that a good time, while also trying to watch Sesame Street with your kids mid-afternoon. I’m really proud of that girl.”

Only four years into that practice, Jones and her husband moved to Colorado, and she began anew. This time, though, a marketing professional told her she’d make a more successful splash in her new market if she practiced one thing, and did it well. “I said, ‘OK, fine. I’ll do family law until the kids graduate, and after I’ll do whatever I want,” she says. Jones Law was born.

One of the first people she met in Colorado was former Denver County Court Senior Judge Gary Jackson. Jackson, who owned a boutique firm at the time, asked Jones to consider joining the Sam Cary Bar Association, a Black organization that Jackson co-founded in 1971. Jones served as its president twice, in 2005 and 2021. 

“It’s very unusual that somebody’s a president twice, but she recognized that there was a need,” Jackson says. “And when I say need, she became president the second time during COVID. We were at a period where people were disconnected. She got the bar association through that period because she is creative, she has her own unique personal energy, and she has the dynamics and relationships to bring people together.” 

Jackson says Jones has force. “Force means leadership. It means someone has great integrity. It is someone that people will follow,” he says. “Force is how she’s evolved from having a small law firm that was probably less than five people, to creating one of the largest family law firms in Colorado with the purchase of a new office building. Soon she’ll be a force behind 30,000 lawyers in Colorado, because she’s the incoming president of the Colorado Bar Association.” 

He also notes Jones’ leadership in other sectors—education, government, even professional sports, thanks to a relationship she’s developed with Colorado Rockies owners Charles and Richard Monfort. “April is like a sponge when it comes to absorbing information, and it doesn’t matter what sector the information pertains to, she can create her own way with that knowledge,” Jackson says. 

Initially, though, says Jones, family law was challenging because of her own experience. Her parents separated when Jones was very young, and her dad was “dead silent” unless it was her birthday. “There was no support from him. I’d seen him just a few times,” 

she says. “But then I’d have a client, like, here’s a man who has an indoor swimming pool—an indoor swimming pool!—and he is fighting for his daughters.” 

Jones began to see a pattern: brokenness. “I deal with people’s brokenness every single day,” she says. “I’m really passionate about helping people who find themselves in that gut punch because what can be a bigger gut punch than the things we lawyers divide in these cases: money, property and children? What’s left? It’s the ‘after’ that keeps me going: the way people come to me, and the way they leave. There are so many questions: ‘What’s going to happen to me? How will I have my kids? Where will I live? Who will pay the bills?’ It doesn’t matter if you have an indoor pool, loss is loss. But we offer hope. We move people to their next destination.”

She models her practice after her particularly pragmatic OB-GYN who, on Christmas Day, performed an emergency C-section after Jones’ first baby’s umbilical cord became wrapped around his neck. The way her doctor handled the chaos—calmly, efficiently and with grace—gave Jones the space to say, “Excuse me, can I please have a bikini cut?”

“That’s the feeling I want to give to clients: Yes, all of this is happening. Yes, all of this is scary. But let me get you to your next best life because you have one,” Jones says. “I have recreated that hospital room over and over again, and taught it to people: Care for the client, respect the client, and be authentic enough that people will believe and follow you.”

Jodie Lopez, firm administrator at Jones Law Firm, has worked with Jones since 2020. “Unfortunately, this was a very busy time for family law,” says Lopez. “People soon realized during COVID that they did not want to be alone together for 24 hours. We started to grow, and fast, but April was very thoughtful about it: ‘How do we grow intentionally and smartly, and how do we help as many people as possible through this horrible process they’re going through?”

The move to the new building, Lopez says, has put the firm on another level. “She literally bought and renovated a building, which is a new level of boss lady,” she says. “It’s a very calm, serene environment, which is what April wants for our clients, as they’re already going through enough chaos.”

Lopez says Jones taps into the brain trust of the entire firm. “Everyone is invited to the round table, and everyone’s knowledge and experience is used to the benefit of each client. Even paralegals will say, ‘Well, I’ve seen a motion work this way,’” she says. “April will never promise a client the world. She’s very solutions-driven: ‘I want to help you, but this is the way I can help you.’ She also knows the difference between lawyering and operating a business. That’s why part of our growth was to add more sales people: Let lawyers lawyer, and let salespeople sell.”

At one point, before the firm’s growth spurt, Jones flirted with the idea of moving to the bench. “I had a mind to try to get onto the state Supreme Court,” she says. Instead, she helped shape it during a six-year stint as a commissioner, appointed by Gov. Bill Ritter, charged with nominating justices to the court. Of the court’s current makeup, five of the justices were interviewed by Jones. “I am really proud of that,” she says.

She’s currently co-chair of the advisory committee for recommending candidates for the U.S. District Court in Colorado, appointed by Sens. Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper. “I’ve been involved with sending lawyers’ names to the president of the United States, and that means something,” she says.

She’s also proud of what she’s given to the Sam Cary Bar Association, although disheartened by the current state of diversity in the industry. “The backward swing of progress is really stunning,” she says. “But it’s like a literal swing: You can go back as far as you go, but then you must go forward. We’ve got good people in Colorado with good intentions, something I really saw during Black Lives Matter.”

In 2027, Jones will step into her next leadership role as president of the Colorado Bar Association. She knows what she wants to accomplish—measures to increase bar membership, address the rise of AI, and to find common ground among an increasingly partisan community. Above all, she wants to rise to the occasion. “I’ll be what the bar needs me to be in the moment it needs,” she says. “Considering how much is changing, politically speaking, I don’t know what landscape I’ll be stepping into.”

Until then, she’s focused on the next chapter of Jones Law, particularly firm culture. “We’re still growing, scaling, and set to reach out into different states,” Jones says. “But what’s really important is that I keep the culture of our company, because I always want this to be the place that I needed when I was raising young children. This is a place where you can have babies, you can climb mountains, you can jump out of airplanes. I’ve got bodybuilders, a roller derby captain. This is a place built to embrace the rest of who you are.”