Norton Rose Fulbright litigation attorney Nicole Lynn was on a commercial airline flight to Lexington, Ky., in late April to be with her client when a potentially life-changing verdict came in.

“There were only four people on the flight,” she said. “I almost didn’t go because of the coronavirus, but I felt I really needed to be there with him when this incredibly important announcement was made.”

At 9:40 p.m. on Thursday, April 23, Lynn, her client and his family were together in the living room when they — and hundreds of thousands of others watching live — learned which team would select her client.

“With the 10th pick in the 2020 NFL draft, the Cleveland Browns select … Jedrick Wills, tackle, Alabama,” NFL Commission Roger Goodell said to a live audience on ESPN.

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Seated in a chair 6 feet from her client and his mother, Lynn threw her arms into the air.

“It was incredibly exciting,” she said. “I wish Jedrick could have been in Las Vegas in the green room when he was selected and able to experience that celebration, but I tried to make it as good of an experience as possible despite COVID-19.”

“Never in a million years would I have thought I would have a first-round draft pick, let alone a Top 10 pick in back-to-back years,” she said.

The next morning, Lynn was on a flight back to Houston to be with another client for another major decision.

“On the plane, I was working on a motion in a case,” Lynn, who also represents New Jersey Jets defensive end Quinnen Williams, recalled. “I may have been an agent to a first-round draft pick, but I also have to get a motion to compel finished for another client.”

At 31, Lynn is a phenomenon, the legal profession’s equivalent of Deion Sanders, who played in an NFL game one afternoon in 1992 and a World Series game that evening.

A fourth-year associate in the litigation section of the global corporate law firm Norton Rose Fulbright in Houston, Lynn is also a sports agent with Lil Wayne’s Young Money agency — one of the few female African American sports agents in the U.S. and the only Black woman to represent a Top 10 NFL draft choice.

As a former financial analyst at Morgan Stanley, Lynn has her Series 7 and Series 63 certifications through FINRA. She is now a duly certified agent of the NFL and the NBA.

For several hours a day, she represents financial institutions, insurance firms and energy companies in securities litigation, breach of contract claims and other complex litigation matters. During the rest of the day, she is an agent advising 15 professional football players, two college coaches, three professional softball players, a ballet dancer and a rapper.

Twice the commitment

Colleagues at the law firm are amazed at Lynn’s commitment to both professions.

“Nicole has been able to do both and do them well, and I don‘t know how she does it,” saidpartner Andrew Price. “I get emails from Nicole at all hours of the night. She has never let being an agent affect her work at the firm.”

When Lynn arrived back in Houston April 24, she met with yet another client, University of Oklahoma quarterback Jalen Hurts, who that evening was selected in the second round of the NFL draft by the Philadelphia Eagles. A couple of hours later, she was on the phone with a third client, University of Arkansas defensive tackle McTelvin Agim, who was chosen by the Denver Broncos in the third round.

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“I am 100 percent committed to my law firm and I am 100 percent committed to being a sports agent,” she said. “They are both full-time jobs.”

Born in Wisconsin, Lynn moved to Tulsa, Okla., with her mother when she was one. Her father wasn’t around much. Her mother was young and struggled to provide for her and her younger brother, who was murdered in 2012.

“At the age of eight, my biggest concern was what was I going to eat the next day. I wore the same clothes to school. I slept in a car. It was a real-life struggle,” Lynn told a conference of aspiring women leaders in 2018. “I lived in homes with no water, no gas and no electricity.”

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“I wasn’t just the poor kid in school,” she said. “I was the poorest. I knew my way out of poverty was through education. I made sure everything I did in high school was to get to college, even without the help of parents.”

As a teen, she applied to and was accepted at a magnet school, where she excelled. A guidance counselor pushed her to attend the University of Oklahoma, where she became friends with some of the college’s football players who had similar backgrounds to hers.

“They grew up with rags, and then they get drafted in the NFL and they turn into riches,” she said. But more than 70 percent of NFL players go broke or file for bankruptcy, she said. “Unfortunately, they go back to rags. That so much bothered me.”

Lynn initially thought she wanted to be a financial adviser for athletes. But then realized agents had the most influence. So, she did a six-month internship at National Football League’s Players Association, where she became an expert on NFL benefits.

“I wanted to have an expertise that other agents did not have,” she told a magazine in 2019. “I wanted to know every single opportunity and benefit provided to NFL players during their playing time as well as after they finished. I think this knowledge set me apart.”

