Christa Brown-Sanford | Why Staying True to Your Mission Is Crucial to Achieving Rainmaker Success

Elise Holtzman: Hi, everyone. It's Elise Holtzman here, a former practicing lawyer and the host of The Lawyer's Edge Podcast, where I sit down with successful attorneys, legal marketing specialists, business leaders, and authors to talk about how lawyers and law firms can grow and sustain healthy, profitable businesses.

Hi, everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Lawyer's Edge Podcast. I am Elise Holtzman, your host, and I am really excited to welcome my guest today, Christa Sanford. Before we dive into talking to Christa, today's episode is brought to you by the Ignite Women's Business Development Accelerator, a nine-month business development program created by women lawyers for women lawyers.

Ignite is a carefully designed business development program containing content, coaching, and a community of like-minded women who are committed to becoming rainmakers and supporting the retention and advancement of other women in the profession. Registration is now open for the 2025 Ignite cohort, and early bird pricing is available. To learn more about Ignite, visit thelawyersedge.com/ignite.

Now I get to introduce my guest today, Christa Sanford, who is a partner at Baker Botts out of Dallas, and she's also the chair of the intellectual property department there. In addition to practicing law and her role as the IP department chair, Christa serves on the firm's diversity and inclusion committee, as well as the firm's executive committee.

Outside the office, as if that were not enough, Christa is actively involved in the community as a member of the Charter 100 and Crystal Charity Ball, and as a member of the boards of Southern Methodist University, SMU Dedman School of Law, the Baylor Scott & White Foundation, Rice University School of Engineering, and something called New Friends New Life, which is an organization that focuses on empowering trafficked women and girls.

She also recently completed her service as the president of the Junior League of Dallas during the league's centennial year, and she regularly speaks on patent matters and is also an adjunct professor at SMU's Dedman School of Law. Christa was recently among a small group of private practice lawyers who were honored as top rainmakers by the MCCA, which is the Minority Corporate Counsel Association.

My goodness, I'm tired just reading this. Christa, welcome to The Lawyer's Edge.

Christa Sanford: Thank you, Elise. I am so excited to be here and I promise I do sleep.

Elise Holtzman: Yeah, I'm going to have to find out when that is. Let's talk about all of that. For starters, I noticed that you've been at Baker Botts from the beginning of your career. You graduated from SMU Law School more than 20 years ago, and you're one of the homegrown partners that people sometimes talk about.

We hear so much these days about people leaving their firms for supposedly greener pastures and moving around frequently, why have you stayed at your firm for the long haul?

Christa Sanford: This is a great question, and you are hitting on something that we are seeing more and more, and that's just the movement in the market, not just among associates, but even more so among partners now. Honestly, when I started this practice, I did not think I was going to stay practicing law for too long. I thought, “Let me go get some big law experience.”

My dad had a fire protection company when I had started off my practice and I thought I would go and start running his company and take it over eventually. When I got to Baker Botts, I saw that in my group, there were a few different other women associates, but there had not been a woman associate at the time who had been elevated to partner in Dallas, and then in Dallas more broadly beyond just the IP group, I was aware that there had not been an African-American associate that had been elevated to partner.

So being the stubborn person that I am, I thought, “You know what, maybe I could stick it out and do this.” There were a lot of twists and turns through my associate life, but I ended up making partner at Baker Botts in 2014, became the first African-American associate to be promoted to partner. Same with respect to the IP group in Dallas.

Then after getting through the associate line, I had to now figure out this partnership thing, went to the whole other can of worms. Again, it's not that I've been here for 21 years with my head down, not aware of the marketplace and the industry. It's me understanding and appreciating just the culture and the fabric of Baker Botts and the opportunities that I have here to make a difference and create an environment for others to thrive and to empower others.

As I figured that out in my early partnership career, I realized this is where I want to be. This is where I need to be, to really make an imprint on this industry in addition to the law firm. That's what's kept me here. I think the reasoning has changed, but throughout my entire career, it has been about making an impact.

