8 minute read
TAKURA NYAMFUKUDZA
BY SHARON MATCHETTE
Growing up in Zimbabwe, Takura Nyamfukudza’s career path was set. When he was 12, Takura’s mom, a nurse; and his sister, a dentist, decided that young Takura would be a doctor. That determination continued unchallenged through the family’s immigration to the United States when Takura was 16, through his time in boarding school … and right up until his first biology class in his freshman year of college.
BY SHARON MATCHETTE
It quickly became clear to Takura (Moore Class, 2013) that his academic passion resided somewhere other than with Biology 101. “I passed,” he reported, “but I had zero interest.” In his second semester at Indiana University-Purdue University, he switched his major to political science. Takura’s interest in a legal career was sparked when he sat in on some law-related classes at his undergraduate school. Upon the recommendation of a friend, Takura checked out WMU-Cooley and soon enrolled.
A calling to the law and service is a bit of a family tradition. In addition to his mom and sister serving in the health fields, Takura has an aunt who is a solicitor and barrister in England. His maternal grandfather in Zimbabwe served as an interpreter in pre-independence court, imbuing Takura with the importance of “always doing the right thing.”
Takura’s choice in law schools turned out to be a perfect fit as WMU-Cooley was willing to work with Takura’s 12year career in the U.S. Army. With six years as an enlisted infantryman, six as a commissioned officer, and two deployments, Takura found himself balancing the demands on his time. The U.S. Army, of course, doesn’t coordinate its deployments to work neatly with a law school calendar, and Takura sometimes
found himself making up classwork, catching up on his law school path, and overall just persevering to get the missions accomplished.
Upon graduation, Takura set about finding a job in personal injury law, a field he’d considered based on his law school experiences. Not finding this a particularly receptive field, Takura shared his frustrations with WMU-Cooley Associate Dean and Professor Amy Timmer with whom he’d kept in touch during deployments with the Army and after graduation.
SETTING A NEW COURSE
Timmer arranged a meeting with fellow graduate, Mary Chartier (Johnson Class, 2002), and the direction of Takura’s law career immediately changed. Takura said that Timmer, who also knew Chartier, played legal “matchmaker,” setting the two up for a meet-and-greet to see where it would go.
Where it went, laughed Takura, was a fourround intensive interview process like no other. Takura said the process started out with a “Do we like this dude?” interview, followed by a “This is what we do” session, then a third meeting with a timed review of facts where he had to write a motion on the spot, and finally, a fourth session where he had to argue the motion.
Finally, Takura revealed, referencing a popular reality TV series, it was “Here’s the rose; do you accept?”
He did indeed.
A CAREER IS LAUNCHED
Takura, fresh out of law school, was still convinced at that point that he wanted a career as a personal injury plaintiff’s attorney. Chartier, however, could see something in Takura that she knew would be perfect for her team, and a career in criminal law was born.
In July 2013, Takura joined the criminal law department of what was then Alane and Chartier, a combination family law-criminal law firm, as a litigator. “Immediately, I fell in love” with criminal law, he recalled. “Even for more money, I wouldn’t want to do anything else.” In July 2017, Chartier decided to transplant the criminal law department into its own firm to continue focusing solely on criminal law, and Takura became a partner and litigator with Chartier and Nyamfukudza, located in Okemos and Grand Rapids, Michigan.
The path to a law degree around military deployments might seem like a long one to some, but the timing was completely on target, Takura recalled. If he’d graduated on a traditional schedule, the job that he now finds perfect wouldn’t even have existed. Because of the extra time Takura took in school to accommodate his Army career, however, he landed in the job market at exactly the same time that Chartier was looking to add on. Takura calls their firm a unicorn because what they’ve put together is so unusual. The firm is small, but they do mighty work, traveling throughout the state to wherever their clients need them. It takes just the right mix of personalities to produce a team that works as well together as Takura, Chartier and the firm’s other staff do, he said. It’s such a unique legal ecosystem that each person in the firm has to fit just right – with the same dedication to righting wrongs, as well as the ability to project a calmness and strength to help clients through a tough time.
“We take a team approach,” he explained. “We all roll our sleeves up.”
One of the advantages of being part of a small team is the swiftness of being able to make a difference. Bigger firms can afford to park a new associate at a desk and it can be a long time before they see the inside of a courtroom, Takura said. As soon as he teamed up with Chartier in 2013, however, Takura immediately had “boots on the ground” and was practicing before judges and juries.
Criminal law is an often high-stakes battle with tension and pressure in abundance. Takura takes it all in stride, however, and credits his 12 years in the military with conditioning him for the environment.
And carry on, they do. While Takura and his colleagues take their responsibilities very seriously, they know they have to strike a balance for the clients who come to them in what’s likely the worst time in their lives.
“They come to us to help them,” Takura said. “We are positive without giving false hope. We provide peace of mind,” he added, explaining that they work at easing the stress so that everyone involved can better proceed.
While many in the legal field are happy to keep alive a “new normal” of pandemic-inspired online proceedings, Takura instead is glad to be back in the courtroom.
“With anything involving witness testimony, I don’t want to do Zoom,” he said. “Zoom court is mentally exhausting in a way that being in court is not. I’m an extrovert,” he explained, given to gestures that don’t translate well on screen. And, he added, “there is so much you can’t pick up on if not in court.”
SARTORICAL SPLENDOR
Takura is known for three things – his skill in the courtroom, his passion for fighting for his clients … and his ever-present bow tie. How did it all get started?
“I was going to this annual event – One Hundred Black Men of Indianapolis,” he recalled. He wanted to make a good impression and latched on to the idea of a bow tie. “It’s impossible to get food on a bow tie,” he reasoned with a chuckle. “So I got on YouTube and I spent HOURS learning how to tie it.”
In a persistence synonymous with his work in court, Takura recalled, “I was not going to let this piece of cloth defeat me.” Takura won the battle, and the bow tie became his trademark. It’s so much a part of him that people he encounters in such places as the grocery store and the gym say they hardly recognize him without the tie!
“There are much worse things to be known for,” he said with his ready laugh.
AWARDS COME EARLY
Takura, now 40, has already racked up a few awards in his career. He was named the State Bar of Michigan’s Regeana Myrick Outstanding Young Lawyer Award in 2015, an Up and Coming Lawyer by Michigan Lawyers Weekly, was given the Rising Star Award and the President’s Award from the Davis-Dunnings Bar Association, and the Top 5 Under 35 Award given annually by the Ingham County Bar Association’s Young Lawyers Section. He was also named a Super Lawyer five years in a row.
Accolades from clients are even more numerous than the awards, and from the testimonials on the firm’s website, it’s clear that the clients aren’t just grateful for Takura’s and the firm’s hard work and achieving the best possible outcomes, but for the support, straight-forward approach, caring and even some levity to ease the burden. Friendships are often forged and Takura frequently hears from clients who keep him updated on their progress in life.
He has frequently served as a guest speaker and a presenter multiple times, and even served as a lecturer on Criminal Law and Procedure for the People’s Law School.
A WORD (OR TWO) TO THE WISE …
Takura is a natural and generous mentor. He tells WMU-Cooley students, “Go see lawyers do what they do – in district, circuit, upper courts. There’s what the books say, and then there’s real life.” He also tells them that classroom learning is good, but classroom learning from faculty who’ve been actual practitioners like they are at WMU-Cooley is so much better. “It’s impossible to overstate the importance of that,” he said. He also explains the importance in a law setting of being able to think and adapt quickly.
Chartier & Nyamfukudza, P.L.C. team
