Calita Coutee´ Elston Robinson was born and raised in Gary, Indiana. When a Black lawyer shared her experience with the practice of law at a mentoring program that she attended in the third grade, Calita knew on the spot that she would become an attorney.

Calita studied pre-law and political science at Northwestern University (Phi Beta Kappa). As she conducted research through an internship with the American Bar Foundation and Harvard College, her passion for the law was concomitant with a desire to understand race and gender more deeply. Calita ultimately graduated from The University of Michigan Law School, which was ranked as the #1 law school in the U.S. at the time. Calita was honored to be an Associate Editor of the Michigan Journal of International Law.

Calita, who believes in balance in all things, is a dedicated yogi. She loves creative writing, reading everything in sight, and dancing with wild abandon. She will tell anyone who will listen that God directs her steps.

Calita pays tribute to her father, Vincent Coutee’, a hard-working steelworker; her mother, Thelma Coutee’, a homemaker and teachers’ aide; a host of other supportive family members like her Uncle Johnny Morgan and Aunt Evette Scales; and, of course, her ancestors. Calita is based in Atlanta and has two sons, one of whom is studying business law at college and the other who is college-bound with an interest in biomedical engineering and patent law. They will be ready to take over Express Contract Bootstrappers in about 10 years.

Knowledge and Experience

Upon graduation from law school, Calita worked as a trial lawyer with various law firms, including Lewis & Munday, P.C., one of the largest and oldest minority law firms in the U.S. After five years of litigation, Calita practiced as in-house counsel for Georgia-Pacific Corporation (where she was the head of all distribution centers in the U.S. and General Counsel and Senior Vice President of the G-P Shortline Railroads), The Home Depot (where she was the head of regulatory compliance for all retail stores in the U.S.), and The Coca-Cola Company (where she was the global legal head of the NBA, Olympics, and Special Olympics sponsorships, Sprite, Fanta, and water brands, and the Global Marketing Network) in the following areas:

• Marketing and Advertising 
• Intellectual Property
• Software Licensing,
• Supply Chain and Procurement
• Regulatory Compliance
• Transportation & Logistics
• Sports Law
• Entertainment and Hospitality
• Music and Talent

Calita negotiated the first deal between Facebook and The Coca-Cola Company. As the lead for the Global Marketing Network, Calita drafted and compiled the best contract forms and best compliance practices and disseminated them worldwide through a database that she created. 

Calita’s 14-year tenure as Senior Global Managing Counsel at The Coca-Cola Company came to an end when her role was eliminated in a corporate downsizing in 2015, and she suffered financial devastation while undergoing a multi-year divorce battle. Some might perceive these occurrences as negative closed doors, but Calita turned these challenges into footstools for her growth to kick open a new door to her own law boutique in 2018.

As she embarked on her new adventure as a small business owner, Calita also began working through legal staffing companies as outside counsel to Fortune 100 companies, including Nike, Converse, Walmart, Sam’s Club, Academy Sports, Hub Group, Simmons, Darden’s Restaurants, and Clif Bar. It was during this time that Calita developed skills in the areas of Technology and privacy and further honed her expertise in transportation, logistics, food law, and supply chain operations. She even periodically stepped in to act as Associate General Counsel in a backfill capacity with several of these companies.

As noted, Calita has served as in-house counsel on an international basis to top global corporations and is a member of the State Bars of Illinois, Georgia, and Michigan, U.S.A., respectively.

Philosophy

Calita believes that legal relationships are not purely transactional. When negotiating contracts for her clients, she takes care to ensure that the other party is also able to make some concessions. She believes a win-win scenario is optimal for her clients’ long-term business relationships. She maintains that it is crucial to make contract provisions work for clients to reduce their risks at every turn. Calita champions the power of doing deep dives into her clients’ business operations so that she can provide the best risk assessments for each real-life scenario in real-time. 

Calita not only gets businesses out of trouble with regulatory agencies but also focuses on the importance of keeping them out of legal peril by activating a preventive mode with policy development and compliance programs. Calita puts confidence in the protection of intellectual property by registration as well as through careful exploitation.

Throughout her career, Calita has been actively involved with tutoring elementary children, mentoring law school interns, developing interns at The Coca-Cola Company, drafting wills for the elderly, and participating in various community service and pro bono legal programs for the poor, divorcees, and others in need.

When 2020 presented its pandemic challenges to the world, Calita knew that she had to do something to help and to leave a legacy for future generations. She realized that in addition to being a mentor like the Black woman lawyer who introduced the law to her, her role is to use her 30 years of business law experience with big law firms and big companies to also serve small and emerging businesses by designing optimal contracts and compliance programs to cover and protect their products, services, ideas, people, and money.

Accordingly, Calita pivoted back to her own start-up and is now focused exclusively on Express Contract Bootstrappers to serve all client partners, whether they are big or small, established or emerging. She is also the Legal liaison for the Kulima Collective, an organization that is dedicated to the development and growth of Black women-owned businesses, and a Legal mentor for the Northwestern University alumni mentor program.