Elise Holtzman: I love that. As you were speaking, it occurred to me, maybe this is obvious, but it occurred to me that you haven't been at all in the same job for the last 20 years. You've been at the same firm. But to your point, you've been in different roles, and role doesn't necessarily mean title. You could be an associate, and the role of junior associate is very different from the role of senior associate, junior partner is different from senior partner, and service partner is different from rainmaker, for example.

It sounds like you've been interested in growing yourself over the years, as well as having an impact on others. Before we get into that a little more deeply, you're doing so many things. I joked with you before we got on the phone that I stalked you on LinkedIn for a few minutes and had looked at your background in order to prepare for today.

You’re a chair of the IP department, you're on multiple boards, you've sat at the top of prominent organizations, you teach in the law school, and oh yeah, by the way, you practice law and you serve clients and it also sounds like you're talking about being a mentor and perhaps a sponsor and a trailblazer and all of those things. You said something about “I need to be here. This is the place I need to be, this is what I need to be doing,” why? What drives you to do all of these things? Why not spend a little more time on the couch with a good book?

Christa Sanford: I'm going to tell you something and it just sounds so trite, but this is true and I will give you a specific example in telling you my why. I was probably a young partner and I had been approached by a company to come in-house. It was by someone who I had worked with at Baker Botts, he had decided to go in-house and he came to me with this opportunity to go in-house.

It was a really good opportunity; an area where I could grow and have a lot of potential at this company. I told him that I could not go because there were a number of women and African-American attorneys that were leaving private practice to go in-house. I felt that if I made that move, this law firm environment would continue to exist in the same way that it had existed for so long without someone sticking it out to try to change the fabric of the industry and make a difference with how this industry is perceived in the community, how we are reflective of our clients that we serve as private practitioners.

I told him, “I can't go because I gotta make an impact here.” That has been my driving force, especially now that I'm a partner, is trying to influence and change how we are as a law firm and build upon the good culture that we have over our 185-plus years, but also trying to influence how my clients engage with our associates that are coming up and bringing people along. That has been my thing. Like I said, it’s trite but truly, impact has been my life's mission and the work that I do, whether it's at the law firm or in the community and one of the nonprofits that I serve.

Elise Holtzman: One of the ways that I think you're making an impact is by being a rainmaker because we know that most lawyers aren't rainmakers and then there are so few women at that level, at the partner level, the equity partner level, and even fewer women who were rainmakers. Tell me about your road to rainmaker. Is this something that you always knew you wanted to pursue? Had it even dawned on you as an associate that this was something that you wanted to work on? How did all of that come to pass?

Christa Sanford: Well, remember, Elise, I thought I wouldn't be here for too long, so rainmaking was not in my vision.

Elise Holtzman: Fair point.

Christa Sanford: I mean, I think this podcast could be named What Not to Do, because I remember my first year of practicing, I'm the first lawyer in my family, not just my immediate family, my extended family, no other lawyers in my family. I graduated from law school and then I go into big law, which is like, oh my goodness, eyes wide open, “What have I gotten myself into?” And so I was so focused that first year, first couple of years on the work in showing up and putting in the time and effort to do the work to the highest level.

Well, you know what got lost in that, Elise? I wasn't going out for lunches, people would come by my office, knock on the door, "Christa, you want to go grab the..." “No, I got to get this project done.” The biggest thing that I think has helped me with developing business is the main thing I wasn't doing when I started my practice, which is building and developing relationships.

Now I feel like half the day, I am spending time doing that, whether it be on client calls or firm calls or meeting with clients for lunch, or even when I'm doing my meetings with nonprofits in the middle of the day, I am meeting with folks where I'm developing relationships where there is an opportunity to then develop business too, in addition to doing the work that we're doing with nonprofits.

