AC: How’d you get where you are?
Lyon: It’s something that I sort of fell into. I went to law school thinking that I was going to meld my love of journalism with the law—become the next Court TV personality or something (I started law school right after the OJ trial, when people thought that legal analysts were the next big thing). While in law school, I clerked for a judge in the criminal court, worked at a civil litigation firm, and realized I didn’t know what I wanted to do when I graduated. I didn’t see myself litigating for the rest of my life, and I wasn’t working too hard on getting a broadcasting audition tape together.
During my third year, I wrote a paper for Law Review that was published. It dealt with what happens to frozen embryos when couples separate or divorce. I realized that assisted reproduction was raising some ethical, legal, and moral dilemmas and I started to research the area more. Once I graduated and passed the bar, a firm that specialized in this area was hiring, and I interviewed and got the job. It was a great start and great exposure to these issues and I found that I enjoyed it. I was able to practice law, but in a non-contentious area of law. I was helping couples to have children. I was assisting the women who wanted to make parenthood possible for a couple experiencing infertility. I was married about ten months into the employment and had to leave the firm because my husband’s job was based in Colorado. We had hoped he would be able to transfer to California, but it wasn’t possible at that time. I was then trying to figure out how to continue in the field and was looking into taking the Colorado bar exam.
Tragically, my husband took his own life, leaving me a widow and on my own. I came back to California permanently and spent several months figuring out what I was going to do. Amazing people surround me in my field and several attorneys took me under their wings and introduced me to other doctors and agencies, and started feeding me work. From there, it grew. One client turned to two, a lunch with an agency turned into steady work, and soon my law practice was off the ground. I don’t know what I would have done if those attorneys had not been there for me.
