About Adesola Adeyemi: My Story
When I was just a little kid, my entire family referred to me as ‘The Lawyer.’
Why? Because I knew what was right and I wouldn’t stop arguing until I had successfully proven my case.
So, it comes as no surprise that I eventually grew up to be an attorney.
My parents had immigrated to Texas from Nigeria—and, believe me, questioning authority was not encouraged in us kids.
Success in academics and hard work was our sole focus.
As kids hard work was engrained in us, because we would accompany parents to help them with their janitorial jobs in the evening and on the weekends.
I attended High School in Garland, Texas, and undergrad at University of Texas at Arlington.
I majored in Management of Information Systems. And I loved it.
Take a large amount of overwhelming information and organize it? Yes, please!
I excelled at Java and other computer languages and graduated summa cum laude.
While the knowledge had come very easily to me, the jobs didn’t. As I was trying to figure out what to do next, I accompanied my uncle, who was helping a family friend sort out some problems at the immigration office.
She was a mother of four being deported and her kids were heading into foster care. It was terrible and she was treated poorly.
I do not like seeing people bullied and felt myself wanting to help her.
Then I remembered my old dream of being a lawyer. That’s what I can do, I thought. I didn’t even tell anyone I was studying for the LSAT.
I went to law school and made it to the top of my class.
Big law firms started courting me.
While I still wanted to help the average little person without a voice, I was offered a well-paying job with an impressive firm.
As it happened, the firm did pro bono work with the Human Rights Initiative and the Refugee Commission and I met people with the most beautiful and tragic stories.
One had escaped genocide, another was a victim of female genital mutilation, and another was an Iraqi translator whose entire family had been killed in a bomb blast.
I began volunteering as a pro bono attorney with the Dallas Volunteer Attorney Program.
And, I began working with more low-income clients who could not make ends meet and discovered I loved representing people. These weren’t multi-billionaires in suits—they were real, hard-working folks who had suffered injury and injustice.
I founded the Adeyemi Law Firm to put an end to unfair practices that take advantage of under-represented individuals.
I got very busy very quickly with lots of clients, but it was hard for me to charge them and actually make a living. Then, one day, I was asked to help a woman who’d been injured in an accident. I ended up getting her a huge settlement. It was incredibly gratifying.
Talk about a win-win.
She was compensated with the money she needed and deserved, and I could finally pay myself.
I now had a business model that worked.
I am free to serve those I want to serve: I can do general practice at no charge to clients, offer advice to the under-represented, and not charge any upfront fees in personal-injury cases.
Today, I serve the under-represented person who needs representation and does not have access to good doctors, to the law, to the information they need about insurance, or to knowing the extent of their injury and their lost wages. When you don’t know this information, this allows the insurance companies to take advantage of you.
I am honored to spend my days being the voice for the under-represented, hard-working person who’s been injured.