Chattanooga attorney Angela Larkins is one of those rare people who makes a statement when she walks into a room. From her brisk walk, to her tight posture, to the way her clothes seem to be custom-made to fit her small frame, to the way she looks a person in the eye when speaking to them, to her firm handshake, everything about her says to a client, “You’re in good hands.”
Larkins radiates the kind of confidence and intensity that changes the air around her. It establishes her as the person in charge, and leaves no question regarding her ability to deal with the task at hand. It also lets her clients know she’s there to do one thing: get them to the other side of their legal issue with the least amount of damage possible.
Many of Larkins’ clients are deeply hurt or angry when they come to see her, as they are going through one of the most emotionally and financially devastating events a person can experience: divorce. But she lets them know up front she’s not their therapist or shoulder to cry on; she’s their lawyer.
“I do not have the tools to help my clients deal with the emotional aspect of divorce. But I am able to help them resolve their financial issues and work out a parenting plan. I do encourage all of my clients to get a counselor because their emotions can negatively impact what happens in legal situations,” she says.
Larkins also moves quickly to dispel any notion that she’s there to give her client his or her “day in court.”
“I get that off the table immediately. It sounds cold, but I tell my clients divorce is a big, messy whirlpool, and they need to get out. Their kids need them to be somewhere other than my office,” she says.
Once Larkins sets the ground rules, she mitigates the expectations her clients have regarding the outcome of the proceedings.
“Mothers have come in here saying they don’t want the father to ever see his kids again. I let them talk about why they thought that was going to happen, and then I told them he would be seeing his kids. I won’t tell a client she’s going to have her kids 100 percent of the time,” she says.
Larkins praises her clients for their ability to check their emotions and approach their legal situations rationally. And she says she does feel for them.
“I’m sensitive to the fact that divorce causes emotional turmoil. But that’s not what law school trained me to handle,” she says.
Larkins has been trained as a Rule 31 Family Mediator. She says she enjoys mediation more than going to court.
“Mediation is solution oriented. The goal is to make sure everyone is relatively happy when they leave the room. It’s different from litigation, where you want to know every bad and dirty thing the other person has done.”
Larkins is also a certified divorce financial analyst. Her training in this area gave her the skills to deal with the knotty monetary issues that surround a dissolving marriage, including alimony, child support, the splitting up of pensions, tax issues and so on. It’s also the part of her practice that appeals the most to her personality.
“I’ve always liked numbers. When I did my first divorce, I realized one of the biggest parts of it was figuring out what each person had and would owe. That solidified my interest,” she says.
Larkins grew up in Chatta-nooga, graduated from Baylor School and earned a bachelor’s degree in financing at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. She didn’t want to be a CPA, though, so she obtained a law degree from UT as well.
“As a lawyer, I still get to deal with the financial piece of the puzzle, but I’m not stuck in a closet crunching numbers. I like the balance of analysis and social interaction,” she says.
In 2004, Larkins returned to Chattanooga and took a position at Stulce & Yantis. Her time at the firm allowed her to test a lot of different waters, but when she discovered divorce, she knew she’d found her niche. In 2008, Larkins struck out on her own.
“I knew I wanted my own space, I knew I wanted to be in control, and I knew what kind of law I wanted to practice, but I didn’t know if those things would translate into a successful business,” she says.
They did. Larkins is already at the point where she’s not taking new clients, and she’s bursting at the seams in her office on Cherokee Boulevard.
“We need more space. My paralegal is swamped, and my secretary can’t answer the phone fast enough, but we don’t have room for another person. So we need to either move or rearrange things,” she says.
Despite the challenges, Lar-kins enjoys running her own firm. She likes marketing her business, dealing with receivables, paying the bills, figuring out where her money is going, calculating whether or not she has enough customers to stay solvent and so on. And she enjoys coming up with a plan to make sure things run smoothly.
“This firm is like a restaurant. I can’t just offer great food; I also have to have a plan for where the money is going to come from and how I’m going to spend it,” she says.
Larkins is so enamored with running her business, she almost likes it more than practicing law.
“My ideal job would be running my business and doing mediations, but not going to court. I’d also like to run firms owned by other attorneys,” she says.
While Larkins has a lot on her plate, she’s also a dedicated mother, wife and dog lover. To this end, she tries to spend every Friday with her 6-month-old baby and two 80-pound Labradors. Although doing so requires her to cram a week’s worth of labor into four days, like everything else, Larkins makes it work.
Larkins has achieved a lot in her first few years as an attorney, and her drive and expertise make her one of Chattanooga’s lawyers to watch. It will be interesting to see where she is in 10 years. Wherever that is, she will likely be in charge, and offering her clients the kind of handshake that says, “You’re in good hands.”