That is how I have grown and evolved over the years, is become more aware and focused on that key, which is relationships, and that has, I think, just expanded the opportunities for me with respect to business development.

Elise Holtzman: As my regular listeners know, I do a lot of work in the rainmaking space, helping lawyers learn how to do this because no one teaches it to us in law school for sure. How did you come to this awareness? Did somebody turn the light bulb on for you? Was there a mentor or somebody who said something or did you look around and figure it out yourself? I'm always interested to know how people who didn't have that desire from the beginning had the light bulb go on for them.

Christa Sanford: It's a few different things and honestly, I am so grateful and blessed to have had a number of people that have just poured into me and my career development where when I started, I didn't see for myself what could be and the possibilities and they saw it for me. That has absolutely helped me and my growth and my career trajectory so I do want to say that.

And because there were so many people pouring into me, it wasn't just one thing. My dearest mentor happened to be a department chair at the firm too. He was an IP department chair too or one before me and he was my mentor from day one before he became a leader in the firm and he really spent a lot of time and effort pouring into me.

He was a rainmaker. He was an incredible rainmaker and I saw what he was doing and I was like, “Well, I like what Bart is doing and that is aligned with how I do things and how I function.” I was a cheerleader growing up in high school and I worked as a cheerleader for a cheerleading company as an instructor. What do we do in cheerleading? We are out there developing relationships, getting the crowd pumped.

I was doing some leadership development stuff and what he was doing to build his practice is stuff that I was doing anyway that I like doing. That introduction I think was very helpful for me. I did go through the firm's coaching program as a young partner and that process over the course of about a year or two years truly changed my thinking and my mindset.

It was the hardest thing for me to go through in that I had had some business success and then I had some business failures and working through at the time when I was low and thought, “Why am I doing this?” to come back and learn from that and to really grow and shift my mindset now where I am always trying to learn versus just do, that has tremendously helped in my growth and development. Between the mentorship and the coaching, all of it coming together has helped me to be comfortable going out and doing business development.

Elise Holtzman: I must say, I'm not surprised to hear that you were a cheerleader, because when you talk about what you've been doing at the firm and how you've changed over the years, your enthusiasm is coming through so clearly. In addition to obviously loving the relationship building and loving what you do, for those who might be considering investing time, money, and energy in pursuing rainmaking, what are the rewards?

What does being a rainmaker do for Christa? Well, we know what it does for the firm. Obviously, every firm is a business. It's a for-profit business. They need clients to thrive and survive. We know what it does for the firm, but what has it done for you personally?

Christa Sanford: That is a great question, because I try not to think about me, I try to think about others, so I've never put it in that context. When I think about this, I will tell you, my typical answer is that it is allowing me to be in a position to provide opportunities for others, honestly, and at the end of the day, law firms are still businesses that are based on revenue generated by partners and others that are discharging that work.

But still, if you do not have that partner that's generating that work, others can't do it for us to then bill out. If you are someone who is able to generate work, that opens up other opportunities within the firm. If I wanted to have a seat at the tables where I can make a difference with respect to how the firm is run, how we are considering the growth and development of our partners in addition to our associates, how we're looking at the leadership of this firm, I knew I had to develop business, period.

Once I realized that as a young partner, it helped to set my focus on what I needed to do. If I wanted to be in a position to influence the firm to impact others behind me, I needed to have business in order to be put in spaces to get leadership roles, to be on the executive committee, et cetera. That's why I have really grabbed on to trying to develop business and to be in a position where I am considered a rainmaker here.

Elise Holtzman: I've always said that it gives people the power of choice, because it puts you in a position where you can influence decision-making. I love that you tend to not think about yourself, you're thinking about others. I mean, I think it's okay to think about oneself, too. But I love this idea that you're thinking to yourself, "How can I have an impact?" And that you recognize that one of the primary ways in a law firm to have impact is to have business, as you say. When you speak, people are going to listen. When you want to make change, people are going to be more open to it. I think that's really important for people to recognize.