In 2012, after 10 months as a Wall Street analyst in New York, Lynn went to law school at the University of Oklahoma, where she graduated with honors in 2015.

Clerking coincidence

During the summer of her second year of law school, Lynn did a summer clerkship at Norton Rose Fulbright in Houston, which coincidentally represents the NFLPA.

“I took Nicole to lunch one day and I saw that she was very driven and that she had a definite plan for her career,” Price said. “She told me she wanted to come to the firm, but that she wanted a dual career plan. … I must admit that I was concerned at first, but she has proven that she can do it.”

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In 2015, Lynn notched another credential on her resume by clerking for U.S. District Judge Robin Cauthron of the Western District of Oklahoma.

“Judge Cauthron is a huge football fan,” Lynn said. “I learned so much from her. I cannot overstate the importance of the impact she had on me.”

In 2016, she moved to Houston to be an associate at Norton Rose Fulbright.

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“I wanted to be a litigator and Norton Rose Fulbright is a strong litigation firm,” she said. “Plus, it definitely doesn’t hurt my agent goals to be a lawyer at such a prominent law firm.”

That same year, she started calling scores of sports agents around the country seeking an interview. None, she said, returned her calls. Except PlayersRep agent Ken Sarnoff, who happened to represent some players she knew.

Even Sarnoff, she said, told Lynn her dream of being a sports agent was far-fetched. The only way Sarnoff said he would even meet with Lynn is if she could get him a meeting with then Texas Tech offensive tackle Le’Raven Clark, who was predicted to be a first-round NFL draft pick in 2016.

“I hung up the phone and then called him back 45 minutes later. He asked if I had another question,” she said. “I said, ‘Yeah, I just want to know if you are available to meet with Le’Raven tomorrow. He’s available at 4 p.m.”

A week later, PlayersRep hired Lynn as its first woman agent, putting her in an exclusive group, as less than 5 percent of the 900 certified sports agents in the U.S. are women.

Breaking in

Lynn admits her struggle to be a successful sports agent was only starting.

“I had no clients, and you are not a sports agent without a client,” she said.

Lynn said she emailed and texted several potential clients, but none responded. The other method is simply showing up at college football games in hopes of meeting with the player. She decided to focus on one player, learning everything about him.

“On my 26th birthday, I drove six hours to see this kid and I was listening to Beyonce and pumping myself up,” she said in a speech accepting the 2018 Salesforce Women of the Year Award. “I arrive and I’m waiting after the game for the guys to come out, and I’m looking at his picture on my phone because I had never met him.”

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Lynn said it started raining.

“I’m standing there soaking wet, my frickin’ mascara is running down my face. My face is poofing up because, obviously, black girl problems,” she said in the speech. “And then high heels start sinking in the mud.”

That was the exact moment the player, whom she declined to identify, walked out. Lynn said she got his attention and told him that she’s an agent and wanted to represent him.

“His face, it was kind of like he was on the show ‘Punked.’ He starts looking around and in the bushes for a camera or something,” she said. “He started laughing and just walked off.”.

Lynn signed her first client later that year, and the successes have kept coming.

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In 2017, rapper and impresario Lil Wayne’s Young Money APAA Sports Agency bought PlayersRep. Two years later, Quinnen Williams hired Lynn as his agent after watching the 2018 video of her accepting the award and telling the story about waiting in the rain.

“Getting my first, first-round draft pick was huge, and getting my second first-round selection was equally as important,” she said. “The difference between me and other agents is that I am there with my athletes every step of the way. I am there when my clients get married or when their first kid is baptized.

“I wear many hats,” she said. “I’m an agent. I’m a life coach. I’m a manager. I’m an apartment shopper.”

Lynn said practicing corporate business litigation and being a sports agent have similar job responsibilities, including doing the due diligence and hard work that is required to zealously advocate for the client.

“But my law firm clients are very different from my agency clients,” she said. “The athletes require much more day-to-day hand-holding than do corporate business leaders. One of my clients is 20, has never had a job, never written a check. Many of them have no idea about how much to tip at a nice restaurant. It is my job to teach them these things.”

Both the legal profession and the world of sports agents clearly struggle with diversity issues, though the sports agency practice may be even worse, she said.

“I am frequently the only African American woman in the room,” she said. “At the end of the day, I’m a Black girl. It doesn’t matter how successful I am. It doesn’t matter how many clients I have. It doesn’t get easier and I am still a Black girl in this industry. With that barrier, I have to navigate in a different way. How? By saying (to myself), ‘Get over it.’ I don’t make excuses and I don’t let the barriers navigate where I go.”