March 30, 2023

Meet Animal Lawyer Katie Barnett, the Founder of Barnett Law Office

In this installment of our interview series with the animal lawyers of Barnett Law Office, we're chatting with the firm's namesake attorney and founder Katie Barnett. Check out previous interviews with attorneys Lisa Carestia and Anna Yendes.

Katie's path to becoming an animal lawyer is deeply personal. After Hurricane Katrina, before she became a lawyer,  Katie went to Tylertown, Mississippi, to volunteer at a temporary animal shelter for animals rescued from the storm. 

She came back home to Kansas with one of the dogs who hadn't been claimed—a little terrier who'd been found on top of a roof, in New Orleans's 9th Ward. 

"This tiny, little dog," Katie says. "She was 30 pounds. I brought her home to my apartment, and we were just living life."

Katie named the dog Katrina. A few months after Katie and Katrina settled into life in Katie's apartment in a town outside of Kansas City, Kansas, an animal control officer knocked on the door. Someone had reported that she had a pit bull living in her apartment, and pit bulls were banned under the town's ordinance.

"I've got a complaint that you're harboring a dangerous dog," Katie recalls the officer saying. 

Katie didn't know what the officer was talking about. She wasn't aware of her town's breed-specific legislation, or BSL—laws that ban or regulate dogs by breed or type; pit bulls are the most common type of dog that fall under these flawed, misguided, cruel, and often unconstitutional laws. 

Even if Katie had been aware of the pit bull ban, she had no reason to think that her Katrina would fall under it.

"In my mind, back in 2005, a pit bull was this massive, snarling, crop-eared, dangerous dog," Katie says. "And she kind of looked like a Beagle mix."

The officer looked at Katrina, the little 30-pound hurricane survivor. He said he "didn't know" if Katrina was a pit bull, but that she looked enough like one that she couldn't stay. 

Katie couldn't believe what she was hearing. "'What? You can just come in here and look at my dog and say that I have to get rid of her?'" she says. 

The answer was yes; Katie, Katrina, and Katie's other dog Kandi relocated to an apartment about 10 miles away in Olathe, Kansas, a town without any breed restrictions.

That wasn't the end of the story. Forcing someone to choose between their home and their pet like this was unjust, cruel, and arbitrary—and Katie knew she couldn't be the only person who'd had an animal officer show up at her door out of nowhere, and upended their whole life.

Katie also knew didn't have to be like this. It shouldn't be like this. She launched into becoming an advocate for animals and the people who love them. 

First, she joined local animal advocacy groups, and began attending and speaking at city council meetings—Katie met her animal advocate husband Anthony at a city council meeting, in fact. She met an animal lobbyist with the national organization Best Friends Animal Society at a conference, and that person encouraged her to go to law school, in order to make the most impact for animals. 

That's what she did. Katie attended the University of Kansas School of Law—which, like most law schools at the time, didn't have a single animal law class. So Katie founded an animal law society for students, and organized the country's first animal cruelty prosecution clinic, while working part time for Best Friends Animal Society with the lobbyist who'd first encouraged her. 

Katie successfully took on her first pit bull ban—this one in Topeka, Kansas—as part of a working group that got the ban repealed. All this, before even graduating.

Nearly two decades later—with BSL now relatively rare, in favor of breed-neutral dangerous dog laws that regulate dogs by their behavior, instead of their breed or appearance—Katie runs a growing animal law practice that tackles everything from overturning the country's few remaining pit bull bans, representing animal shelters, advocating for laws and policies that better protect animals, and representing individuals facing the myriad legal issues that involve people and pets. 

She is the chair of the American Bar Association's Animal Law Committee of the Tort Trial Insurance Practice Section, has published multiple influential law review articles, and founded an organization with her husband to teach humane education to law enforcement.

Coming full circle, Katie also now teaches an animal law class at the University of Missouri—Kansas City School of Law. She and Anthony are also raising two young children.

Katie, rather understatedly, describes herself as a "doer." Here she talks about how, and why, she does so much—and what's to come.

What happened after the animal officer told you that Katrina was banned in your city?

I jumped into advocacy mode. I got really involved with Kansas City Dog Advocates. I started speaking at city council meetings. I was at a conference where a legislative attorney from Best Friends Animal Society was speaking.

I raised my hand at the end, and I was like, "We can go to city council meetings. But how do we make true change?"