Christa Sanford: I completely agree with that. I think honestly, if particularly women and people of color, as you are navigating that into understanding the importance of it in the law firm setting, that is huge.

Elise Holtzman: Let's talk about another one of the hats you wear, which is as a leader. Not only are you the chair of your practice group, but you've been talking a lot about leading others and helping others achieve, breaking down barriers. How do you think you've had to change over the years in terms of your mindset, perhaps, and how you view yourself in order for you to be able to step into these leadership roles?

Because again, when we come out of law school, we don't know anything about leadership. We don't know anything about developing other people. I mean, we don't know anything about running a case or a transaction, let alone those other things. So, when you look back at yourself and you see your evolution as a leader, what are some of the things that come up for you that have made a difference?

Christa Sanford: It's actually twofold. I have gone through certain experiences through cheerleading, through the nonprofit work that I've done that have influenced me and my leadership roles at the firm. That's one thing that I just want to talk through. You're right, we don't get trained on how to be a leader. Like I just said, usually the people that are being put in leadership roles are those that are really good at developing business, which is a different skill set.

But what I wanted to do, because I am driven by thinking beyond just the moment, is to pick up those qualities in other avenues. For example, I was a cheerleading instructor in college and I actually did that through law school, I would do a camp a year even as an attorney for many years where I would lead the full staff of cheerleaders and I would lead the camp and I was interfacing with cheerleading coaches and parents.

Let me tell you, if you are dealing with a cheerleading coach or a parent, trust me, any client issue will be, “You can handle that.” That helped me to figure out how I could lead in working through different scenarios with different personalities, with different staff that I was working with during the camps. I started to figure out my style of leadership.

Then I will say, just generally, as most lawyers, I suffer from perfectionism and fear of failure. What I had to get out of my learning and development is that for me to improve, I've got to stop being afraid of making a mistake in realizing that, “You know what, learn from it, make sure you understand what you need to take from this, and then don't make the mistake again. Apply what you're learning to the next encounter that you have.”

As I got involved in nonprofits, there was a lot of leadership training in the nonprofits that I worked in, especially in Junior League of Dallas. As I was on the leadership council there and also on the board, we go through various leadership training. In those instances, I started to find voice as a leader. That has helped me in this instance to where I don’t think I lead the IP department as every other partner before me, I think I take a different approach in trying to empower the partners and the associates. I try to really have us think as a team, not 52 individual partner practices, but as the IP department.

Sometimes I do what they call, I don't think everyone loves it, but I bring my cheerleading spirit to Baker Botts too, when we do activities and we are on calls, actually talking to one another, I think that has helped me in my role here now to be effective in my leadership. It's the training that I've had over the years that has helped me, but also me changing how I approach different opportunities and not being afraid to fail and realizing it's an opportunity to learn. That mindset shift has been helpful.

Elise Holtzman: That's a tough one because I think we all know intellectually, I mean, if you said to somebody, "Is it possible to be perfect?" I actually do some women's programs on perfectionism and I'll often ask the audience, “How many of you believe it's possible for a human being to achieve perfection?” Of course, not one hand in the room goes up. Yet at the same time, so many of us are pursuing that.

I think there is a lot of ego involved. We all want to be viewed as being good at our jobs. We don't want to fall flat on our faces. Also, as lawyers, sometimes we're used to being the smartest person in the room, or at least we think we're the smartest person in the room sometimes.

Let's talk a little bit about that. I mean, how do you go from the intellectual knowledge that perfection is impossible and you must fail in order to achieve, and that horrible feeling of “Not only am I not thrilled with myself, but what are other people going to think? How am I going to be viewed?” What do you think worked for you? What helped you step into that mindset?

