When Smolen & Roytman office manager Angelina Hayes claims that no two days of her job are the same, she means it. On a recent week, she made arrangements for two Irish mechanics to fly to the U.S. to work on double-decker buses owned by the firm’s partners, managed the monthly balance sheet and leveraged her former career as an electrician to repair a firm property.
“I don’t know how to describe what I do—I just do everything,” explains Hayes. “I handle the daily operations of the business and the firm’s financials and I try to make our attorneys’ lives easier so that they can focus on making our clients successful.”
Rewiring Her Future
Hayes gravitated toward the construction and legal industries at a young age, but her path toward the law took a circuitous route. The Wagoner, Oklahoma native gave birth to her first child at age 18, and raised three sons on her own. After her divorce, she returned to school to study as an electrician. “Before that, I was literally scared to plug in my vacuum,” Hayes recalls.
For eight years, up until the 2008 housing market crash, Hayes worked as a licensed electrical contractor, wiring houses and commercial properties. After the bottom fell out of the market, she decided to pursue her other passion—law. “I’ve always loved the law and I thrive in this environment because every day brings some new challenge to solve,” she says.
The Right Call
In 2023, after a few years of remote work that she found “incredibly isolating,” Hayes saw an opening for an accounting role at Smolen & Roytman. “I called up a lawyer I used to work for and asked him about Dan [Smolen] and Oleg [Roytman],” recalls Hayes. “He said they were really good and that I should consider the position.”
Beyond the Balance Sheet
The legal profession provides Hayes numerous insights—perhaps none more profound than the need for empathy and understanding for incarcerated individuals. “As a society, we often think that people in jail deserve what they’re getting,” laments Hayes.
Yet many outside the field don’t realize basic human rights (food, water, medication) are sometimes withheld. One case—“the cookie queen”—hit Hayes particularly hard. A baker with lupus in Norman, Oklahoma, Shannon Hanchett, landed in jail after a psychotic break. Less than two weeks later, after receiving no medication, she died of heart failure. “That could have been any of us,” Hayes says.
During her downtime, Hayes enjoys spending time with her sons and daughter-in-law and animals on the family farm, as well as kayaking, camping, hiking and paddle boarding—even though she broke her knee on her last go-round. “I just love it so much,” she says.
Fortunately, Hayes also feels the same way about her job, saying “I’m so proud that I get to be here every day.”
