Educational Background
Ms. Harrell was awarded her Juris Doctor degree from Tulane Law School in New Orleans, Louisiana in May of 1993. While at Tulane she excelled in courtroom advocacy and trial techniques, earning induction into the Order of Barristers, the Callaghan Book Award for Excellence in Oral Advocacy, the position of Administrative Justice of the Moot Court Board, and an invitation to participate in the New Orleans chapter of the American Inn of Court. She was named Captain of Tulane's National Trial Team and won both the Intraschool Appellate Competition (briefwriting and oral argument) and the Intraschool Trial Competition.
She was selected by the Tulane Law faculty to serve as a Senior Fellow in the Legal Research and Writing Program, where she taught first-year law students the fundamentals of briefwriting. She served as President of Tulane's Public Interest Law Foundation, as a student attorney in Tulane's Criminal Law Clinic representing low-income clients, and as a volunteer at the Free Tutoring Program of New Orleans as well as the Orleans Indigent Defender Program. She was active in the Project for Older Prisoners, a student organization working to transition elderly prisoners out of the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola in order to make room for younger, more violent offenders. She also earned a Certificate in Environmental Studies from Tulane Law's prestigious environmental law program. Ms. Harrell worked her way through law school in various jobs such as restaurant server, grocery cashier, substitute teacher, and federal, state, and private firm law clerk. Visit Tulane Law School's Web Site.
Her undergraduate degree was awarded from Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service in Washington, D.C., where she earned a Bachelor of Science in Foreign Service, specializing in International Politics. After graduation she worked in the corporate marketing division at First Union National Bank's headquarters in Charlotte, North Carolina, and served as a volunteer in the Guardian Ad Litem Program there, before deciding to pursue a law degree at Tulane.
Personal
Ms. Harrell is a Brevard County native. She was born in Cocoa Beach and is a graduate of Palm Bay High School. Her late father served as an engineer with the space program, and her mother recently retired after thirty-eight years of teaching elementary school in Brevard.
Ms. Harrell has been married to a law enforcement officer for over fourteen years. Through her husband, as well as through her direct experiences as a former prosecutor and in private practice, she enjoys strong ties with and affection for the extended law enforcement community.
As a child of divorce who is now the mother of three young children and the stepmother of three, Ms. Harrell is personally familiar with many of the issues and concerns encountered by her family law clients. She is not "pro-divorce" but rather "pro-divorced people"; her goal is to help clients navigate the process in a way that will best insulate their children and finances from harm, and to help them emerge from divorce with dignity, security, and a positive outlook for the future.
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