“I want each and every person who experiences our law firm to be left better than they were when we found them,” said attorney Michel Huff, founder of Huff Legal and social justice advocate, who goes by the name “Huff.” “That’s my philosophy on life.”
While his law firm provides clients with excellent legal representation, Huff isn’t motivated by billable hours.
“I have a bone for justice and a heart for helping people. I’ve always been wired that way,” he said. “The only thing that actually makes me go is the good feeling I get when somebody says thanks.”
Repeatedly meeting adversity and being forced to overcome it could have made Huff bitter. Instead, it inspired him to give back and make the world a better place.
An extraordinary career
Huff knew he wanted to be a lawyer since he was seven years old. Affording law school, however, was another matter. To raise the necessary funds, he served as a police officer and patrol supervisor in Houston, Texas, from 1997 until 2004.
“I took the scenic route,” he joked.
But his time in law enforcement was no pleasure drive. “I was a lesbian of color who was closeted at the time because of fear of retaliation,” he explained.
When asked which pronouns should be used for this time in his life, Huff explained, “I didn’t transition until I was 40. I owe everything I’m enjoying now to her. She did it. She went to law school. She graduated at the top of her class. She was the first black female deputy in the history of Precinct Four. She did all of those things. And then at 40 ‘he’ started doing stuff.”
As a biracial lesbian police officer, she faced multiple forms of discrimination. “A certain lieutenant who will remain nameless regularly called me a fat [racial expletive] to my subordinates,” Huff said. “The captain at Precinct Four told me I’d never make it to be an attorney. He told me I should adjust my goals to something a little bit more realistic.”
This prejudice failed to deter the young Huff from achieving her goals. “I went to school every day in my bulletproof vest and gun belt because there wasn’t enough time to change between work and school,” he said.
Upon graduating from the police academy, Huff was assigned to patrol one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in the country. “I was one of two female deputies ever assigned to South Central,” he said.
As a policewoman, Huff’s approach focused on building relationships in the community. “In addition to working within the community, I also really try to speak to every single person’s higher self,” he said. “When you meet people with a degree of respect and extend expectation for the greater good, they often rise to that occasion. That was my experience out on the street. I can’t tell you how many times a citizen showed up and helped me. Sometimes even someone with an open warrant jumped in to make sure that I was safe.
“For example, I had a guy whose arms were so big that he needed two sets of handcuffs. He could have made my nose be where my ear is if he wanted. But three gang members who knew me said, ‘You’re gonna turn around and let her put those cuffs on you, and we’re not going to have a problem out here.’ The same guys that I might have to chase or arrest had my back. They were my backup.”
In the course of this service, policewoman Huff earned two life-saving achievement awards. In one case, she saved a 13-year-old boy from suicide. In the other, she rescued a teenager from a small, makeshift craft during Tropical Storm Allison. She pulled him to safety while suspended over the raging waters as a deputy held her by the gun belt over the water.
Giving former felons a second chance
In addition to his legal career, Huff currently serves as Deputy Executive Director for 1 More Chance, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit based in Wyoming. Founded by Robert J. Phillips, the charity provides education and training to former felons to help them reintegrate into society.
Huff described his involvement as “a great opportunity to finish the cycle that is in the criminal justice system.”
To combat recidivism, Huff explained, it’s important to understand why felons committed their crimes in the first place.
“A lot of it is that they just don’t know any better,” he said. “People assume everyone’s getting the same training at home on things like nutrition, getting a job, etc. But the information that’s being disseminated is vastly different on the different sides of the track. We provide the education and training these former felons never received at the outset.”
Huff describes the positive impact of successful rehabilitation as having a “snowball effect like compound interest,” due to participants “paying it forward” and helping others in their communities.
Legal Lifeline
If that wasn’t enough, Huff has created an app called Legal Lifeline that would connect citizens with real-time legal support.
“It potentially could have helped George Floyd,” he said. “Had George Floyd been able to push a button on his phone to bring up Legal Lifeline, a real-live attorney like me – a civil rights or criminal defense lawyer – would have appeared and told Derek Chauvin that he was going to get 30-plus years in a federal prison if he didn’t remove his knee from George Floyd’s neck.”
Taking up the role of the lawyer speaking to Chauvin, Huff continued: “‘It’s excessive force and murder, and you will stop it right now. I’m a third-party learned intermediary and officer of the court, and you will not do this to that man.’
“Sometimes you just need to hear that voice of reason to stop being stuck on stupid, and Derek Chauvin was stuck on stupid that day,” he explained.
In addition to high-stakes interventions like these, Legal Lifeline could help connect people who have been in car accidents with personal-injury counsel. People could also use it to report needing help. Huff is currently seeking funding to make this app a reality.
Helping others be awesome
Looking back on a life spent facing discrimination, Huff says the biggest adversity he has overcome was “learning how to stop reducing my shine for people that didn’t want me to run faster than them.”
“I’m too old now to let anybody stop me,” Huff said. “I want to know my full potential. I don’t think I’ve scratched the surface, but I feel empowered to do it now.”
True to form, however, he views this effort as a collaboration.
“I want to sit at the dinner table with everybody who wants to talk about how to be more awesome for humanity and figure out how I can be a part of helping them do it,” he said. “That’s what I want to do with the rest of my life.”