And she said, "Run for office. Go to law school." And so, I did. I went to law school to save dogs like my dog, Katrina.

I didn't know that animal law was a thing. I just knew that I wanted to be an attorney for people like me. 

How did you and your husband meet through animal advocacy?

We have such a sweet love story. I met Anthony at a city council meeting in Olathe, Kansas. He owned a doggy daycare in Lawrence, Kansas. He was involved with the Lawrence Humane Society. We were both involved with pit bull rescue and advocacy. 

When I applied to law school, when I opened my letter to find out that I got in, he was right there and continues to be there for me.  

I wouldn't be able to open my own practice if my husband wasn't supportive. I just have had an incredible amount of support from family, advocates, shelter directors, and law professors who believed in what I was doing. When I started Barnett Law Office in 2012, Anthony owned his own business. Entrepreneur is not a thing that I would've called myself back then, but I did it.

What made you decide to open your own animal law practice?

Honestly, it was so easy because despite how much I enjoyed traveling the country with my first job at Best Friends Animal Society, there was so much going on back here at home. 

The first case that I ever got was about a dog in Tonganoxie, Kansas. It was a Rottweiler, and they had been given a dangerous dog citation. Tonganoxie had a ban on all kinds of dogs, which they don't anymore. 

I got the dog to rescue, and got the citation dismissed because the dog was no longer going to live in town. And it felt horrible.

I saved this dog, but I wasn't doing victory laps. I was like, "I've got to get better at my job." Separating pets from their families was not a success to me. 

In the years since you started doing this, what has changed about animal law? 

I was the youngest person in the American Bar Association's Animal Law Committee for so many years. And now, people are scrambling to get on the Animal Law Committee, to get internships. 

I regularly open up my office for interns and externs. I want anyone who's interested in animal law and is in Kansas or Missouri to come intern with me, come extern, see what they like, what they don't like about practicing animal law, because the job encompasses so much.

It's not just policy work, and it's not just dangerous dog defense. It's not just plaintiffs' work. We do everything here. Literally, we do everything here. 

What are you feeling hopeful about?

This may sound surprising, but I am so struck by the opportunities in artificial intelligence in thinking about the practice of law. 

The people who call my office, often have not budgeted to pay an attorney to save their dog. They didn't budget for getting justice for their dog who died at the hands of their neighbor.

I want legal representation to be accessible to everyone. And I am so excited about the opportunities for AI to make our work affordable so we can help more people. I know it's not a commonly held opinion right now, but I am very excited.

What drives you forward?

I just feel like I can't stop. I really want to make the community I live in a better place for people and for pets. There's no way that those two aren't intertwined. My role on the Human Relations Commission, which is our Civil Rights Commission here in Lawrence, has been so incredibly rewarding. 

I have two children who keep me unreasonably busy (and tired!). I want my kids to know that I go to work to help people—to make a difference. Both the girls are both animal lovers. I tell them when I travel or when I have to drive across the state for a case, that I have to go save someone's dog. I try to make a connection with them so they can understand that what I'm doing is important.

On Valentine's Day, we got the ordinance passed to expand housing opportunities and protections in Lawrence. Rosa, my youngest, made Valentines with her class. They made bags of supplies for the Lawrence homeless camp—having that bridge to explain why I wouldn’t be home that night for dinner was impactful for her. I explained, “Hopefully, tonight we'll be able to get this law passed, and the people who are living at the homeless camp can finally find housing."

I always just try to relate what I'm doing to the bigger social or community issue. The kids seem to understand because they see it and hear about it every day. 

What ended up happening when the animal officer said you and Katrina couldn't stay where you were living?

Well, I moved. And then the officer who'd knocked on our door all those years ago stayed in touch with me. He was at a city council meeting that I was presenting at, and I introduced myself, or reintroduced myself, and we have stayed friends since then.

He’s accompanied me on my law enforcement trainings and animal control trainings that I do when I teach at the Police Academy. He does the officer safety part of it and is incredible.

Katrina, my dog, lived with us until she was 11 and then she died very suddenly from a fatal brain incident.

When it happened, I was in Kansas City, Kansas, working on repealing their pit bull ban. And I had turned my phone off while I was in a meeting.

So I didn't get a chance to say goodbye to her. That really hurt. It took time but eventually I felt like it was almost serendipitous that that's what I was doing when she died. Repealing another pit bull ban, so that dogs like her could be safe.