This post
was originally published by the D1 Blog, The Dispute Resolver, on May 20, 2025
by Jessica Knox. Link to original post: https://abaconstructionforumdivision1.blogspot.com/2025/05/meet-forums-in-house-counsel-amanda.html
Company: The Lemoine Company
Email: amanda.messa@1lemoine.com
Website: 1lemoine.com
Law School: LSU Paul M. Hebert Law Center (JD 2005)
States
Where Company Operates/Does Business: LEMOINE is a Louisiana based ENR
Top-400 Contractor since 2011 with a core practice in commercial construction
as well as service lines in disaster services, program management services,
infrastructure and fuel logistics.
Q:
Describe your background and the path you took to becoming in-house counsel.
A: After
law school, I was privileged to work under some great litigators and mentors at
the law firms of Wiener, Weiss & Madison and later, Phelps
Dunbar. I ultimately spent the majority of my litigation career at
Phelps where I focused my practice on construction litigation. In
early 2021, LEMOINE reached out about an opportunity to become their first
general counsel that I could not pass up. The last 4 years have been
both rewarding and challenging. I’ve worked to build structure and process
around our legal and contracts departments as we have experienced tremendous
growth.
Q: How
does working in-house compare or differ from firm life?
A: I
think the difference that surprises people the most is I definitely work more
than I did when I worked at a law firm. I just don’t have the billables to
prove it! Another key difference is I often don’t get the opportunity to
collaborate and research issues comprehensively like I used to. The days of
creating a research memo are certainly gone. My focus has to be on coming up
with the best practical solution to help our project teams keep things moving
forward.
Q: How
and when do you use outside counsel?
A: While
I still enjoy a healthy sparing match from time to time, a general rule of
thumb for me is when something starts to escalate towards litigation (or I
start to get aggressive emails), it’s time to call my litigator
friends. From a capacity standpoint, I can’t be tied up for extended
periods of time with hearings or depositions, and I need those valuable extra
resources a law firm has to offer.
Q: What
are the work/business-related issues that tend to keep you up at
night?
A: It’s
the unknowns that keep me up at night – i.e. what new legislation (or
currently, executive order) is coming down the pipeline that we need to be
aware of and take into consideration as we expand in new geographic areas and
service lines. I rely heavily on firm blogs/updates to keep
leadership and our project teams up to speed on new industry issues.
Q: What
qualities or characteristics do you look for in outside counsel?
A: Responsive
and practical – Because of the pace at which things move in-house and the
number of emails I get each day, I truly value those outside lawyers we work
with that timely respond with succinct, practical guidance and
updates. If I’ve gone to outside counsel it’s because I’ve likely
already run through the pros and cons and I need a recommendation based on
their experience.
Q: What
advice would you give to outside counsel about how to meet or even exceed their
client's expectations?
A: Spend
some extra time (even if it’s non-billable) getting to know your client’s
business – the specific industry they operate within, their leadership
structure and the way they approach litigation and business issues. If
you’re giving legal advice in a vacuum without that background information,
it’s not going to be as effective.
Q: What
is the biggest problem that you see when working with outside counsel?
A: I’m
still only a few years removed from the litigation practice so I remember how
easy it can be to go down a rabbit hole on a particular legal issue. But
from an in-house perspective, we often have a very limited budget to spend and
countless issues that will come up throughout the year. On occasion,
outside counsel will spend a lot of time on an issue that doesn’t necessarily
warrant that allocation of resources from our end. I’ve tried to be more
intentional about communicating expectations/goals/budgetary restrictions at
the outset, but it’s great to proactively address those issues as outside
counsel even if in-house counsel doesn’t raise them.
Q: What
are some of your interests or hobbies?
A: Baseball
and books! 13U baseball consumes a LOT of our weekends these days and
gets me away from the computer screen. It’s therapeutic for me to be
outside watching our son (Wyatt) and his teammates compete in travel baseball
tournaments. Our daughter (Jules) has even started to join in on the fun and is
learning to record the plays in game changer. In the last 9 months, I’ve
also taken up reading for the first time in over 20+ years. It’s been a great
way to keep me on the elliptical machine longer and provides another escape
from the constant flow of work emails.