Christa Sanford: It wasn't without failure and being in that place where I was just so low that I didn't know why I was doing what I was doing. I mentioned this earlier that I just had this experience as a young partner that really brought me to the depths of just feeling completely insecure about myself, about my practice, about my position at the firm, and just afraid of what the future held, honestly.

I'll tell you exactly what happened. I had just brought in a really good client into the firm. As I mentioned, I was a young partner when this happened. To get a nice-sized client as a second-year partner, that just doesn't happen. An issue came up where another partner's client was not happy that we had brought in this work. Even though we had gone through all the approval processes on the front end, on the back end, it was not okay. I had to fire the client after we had already onboarded, gotten everything in, everything was done. That was hurtful.

Elise Holtzman: That's devastating. I mean, as a young partner in particular, when you work so hard, it's so exciting, and to have something out of your control make that happen, I can imagine that must have been just really hard to take.

Christa Sanford: It was devastating, yes. What made it worse is I felt like I just couldn't figure it out and I couldn't make it work here. That was my mindset at the time. I just had to go through it. I had to walk through that 12-month period and I was probably a bit depressed. Thankfully, I had a coach at the time and I told him he was not just my coach, he was my therapist, truly, and I had gone to the place of “You know what, I don't know if I should be here,” and working through that and thinking about what I would do instead, where I would be instead.

When I decided that I was going to stay here, I knew I couldn't continue staying with what I had brought to the table before with respect to my perspective and how I was showing up every day. I knew I had to shift and I couldn't continue on with that baggage. It was people pouring into me, it was my husband, it was my coach, it was dear friends that helped me to get to that place.

But when that change happened and I started to approach things like, “Okay, sitting down, Christa, after having gone through that, what can you learn from it? What can you learn about people? What can you learn about yourself? What can you learn about even this practice of law and what you are doing here that you can change to impact your practice moving forward?”

As I thought through that and started to think about things to change, honestly, that's what started propelling me to the place where I was able to develop a multi-million dollar business from clients. It was that shift and I don't think I would have experienced the same success now if I had not gone through that because I had to change how I approached people. I had to change how I mentally was thinking about things and I had to give myself grace, honestly. I was so hard on myself and I had to be okay with messing up and I learned that through that experience.

Elise Holtzman: One of the things that's coming up for me while you're talking is that what you're talking about is not just changing what you're doing, but changing who you're being.

Christa Sanford: That's right.

Elise Holtzman: I think that I'm noticing that more and more as I work over the years with more and more senior leaders and rain makers that you can make a list of things to do. There are certainly things that need to be done when you're a leader, that need to be done when you're a rainmaker, but a lot of the shift is around how you're showing up and what's going on inside of your head and the messages that you're giving yourself.

Of course, that's where coaches come in and mentors come in and spouses come in because they can help you see something that can be very difficult for you to see. We don't see ourselves objectively.

Christa Sanford: I think that is something that we are missing a bit in the legal industry, is that it's not a to-do list, it's not an action item, it is something else that needs to change in your thinking and your being. When we start having those conversations, that is when change can really happen.

Elise Holtzman: Well, I love that you're highlighting this for people because I think that because we are driven by what I call the almighty billable hour, because that's where we get the rewards, because we're constantly running around with our hair on fire trying to get things done, it is very challenging to sit down, stop dead in our tracks, take stock of where we are, and start evaluating “Who am I, what am I doing, am I heading in the right direction, am I bringing people along with me?”

It sounds like that's something that you were very intentional about doing. I believe being intentional is so much a part of this. I love hearing your story. One of the things that I did want to ask you about, Christa, is you mentioned to me earlier that you have three children, as do I. What I find is that for many people, not just women, but certainly for women, when they are in this stage, phase, age of becoming rainmakers are thinking about that, becoming leaders are thinking about that, that's when the babies start showing up.

I'm curious from your perspective what has been harder, easier, different about being a mom, being a woman, perhaps being a person of color in achieving all of these things.

