Last year, Rafael Langer-Osuna concluded that to be the most successful lawyer they could be, it was time to come out to their colleagues.

"One aspect of deepening ones' legal practice and career really requires you to be who you are," said Langer-Osuna, a litigation partner in Squire Patton Boggs' San Francisco and Miami offices who is nonbinary, meaning their gender expression falls outside the categories of man and woman. With this revelation in mind, they decided at the end of last year it was time to tell their colleagues and start bringing their true self to work.

Langer-Osuna, who uses they/them pronouns, isn't aware of other nonbinary attorneys in Big Law. The litigator hopes that by speaking out on the topic, they will provide meaningful representation in the courtroom as well as in the office.

We spoke with Langer-Osuna earlier this year to discuss their decision to come out at Squire, the impact their actions have had on the firm's policies for transgender and gender nonconforming staff members, and the change they hope to see in the legal industry.

This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

Tell me about yourself.

I came to the realization about three to four years ago that not everyone else struggles with issues of gender identity. That might sound obvious, but it wasn't—that no, actually not everyone is wondering about their gender, not everyone is feeling like they are shifting male-feeling to female-feeling within the span of the same conversation.

I identify as nonbinary for a variety of reasons, and I also very much identify between genders, never moving wholly from one to another, which introduces its own complexities. This is just the truth of who I am, which in and of itself is hard to figure out because there are not many narratives out there for nonbinary people—they do exist, but they're very few and far between in the mainstream.

In the workplace, they/them pronouns is the preference for me, and when someone uses my correct pronouns, it's always nice to feel that respect. I'm also a dad to two teenage boys. I live in the Bay Area, and am also a bit of an adventurer and an environmentalist.

What was your experience coming out at your firm?

I realized I was having an experience that was causing me to distance myself and not be fully who I am in the workplace because my colleagues had no idea what's going on, and I realized I'm too old for this, too old to not be who I am. After recognizing that this is a lifelong journey that I'm working through that is not shared by the majority of people around me, I came to the conclusion that I wanted to be who I am, fully, with people I work with. A huge component of Big Law is business development, and its underlying component is building relationships with people. It's easier to develop strong relationships with people if you're comfortable being who you are.

That was sort of the arc that led to me coming out at the end of last year. In preparation, I studied how other people had done this and worked with a nonbinary support group to formulate a plan. I have an ever-evolving, ever-expanding group of people to talk to, which started with firm management, the diversity coordinator and HR. Then, it expanded out to the office managing partner and lawyers I work most closely with, until I got to a point of being sufficiently out and then paused—just letting things lie for a little while. Eventually, I called or visited with other people I knew I wanted to talk with personally before representing myself fully.

Conversations with clients have been similarly straightforward. I haven't been really asking people to use my pronouns directly. If people do use them, I'm very pleased, but I am cognizant of the idea that I'm a service profession, so to a certain extent I just take what I can get and am very pleased when people use my pronouns, but beyond that, I just let it go.

When you came out, how did the firm respond?

Of course, it was terrifying—I haven't been out for the majority of my life because there is a lot of internalized transphobia [in society], and I feared what peoples' reactions would be when they saw my true self. Also, there were positives and negatives to consider: there are all sorts of stereotypes out there, which I hope to confront by being a new data point for people.

At the same time, one aspect of deepening ones' legal practice and career really requires you to be who you are. In my current environment, at Squire Patton Boggs, everyone has fully embraced my identity and has been really lovely. Personally, the best aspect of coming out has been the degree of comfort I now feel, and there is no way to adequately describe what a relief it is.

You've worked within the firm on some initiatives to affirm the identities of transgender and nonbinary lawyers and staff. Can you tell me about them?

For the last several years, there have been transgender guidelines for HR, but it wasn't a personnel-facing document, so although it was a fantastic guideline on gender transition and gender identity policy in the U.S., it wasn't forward-facing. So, when I started reaching out to my circle of people to come out, one of the first conversations I had was with someone in HR, which ended up being the perfect timing, because they were in the process of formulating a policy for transgender employees, and they wanted my feedback. What they gave me was quite good and was taken from best practices from the Human Rights Campaign and other organizations.

One of the things I was able to add from my perspective was making sure the term transgender was used as an umbrella term that includes gender nonconforming, nonbinary and nonstandard gender identities. Another big piece I added was a right to privacy when it came to putting preferred pronouns in an email signature—that has to be the preference of the employee. That was especially important to me and my personal trajectory, because had you asked me four years ago to put my pronouns into an email block, I would have put he/him/his and felt cowardly about it. It's important that no one is forced to take up that mantle if they don't want to.

Another tenant of the policy is now, after someone who is going to transition contacts an initial person at the firm, the idea is that the firm will then appoint a formal point of contact to support that person. This is huge because … even as nonbinary identities become more mainstream, coming out is not so much painful as it is exhausting. Communications about coming out are emotionally taxing: there's the stress that comes up beforehand as well as stress during the conversations. Having a point of contact allows a person to defer those conversations and direct colleagues to someone who can explain what's going on without making the transitioning person feel emotionally drained.

The firm readily took my input to update our existing policy, which was previously sort of more tailored to transgender people, to include the broader umbrella of gender identity.

How did this experience shape the way you think about your own identity as a nonbinary person practicing at a Big Law firm?

We are doing this interview because I think more representation needs to be out there, and this is a time where I am actually hopeful that representation will be meaningful. I don't know of any other nonbinary attorneys in Big Law. I'm aware of nonbinary attorneys at smaller firms and shops. So I think it's a really big deal that we can break that barrier. Being gender-nonconforming as a litigator is not uncomplicated: litigation is about sharing narratives and stories and presenting the more believable version of the truth by having a story fit together and work.

Part of that story is the lawyer: they're the narrator putting together a picture of themselves that should support the truth they're telling. As it stands, being nonbinary has the possibility of distracting from that story, and I'm trying to leverage my position in Big Law and make it less likely that this will be something a judge may find distracting.

The whole time I've been here, Squire Patton Boggs has been fantastic in offering background messages of acceptance. Earlier in my career, the firm supported me representing a transgender woman pro bono, and our Washington, D.C., office represents and supports a number of LGBTQ organizations. That background is really important for laying down these markers for acceptance that can really facilitate the feeling that someone like me will be embraced—and I have been.