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When Monica Lopez spoke as the valedictorian of her class at Texas Southern University’s Thurgood Marshall School of Law, she thanked two people who couldn’t be there: her late parents. Lopez lost both her mother and father to cancer mere years apart. The youngest of eight children, Lopez acted as a caretaker for her mother in her final ten months.
In her speech, Lopez recognized her parents, migrant-fieldworkers-turned-farm labor contractors who spent years chasing harvests and opportunity between Oregon and Texas. Her parents never graduated from high school, but they made sure their children did. While their youngest child proved particularly precocious, it still would have amazed both Lopez’s mother and father to see their daughter graduate from law school, valedictorian no less.
Today Lopez is corporate counsel for Sumitomo Corporation of Americas, but in all things, she is most proud of being the daughter of two incredible people.
Keep Trucking
Lopez’s childhood differs from her peers. As soon as a child turned thirteen, they were old enough to go work in the fields for their parents. They spent every summer of high school under the sun, saving money, and traveling from the border of Texas to the border of Oregon and Idaho. When Lopez tested out of algebra in the eighth grade, she was able to stay in Texas and finish her year of school, but the day after classes ended, she’d be on a plane to Oregon to work.
“I never got a chance to do summer programs or play volleyball because I was always in Oregon, missing the camps and training,” Lopez remembers. Instead, she spent her summer days working the fields and going to the open gym to play basketball (her favorite sport) in the evenings. But the bouncing back and forth didn’t seem to affect her schoolwork. Lopez earned a Gates Millennium Scholarship, one of a thousand granted for an honor that regularly received fifty thousand applicants, to attend the University of Texas at Austin.
During Lopez’s junior year, she lost her father to cancer. She often returned home on the weekends to see him and spent her college summers with him and working in the fields as well.
The farm labor contractor was always driving a pickup—Lopez learned to drive in her father’s Chevy in the middle of a field—and, whether it was to congratulate an achievement or comfort her through a hardship, he would tell his daughter the same thing: “Keep trucking, my baby.” She still relies on that advice today.
Lopez returned to Oregon to help her mother run their family business, which was now solely in her mother’s hands. Lopez’s mother had already beaten cancer once but was diagnosed with leukemia soon after her husband’s death. And just like that, Lopez’s parents were gone.
A Bar What?
Lopez was understandably lost. As her parents’ dual Oregon-Texas estate was being sorted, she became interested in the legal process. At the same time, a couple of friends urged Lopez to consider law school.
The complexities of law training are hard enough if you know the process. But if you’re a first-generation high school and college graduate, sometimes you don’t know what you don’t know. Lopez knew she needed to study to get into law school and get a scholarship, but she didn’t know there was a “bar exam.”
“I didn’t even know there was a bar exam before I started law school,” the attorney says, laughing. “I think I would have been a little intimidated by all the hoops you have to jump through, so maybe I’m glad I didn’t know.”
Lopez kept trucking. Her law school grades were exemplary. She was chosen for a prestigious clerkship and wound up specializing in transactional work prior to coming to Sumitomo in 2023.
A Chance to Be Proud
Lopez spent so many years with her head down, she has only recently taken a breath to realize just how far she’s come. Her early life was marked by travel between two states but now she’s added two new locations to her list: New York City, and Sumitomo’s headquarters in Tokyo for the first time.
The lawyer hasn’t taken any of it for granted, and that includes mentoring and speaking with first-generation lawyers as much as she’s able. Every year she returns to her law school alma mater during orientation week to share her personal and professional experiences with newly admitted 1Ls. Lopez served as cochair of the Houston Young Lawyers Association’s First-Generation Attorney Committee in its inaugural year. She’s also volunteered for the American Cancer Society’s ACT! team that lobbies state and federal legislators on behalf of its mission to provide resources and assistance for those seeking treatment, one close to Lopez’s heart.
But at this very moment, Lopez has taken a pause on everything but her daily responsibilities at Sumitomo. From endless ping-ponging to caretaking to grieving to excelling in her studies to becoming a truly successful transactional and in-house attorney, Lopez finally decided she may need to let her spirit catch up with her.
She’s been afraid to sit still for too long, but she’s finally ready to reflect. Lopez does so with a full heart and the knowledge that the two people who brought her into the world couldn’t be prouder.
Katten is a full-service law firm with approximately 700 attorneys in locations across the United States and in London and Shanghai. Clients such as Sumitomo, who seek sophisticated, high-value legal services, turn to Katten for counsel locally, nationally and internationally. Monica Lopez has been at the forefront of defining and enhancing the relationship of trust between our two firms. Monica’s collaborative approach and strategic vision align seamlessly with Katten’s commitment to delivering practical, business-driven legal solutions. We are proud to work alongside Monica and the entire legal group at Sumitomo Corporation to help them achieve their goals in an evolving global market. Our partnership is built on trust, shared vision and a commitment to excellence – values that honor and support Sumitomo’s business philosophy developed more than 400 years ago.
