Attorney Leigh Fletcher split her childhood between Columbus, Ga., and Florida's St. George Island, developing a love for the ocean. She's a diver, she loves coral, but she never imagined she would end up owning a pair of water treatment laboratories in the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Now Fletcher, 46, who spent years working for Stearns-Weaver, one of Tampa's largest law firms, shuttles between Tampa Bay and the Caribbean balancing the demands of her dual existence while helping to raise her daughter Katie.
Here, she handles complex development deals such as the Lake Taho project in Kissimmee. In the Virgin Islands, she's helping the labs recover from hurricane damage while handling environmental and land-use cases.
The story doesn't end there, however.
Along with law partners Tina Fischer and Anne Pollock, Fletcher has helped move their firm to a downtown St. Petersburg space that appears primed to enhance the trendy area. The Rising Tide Innovation Center, nestled in the city's historic McCrory Building, will officially be introduced on May 16.
Fletcher recently shared her entrepreneurial journey with Tampa Bay Times columnist Ernest Hooper, explaining her hopes for the new "Innovation Center" and why passion continues to drive all of her decisions.
Let's fast forward to your introduction to the Virgin Islands. You go there in 2006 for your firm to handle a litigation issue involving a mixed-income, affordable housing project. I'm imagining it's a little more scenic than St. George Island.
I'll give you the visual. I get off the plane in my little blue lawyer suit. At this point, we're still in the world of Blackberry, so I have a Blackberry and a cell phone and I'm ready to go do the site visit. In a blue suit. In the Virgin Islands.
It's like 92 degrees, right?
Yes, it's 92 and the guy picking me up at the airport is in an open jeep. I'm thinking how far can this be. He drives me across St. Thomas, we get on a ferry in the car. We get off the ferry in St. John and we drive through Cruz Bay and there's goats, chickens, donkeys and I lose cell service. I'm hot and sticky, and 'I'm like where am I, why did I agree to take this case?' Long story short, I get to the site and I'm just blown away that there's this whole beautiful world I had never seen.
You win a lower-court ruling against residents opposed to the project, but your client then asks you to seek a settlement. How did you work that out?
Ultimately, the issue was the neighbors wanted stormwater fixed. Water was running down their dirt roads, turning the beautiful bay brown every time it rained. They were concerned that this project, which was more dense than their homes because it was multi-family, was going to do even more of that. The Virgin Islands government had not adopted stormwater regulations ever.
So we worked with the government to establish a stormwater regime which would require testing. So now I've solved the problem for my client. We agree. We're going to do stormwater testing.
...(But) there's one lab on the island.
So I go bouncing into the lab: 'Hi, do I have an opportunity for you? You've been doing drinking water but now you can do stormwater because lo and behold, everybody has to do it. It's awesome.'
The lady who owns the lab looks at me and says, 'I'm 70 years old. I don't want this opportunity.' I said, 'You have to want this opportunity. This is how I'm settling this case.'
We went back and forth and ultimately I ended up working with her to set that up. Five years later, when her husband passed away, she decided to retire and that's when she sold me the labs.
So you go from not really knowing anything about the Virgin Islands to owning two businesses there. How do you process all of that?
I was a blue suit-wearing, young lawyer charging towards equity partnership. I was full on, committed, this is my life. I'm in the Junior League, I'm everything in Tampa. And then five years later, I own two labs and I go back and forth every other week and I'm blessed with this crazy existence that is chaotic and somewhat conflictual but also somewhat enriching. It hits both.
Has owning your own business made you a better lawyer
I've learned a tremendous amount about being in business. Running a law practice is one kind of business. Running what I would call a transactional business where you have customers that are very different, a public/private lab because we are the government's lab. We have a lot of government contracts but we also work with the public. So it's a totally different kind of experience. It's informed how I advise my clients because I'm frequently sitting on the other side of the table.
Ultimately, you leave your firm, Stearns, Weaver, and your practice morphs into Fletcher and Fischer. Tell me about your firm.
Anne (Pollock) is a specialist in land use. Tina, God bless her, loves title and the nitty gritty real estate. I love the deals. We're a collaborative law firm in the sense that I don't own clients, they don't own clients. We work on our client stuff together to give them the best expertise that we can. It's a different model.
Tina is willing to jump off cliffs with me when I do crazy things. She's also a co-founder of this space.
So you're Thelma and she's Louise.
She's said that before.
How did you arrive at opening this work space?
Our lease was up in downtown Tampa and we were looking for new space. We were negotiating leases. Prices are crazy in downtown Tampa.
We took a real long look at it. We had beautiful corporate space, and I said, 'Tina, when was the last time we had a client come into our space.' She was like, 'I don't know.' It was six. In a year. Why? Because they were based in Texas or California or I see them at ULI conferences or I go to them or it's Bank of America and they would rather meet in their office. I was like, 'You know what, what value in the universe are we getting by having space - that's admittedly gorgeous - but no one sees it but us.' The answer was if we don't have to, why should we?
You considered a historic building in Tampa, but then found this spot. What do you love about it?
When I walked into this space, I thought this is like a jewel box version of what I wanted to do in Tampa with the historic building. Why not start small once, why not jump off a lower cliff? And overall, this entire floor is less than we were paying for a very small corporate space in Tampa.
So you now have the perfect vehicle to manage your diverse interests.
It goes back to my passions. I love the passion and energy about people building community. ... Being around that is so exciting and enriching to me and makes me a better business person, a better lawyer. I want to create the opportunity to have that.
Tina is a veteran so she's hoping we get a lot of veterans. I'm hoping we get a lot of women entrepreneurs and people that are into science and environment, ocean tech, geek chic. Will that happen? We're at the front door of a new venture. Who knows?
The idea is that it will tie together. I'll be able to use the expertise I've developed in my own business as a lawyer to advise people who are here to the extent they want to be advised. It's not like it's mandatory, you must talk to the lawyer, but it'll be here as an opportunity.
Why is community and collaboration so important to you?
I come from a place where there was always more than enough. Abundance. And all we needed to do was to combine our energies to create more. I like creating and the projects that have been most successful in my legal career have been the ones that, by facilitating a physical structure or structures, you create a space where community can happen. Community is about people taking their energy, putting it together and coming up with something bigger than themselves. That's basically what drives me.
Contact Ernest Hooper at ehooper@tampabay.com. Follow him @hoop4you.
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