Monique Hayes, of Goldstein & McClintock, and president of the Wilkie D. Ferguson Jr. Bar Association. Courtesy photo

On any given weekday, tucked away in a glossy Miami Tower suite amid a throng of high-rises, is bankruptcy lawyer Monique D. Hayes, a Goldstein & McClintock partner from Liberty City.

And she's on a mission.

“I do this to make money, but I make money in order to be able to take care of people and make my city, Miami, a little bit better. I want people to come here and believe that they can start a business and that they can invest without getting defrauded,” Hayes said.

As a child, Hayes' home life was crowded, buzzing with siblings and extended family, but it was also was marred by violence that followed her family even after they swapped Liberty City for the suburbs.

Her father, originally from Cuba, was shot and killed when she was 13. Hayes also lost her brother to gun violence in 2007, and two twin cousins who were murdered in 2012 and 2013.

“Even though you can move from a place, unless your entire world is able to move from that space, you're not going to be unaffected by it. It doesn't matter if I move to Brickell. If I have a family member that still lives in Liberty City, theres a chance that I'm going to have to go to a funeral next week and see a kid buried,” Hayes said.

For that reason, Hayes said she deliberately didn't practice criminal law.

But she considers herself lucky.

“I had a lot of teachers and women around me that would encourage me and tell me they thought I was smart and that I could do anything I wanted,” she said. “I couldn't have won the lotto to get better mentors.”

Hayes' mentor while in law school at the University of Miami was Patricia Redmond of Stearns Weaver Miller Weissler Alhadeff & Sitterson, widely considered a giant in the bankruptcy world. Hayes also had the chance to learn from civil rights lawyer Marilyn J. Holifield of Holland and Knight in Miami, who took on prison reform and employment litigation in the Deep South for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.

As a young lawyer, Hayes was the first clerk to serve now-Chief Bankruptcy Judge for the Southern District of Florida Laurel Myerson Isicoff.

“To me, you don't just make money to live in a fancy house and have a glamorous lifestyle. It's so that you can do well and do good,” Hayes said.

At Goldstein & McClintock, Hayes specializes in corporate restructuring.

“That's just a fancy word to say business bankruptcy,” she said.

For the past two years, Hayes has focused on developing a practice that encourages innovation and technology to flourish in Miami, helping companies and entrepreneurs to initiate, grow or stabilize their business. She is also president of the Wilkie D. Ferguson Jr. Bar Association, named after another Liberty City figure, the first black judge to serve in the Third District Court of Appeals.

As bar president, her priority is social and economic justice.

“That includes making sure that black lawyers have access and opportunities to have economic independence. That means they can develop clients, have the skills and the resources to have their own book of business. And it also means they can provide legal and advisory services to the community, including the black community, which doesn't often get expert-level legal services,” Hayes said.

The way Hayes sees it, Miami is the “best of all worlds,” and its immigrants are its greatest economic strength.

“So many people come here hungry, literally and figuratively, and they're the innovators. That's the thing about people who don't have anything. They can make anything,” Hayes said.

Hayes entered law school to become an FBI agent, before realizing, “I was not the type of person that would be able to follow orders that well.” She then set her sights on practicing law in the sports and entertainment sector.

Instead, she fell into the bankruptcy field, where “everything happens.”

And as chance would have it, many of the cases Hayes handles are sports- and entertainment-related because several National Football League and National Basketball Association players end up in bankruptcy.

“The statistics are really striking. Because they don't get the financial skills training a lot of the time, they can be susceptible to fraud or mismanaged because of their lifestyle. They're always busy and depending on other people to take care of all of those details,” Hayes said.

One of the biggest cases she's tackled involved picking up the pieces after record producer Lou Pearlman's multi-million-dollar fraud. In addition to promoting “boy bands” like NSYNC and Backstreet Boys, Pearlman ran a phony travel company, which fell apart in 2007.

When Pearlman was arrested, his assets went into a bankruptcy case in which Hayes' client, Soneet Kapila Mukamal, was the trustee.

“I was just praying that I'd have to take a deposition with Justin Timberlake, trying to make up a reason why, 'Oh, I think I need to interview him to find out what happened here,'” Hayes quipped.

But Hayes acknowledges that no matter how far she takes her practice, she can't forget the social issues affecting her immediate community, including gun violence among young people.

“It affects whether businesses are going to want to come here, because they need to feel safe. That's something we all have to be responsible for,” Hayes said.

She believes Miami's problems are multi-layered, stemming from years of disparity and institutionalized racism.

“It's a (disjuncture) that develops after so many generations of blight, lack of opportunity and belief in the American Dream I believe in so much,” she said. “People in some communities have been told and shown that they cant even get a start. They just come to a point where, not only do they not value their life, they don't value life at all because we as a society have given them the impression that their life doesn't have value.”

But ultimately, bankruptcy law has taught Hayes that it's never too late for a new beginning.

“Our country was built on the principle of having a fresh start. Our Founding Fathers funded the Revolutionary War to get independence, but because of that they were in debt,” Hayes said.

If they had kept the British system, Hayes acknowledged, the Founding Fathers would have ended up in debtor's prison. So they wrote bankruptcy laws into the U.S. Constitution.

“One of the principles of this country is that people can take risks, and sometimes they're going to fail. But we cannot put them in prison for that. We need to encourage them. As long as they're being honest and fair, they can make a mistake and start back over. That's my job,” Hayes said.

But according to Hayes, setting a city up for success doesn't require a law degree.

“I don't need to tell you what type of law you need to change, what type of investment you need to make, what type of associations you have,” she said. “All you have to do is be a little bit more human.”

Monique D. Hayes

Born: Miami, 1979

Education: University of Miami School of Law, J.D., 2004; University of South Florida, B.A., 2001

Experience: Goldstein & McClintock, 2017-present; The Hayes Firm, 2016-2017; Genovese, Joblove & Battista, 2007-2015, Law Clerk to U.S. District Judge Laurel M. Isicoff, 2006-2007; Legal Services of Greater Miami, 2004-2006.