An Unconventional Defense

Drones buzzed overhead as law enforcement broke through the gate of a suspected gang leader’s home—a key figure in a double homicide investigation. Lance Kennedy, then a Texas prosecutor, watched nearby.

“It was like Al Capone. We couldn’t get the guy on capital murder because we didn’t have the weapon, but we got him on engaging in organized criminal activity,” Kennedy says, noting that he secured a bond of more than $1 million, the highest the judge had set at the time.

Years later, Kennedy would draw on that prosecutorial experience, but from the other side of the courtroom: In 2022, he launched his criminal defense firm, first in New Braunfels and then in Austin, leaning heavily into speed and technology. 

Kennedy got his J.D. from Southern Methodist University in 2013, and one year later earned a master’s in international relations from Harvard. He spent the next decade as a judge advocate in the Army Reserve, rising to the rank of major and working assignments that included helping deploying soldiers with estate planning, advising special warfare and intelligence units, and supporting national security operations during domestic emergencies and terrorist attacks. 

About a year into his military service, Kennedy also began a civilian career as a prosecutor in Comal County handling misdemeanor cases. “That’s where I cut my teeth,” he says.

He also worked with the Gregg County District Attorney’s Office in East Texas, and then the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Texas, first as a special assistant and then as an assistant U.S. attorney. The role ultimately took him to Alpine, part of a jurisdiction covering a 500-mile stretch of the southern border. 

“Literally the middle of nowhere,” he says. “Three hours to an airport and 70 miles to a Walmart—like an island in the desert.”

The cases reflected the remote landscape. Kennedy prosecuted a seizure of 13,000 pounds of marijuana hauled in horse trailers. In another case, he helped dismantle a network that moved hundreds of people from South America across the U.S. border each month through a system of transporters and safe houses. “I felt a lot of purpose, and felt we were doing some things that most people don’t know are going on right under their noses,” he says. 

Kennedy additionally secured two life sentences for a man who sexually abused a minor at Big Bend National Park. The conviction was upheld on appeal, and the Supreme Court declined to review. “You don’t see sex cases like that very often at the federal level,” Kennedy says.

By the time he left the U.S. attorney’s office, Kennedy was ready for something different. “I’ve always been entrepreneurial and creative, but it’s very structured when you work for the government,” he says. “There’s a lot of policy, a lot of rules. I liked that, but I wanted to build my own system to do things to my fullest extent.”

In his first year in private practice, he brought in seven figures in revenue, all from retained work. “The conventional advice is: You’ve got to get on the wheels, take appointed cases, and pay your dues. But I didn’t take that approach,” he says.

Kennedy mainly handles complex criminal defense matters, including federal cases, white-collar work, and serious felonies—with an emphasis on expanding his presence along the I-35 corridor between Dallas and San Antonio. He favors “blitzscaling,” prioritizing rapid growth to outpace other attorneys, even if that means temporarily sacrificing some efficiency. 

“It’s grow or die, so I have to constantly think how we are going to scale, grow, expand our footprint,” he says. “If you think things are level, they’re really slowly declining.”

A seventh-generation Texan, Kennedy was born in Texarkana and raised in Dallas, where his father was a televangelist and megachurch pastor. Growing up around church operations and doing voiceover work for Radio Disney as a child, Kennedy developed an awareness of the marketing and planning that goes into building something at scale. “You start to see how everything is put together,” he says.   

A self-described early adopter of technology, Kennedy has integrated artificial intelligence across much of his practice, using it to draft motions, analyze research, and manage client communications. The tools aren’t perfect, he says, but they have the potential to significantly expand his capacity. 

Having worked as a prosecutor, Kennedy is well aware of the resource imbalance that often exists, with government attorneys having access to investigators, agents, and institutional support that defense attorneys usually lack. He says AI and other technologies can help close that gap, allowing smaller legal teams to produce the kind of output that once required far more resources. 

“It levels the playing field. And it’s only going to get better.”