Pivotal Paths

Law was never part of Fareshteh Hamidi’s plan. An aspiring physician assistant, Hamidi had just been rejected from PA school two years running.

“Instead of potentially getting my heart broken a third time, I looked for other avenues to work in health care tangentially. … Law school fell into my lap,” says Hamidi, a litigation associate with Steptoe & Johnson in Oklahoma City.

Morgan Lawson, a first-generation college student, decided as a teenager that she was going to law school.

“In high school, I was taken under the wing of a lawyer in Houston where I grew up,” says the litigation associate with Oklahoma City’s Hall Estill. “I knew I wanted to follow in those footsteps.”

L. Paul Hood’s mom nudged him toward law for years to no avail. Attending law school had been a personal dream for the paralegal and single mother of two, but always out of reach.

After two years in college athletics, Hood craved more stability and decided: “I should just go to law school and finally listen to my mother.”

Despite their different paths, these three, all with less than six years on the job, represent a new wave of Oklahoma attorneys. We asked them to share the unique lessons, challenges and perspectives their generation brings to the industry.

As students and new attorneys during the COVID-19 pandemic, they’ve had to perfect the art of the pivot.
Hood, a business litigator with Pray Walker in Tulsa since 2024, says the pandemic forced him off campus and into law firms, gaining real-world experience faster. “I got a nice jump-start doing that,” he says. It had already been a year and a half of remote learning for Hood when Hurricane Ida—the most destructive storm to hit Louisiana since Katrina—delayed his return to Loyola University New Orleans another two months.

Despite the time apart, Hood says the people were the highlight of his time in law school. “Even though I live in Oklahoma, and all my friends are in Louisiana, we talk pretty much every day in a group text.”
Hamidi’s introduction to law school was a six-week summer contracts course alongside mostly nontraditional students like herself.

“My friends in law school weren’t told from a young age they were destined to be lawyers because they like to argue or because it’s a good financial move,” she says. “They came because they saw gaps in their industries that they felt they could address with the law.”

Lawson’s experience in moot court competitions and as president of the Board of Advocates at the University of Oklahoma College of Law first sparked her interest in litigation. She solidified it with a transition into her current practice, focusing on commercial litigation areas, including oil and gas. “The idea of transactional work, where I was more behind the scenes, was not for me,” she adds. “I wanted to be more hands on. The litigation field just fit my personality better.”

The young attorneys are navigating another colossal shift with the growing influence of artificial intelligence. They don’t fear AI replacing lawyers, but rather enhancing their work to better serve their clients and save them money.

“I can bring a level of efficiency with AI foundations that more senior attorneys might not have,” Lawson says.

Hamidi and Hood also use AI to fast-track research and save time and money for their clients. “You have to use it as a way to make work more efficient, as opposed to having it do your work for you,” Hamidi says, adding that her firm is constantly adjusting its policies regarding AI as we learn more about its limitations.

Hood sees AI presenting an opportunity to focus on parts of law only a human can provide. Much of his casework includes “business divorces,” when co-owners dissolve their partnership. “It can get really emotional. AI won’t be able to help somebody through that,” he says.
“I’m focused on giving support to the client,” he adds. “The lawyers that focus on that, and also lean into AI, will survive.”

Some have been looking into the future and predicting doom, but Hood says, “I don’t think that’s the case. We still bring the human aspect, and that’s what’s important. It’s why people pay lawyers.”

The rapidly changing landscape does provide a challenge, Lawson says. “Whether you’re for it or against, on the federal level a lot of laws are changing or in limbo, so it’s hard to have a cohesive message because we’re not sure where things are going to be in three or four years.”

In many aspects, though, change is for the better. “What I’m already seeing is longer careers for women. Those before me felt they had to keep up, and they hustled to pave the way, but they got burnt out. The average career span for a woman lawyer was six years when I was in law school,” Hamidi says. “But now that I’m in my sixth year, I don’t see myself stopping anytime soon.”