{"id":3714,"date":"2024-09-03T21:43:47","date_gmt":"2024-09-03T21:43:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/lawmag\/?p=3714"},"modified":"2024-09-05T18:56:16","modified_gmt":"2024-09-05T18:56:16","slug":"ebony-thompson-brings-serious-energy-to-the-role-of-baltimore-city-solicitor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/lawmag\/ebony-thompson-brings-serious-energy-to-the-role-of-baltimore-city-solicitor\/","title":{"rendered":"Ebony Thompson Brings Serious Energy to the Role of Baltimore City Solicitor"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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By Christianna McCausland<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/h4>\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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\"\"<\/p>

When F.\u202f Scott Fitzgerald said, \u201cThere are no second acts in American lives,\u201d he clearly hadn\u2019t bet on <\/span>Ebony Thompson, J.D. \u201913.<\/span><\/b> Thompson, 46, did not even graduate from law school until she was 34. Yet today she is Baltimore\u2019s first woman and first openly gay City Solicitor, sworn in last January, and she has already successfully tackled some of the city\u2019s most pressing issues, including vacant housing and ghost guns.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

After graduating from Brown University with a degree in economics, Thompson took a job at UBS in New York City. But after watching the second plane hit the World Trade Center on 9\/11, she realized finance was not her passion. Instead, she went into real estate. \u201cI did well, but something was missing,\u201d she says. Through law, she realized she could bring together her interests in real estate, finance and technology. As a career changer who was born and raised in northwest Baltimore, UBalt Law made sense.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

\u201cI knew I would get the knowledge and resources to immediately practice law,\u201d she says.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

After graduation, she went to Venable LLP, where she was happily heading down the partner track. Although she\u2019d worked on cases with Venable\u2019s chairman, Jim Shea, she was \u201cshocked\u201d when he asked her to become his deputy when he was named Baltimore City Solicitor. When Shea retired, Thompson was his pick for his successor.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

\u201cShe is smart, she has good judgment, she\u2019s very personable,\u201d says Shea of Thompson. \u201cShe\u2019s very strong-willed and can face difficult situations calmly and effectively.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

He adds that while Thompson has a wealth of experience as a lawyer, \u201cshe brings a lot of diverse life experience to the work she does.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

While the post meant a major pay cut \u2014 no small thing for a single mother of three young daughters \u2014 Thompson says it felt like the right time for her to give back to her hometown. It also brought Thompson back to the earliest days of her legal career: as a high school student at Baltimore City College, she was a Law Links intern in the same legal department she now leads.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

\u201cThey gave me my start, so it was incredibly difficult to say no,\u201d she laughs.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

To say her job now is more complex than in those youthful internship days would be understatement. Thompson immediately tackled the city\u2019s vacant housing problem, which she describes as \u201ca public health issue.\u201d Leaning on her passion for tech solutions, she introduced blockchain technology as a way to combat the challenge, making Baltimore the first municipality in the country to do so. Using blockchain and the newly dedicated In Rem docket with the Circuit Court, the city is in the process of creating an immutable ledger that streamlines the foreclosure process on vacant homes and passes the savings on to residents and redevelopment investors. Vacancy rates have dropped from roughly 17,000 to 13,500.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

\u201cNot only does this combat vacant housing, it also expedites the renovation process and lays the foundation for fractional ownership for those who have been shut out of homeownership and community revitalization,\u201d she explains.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

She\u2019s also proud of the $1.2 million settlement with Polymer-80, the primary manufacturer of ghost guns. While the money was a nice boon, Thompson says the injunctive measures on neighboring jurisdictions with less stringent laws will make a measurable difference in the city\u2019s fight against violent crime. She also helped build the legal framework for the Squeegee Collaborative, balancing the First Amendment rights of young people with the need for public safety, and she stood up for consumer protections by drafting new local ordinances that prevent unfair trade practices.<\/span><\/p>

\u2018Always on 100\u2019<\/h4>

With a demanding home and work life it\u2019s good she has, by admission, a lot of energy. All three of her daughters are swimmers (like their mother) and in addition to juggling swim meets, Thompson makes time to work out daily. She returned to karate, which she did as a young person, after breaking her leg in a women\u2019s tackle football game. (Her father, a black belt, is her sensei.) She lives within walking distance of her childhood home and weekends are all about entertaining friends and family.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

\u201cPeople joke that I\u2019m always on 100, but I\u2019m excited that there\u2019s always something I can do to make the city better, to solve an issue, or to bring something to implementation,\u201d she says.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

Thompson has a visceral understanding of the importance of law and equal protection borne out of her own experience. At Brown, she joined the U.S. Marine Corps as a reservist and went on to Officer Candidate School, graduating first in her class. Yet this was the era of \u201cDon\u2019t ask, don\u2019t tell.\u201d\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

\u201cThat was a very challenging time to go through, knowing that if I said I was gay it would all be taken away,\u201d she remembers. She also had all three children via IVF. Although she had a pre-existing medical condition that should have qualified her for insurance coverage for the procedure, as she had not met the criteria of trying naturally for 12 months with a heterosexual partner, her coverage was denied.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

\u201cThose are the things that motivate me, seeing the real-life implications of the laws you are trying to pass,\u201d she says.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

She is also motivated by the people she is entrusted to serve, a big change from her Venable days when the lawyer\u2019s responsibility was solely to the client. Now the \u201cclient\u201d is the city, which includes the people of Baltimore.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

\u201cYou have to challenge yourself to often find the best solution for the most people,\u201d she explains. \u201cThat has been a big but a good challenge, because having to think about that every day keeps the people top of mind.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Christianna McCausland <\/strong>is a writer based in Baltimore.
Photo by Larry Canner<\/strong>.
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By Christianna McCausland\u00a0 When F.\u202f Scott Fitzgerald said, \u201cThere are no second acts in American lives,\u201d he clearly hadn\u2019t bet on Ebony Thompson, J.D. \u201913. Thompson, 46, did not even graduate from law school until she was 34. Yet today she is Baltimore\u2019s first woman and first openly gay City Solicitor, sworn in last January, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3596,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/lawmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3714"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/lawmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/lawmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/lawmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3596"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/lawmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3714"}],"version-history":[{"count":67,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/lawmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3714\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4846,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/lawmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3714\/revisions\/4846"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/lawmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/lawmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/lawmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}