Alex Lepe
Marianne Auld was headed toward a career as a teacher, having majored in English at Baylor University.
“I was very bookish, and I loved to read and write,” says Auld.
A career later, Auld, who moved into law and became a specialist in appellate, is the new managing partner at the 38-year-old Fort Worth firm Kelly Hart & Hallman, promoted to the post earlier this year and becoming the first woman and third person to hold the post. Auld continues to serve as appellate practice chair at Kelly Hart, launched in 1979 by Dee Kelly Sr., Mark Hart and Bill Hallman. Kelly and Hart died in 2015.
“I thought I’d be a teacher,” says Auld, whose father taught seminary and was a preacher, and whose mother was a special education diagnostician. Auld, who had lawyers in the family, taught high school English for a year in Waco and moved to another job before deciding to attend law school.
“I was one of the few people who was bookish and nerdy enough to enjoy law school, and I enjoyed law school,” says Auld, who graduated first in her class from the Baylor School of Law and was editor-in-chief of the Baylor Law Review.
Auld’s path into appellate law began at the Baylor law school, where she wrote a moot court brief that caught the attention of a professor who suggested she had a knack for appeals work. Following law school, Auld served as a clerk to Judge Tom Reavley of the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals and was a law professor at Baylor for 10 years.
Auld, who graduated law school in 1988, worked for Kelly Hart between November 1989 and March 1993, when it didn’t have an appellate practice, then left and returned in 2008. By then, the firm had launched an appellate practice. Auld, who followed Hart and Dee Kelly Jr. as managing partner, credits numerous mentors, starting with her parents.
“They taught me responsibility, keeping your word, being trustworthy,” she says. One law professor, Louis Muldrow, taught her the importance of precision. Auld reserves her highest praise for Reavley, who, she says, likes to say, “It’s never the wrong thing to do the right thing.
“He still speaks at every opportunity to follow the rule of law,” Auld says. “Watching him live, that affected not only who I became as a lawyer, but as a human being.”
And Dee Kelly Sr. helped the careers of women over the years, she says. The firm’s first associates were Sharon Millians and Pati Meadows, partners today.
“What was important to Mr. Kelly is he had people working for him who were committed to excellence and willing to work hard." Kelly also imbued the firm with tenacity and loyalty, she says. “He taught us how not to give up.”