Christa Sanford: I'm going to tell you a story and I think this will exemplify the answer to that. I had all my kids when I was an associate and after my first two kids, boys, they were born a little less than two years apart, my husband had taken a new job and he was working 24 hours a day. There was a six-week period. My oldest had turned three and my youngest had just turned one. We didn't see him at all for a couple of months because he just worked around the clock.

I remember coming into the office and my mentor, Bart, he came in and he was like, "Is everything okay, Christa?" And I was like, "Bart, I am a single mom. I do not know what I could do." I was billing at that time. I was on like three different cases. I had a patent portfolio development practice. I was billing 2200, 2300, and that's the pace that I was on while being a “single mom,” because my husband was working around the clock.

He was like, "Okay, Christa, we can work through this." There was an alternative work schedule that the firm had, but not a lot of people had been doing it. We discussed what that looked like for me. I went on that schedule as a six-year associate. It was a reduction in billable hours.

Talk about mindset shift, the firm was great. They were like, "Christa, we can make this work, make sure you are hitting the targets that you need to hit." I had to take a mindset shift back and realize “I am not on a 2000-hour pace anymore. Christa, you don't have to be doing the same things you were doing when you were on the 2200-hour pace when your expectation is 1600 hours.”

That's a shift that I had to take. I was on that schedule for several years. I made partner on that schedule, which was amazing to see that the firm too was not going to have a negative impact on my trajectory at the firm. So I made partner on this schedule. But before I made partner, it was in my eighth year, I had my third kid and it was a little girl and I remember when I saw her, I told my husband, “She's going to be a patent attorney.”

When I was at the place where I was about to come back to the office after my leave, I looked at her and it was the hardest moment for me to know that I'm about to leave this baby girl and have to go back to the office. But when I saw her face, I knew I had to go back to the office. I knew I had to go back and continue doing the work that I was doing to try to make partner, to try to be in the position to influence this industry for my baby girl because she was going to be in it too.

That's why I kept going is because of her. Now that I am where I am, it's because of the others that I see coming up through the ranks, the other engineers out there that want to get into law. That's what propels me.

Elise Holtzman: That's quite a story. That's a lot going on all at the same time. It's amazing how some people struggle with that so much and throw in the towel, understandably so, no criticism there, and how some people find it motivating. As the parent of a female law student, I thank you for continuing to fight the good fight.

So, Christa, as we wrap up our time here together today, there's a question to ask all of my guests at the end of the show. There's a phenomenon called the curse of knowledge where experts sometimes forget that what is so obvious and natural to them is not at all obvious to others. When it comes to going from being an individual contributor as a lawyer to becoming a rainmaker and a leader, what's a principle or piece of advice that now, after all these years may seem obvious to you, but you think is important for people coming up to hear?

Christa Sanford: This is something that I mentioned earlier that I had to change in what I was doing and my guiding principle now is relationships matter and treat people like you want to be treated. That's how I try to approach my clients that I work with. That is how I try to approach associates that I work with and how I approach my partners.

If I am wanting to develop and nurture and foster a relationship with you and treating you how I would want to be treated, that is going to be hugely and positively impactful.

Elise Holtzman: Fantastic, I love it. It is important for people to hear that over and over again. I think especially because as lawyers, we're so focused on the task. We have to remember not to always be putting the task before the relationship, that the relationship can sometimes be just as important, if not more so, than the task. So, Christa, thank you so much for that great advice, and thank you for being here today. It's been a pleasure having you.

Christa Sanford: Yes, thank you for having me, Elise. It's been fun.

Elise Holtzman: I also want to thank our listeners for tuning in. If you've enjoyed today's show, please subscribe, rate, and review us at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. In the meantime, be bold, take action, and make things happen. We'll see you next time.

Thank you for tuning in. If you've enjoyed today's show, please subscribe, rate, and review us at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. In the meantime, be bold, take action, and make things happen. We'll see you next time.