Denise Evans was born in the exam room of a small military base infirmary, delivered by a doctor who had been retired for ten years, and who was assisted by a dental technician. At a time when mothers were knocked out for deliveries, there were no drugs in the infirmary. All the dental technician could say was, "She ain't got no teeth!" Denise's father was miles away, teaching young recruits how to disarm bombs. Immediately afterwards, first-time mother and baby were bundled up into the backseat of an Army squad car and driven 75 miles to the hospital where Denise was supposed to have been born. People say it explains a lot about her…

                                           …Denise says, it doesn’t explain why she ever had siblings.

Okay, fast forward to more relevant history.

Denise practiced law in Texas with a mid-size commercial litigation firm that specialized in representing banks, savings and loans, real estate developers, and celebrity investors. Unfortunately, the chummy relationship among those groups led to many a bank failure in Texas in the 1980’s. As her law firm’s client base dwindled, another group of people had more business than they could handle—the FDIC Closed Bank Division. They recruited Denise to establish the litigation group in their Houston office. As head of that section, she managed in-house counsel and outside counsel, was herself lead counsel on a large number of lawsuits, assisted in bank closings and investigations, and conducted training state-wide for the FDIC and for outside attorneys.

At the FDIC, Denise was known for her gift with the English language. I know, we all speak it, but lawyers have a completely different dialect. Denise was the “go-to” person when something needed to be translated from Legalese into Plain English. In fact, when one federal judge threatened to jail the very next FDIC lawyer who brought him the standard 300-page package of papers for a bank closing, Denise was selected to transform everything into ten pages of—you guessed it—Plain English.

In the early 1990’s, Denise returned with her husband to his home in Birmingham, Alabama. She continued to represent private clients in Texas with multi-million dollar loan modifications, short sale negotiations, and lender liability claims. At the same time, she was drawn into her husband’s real estate development business. She learned that she loved real estate even more than she loved practicing law! It was the beginning of a new career.

Today, Denise continues to assist her husband with his real estate developments. (Well, let’s be honest—there’s not a lot of that going on right now, is there?)  She lectured for several years at the University of Alabama College of Commerce and Business Administration, teaching the junior and senior-level course, Principles of Real Estate. She is also a commercial real estate broker, and the author of eight published real estate books, including the Complete Encyclopedia of Real Estate, published by McGraw-Hill.  Critics praise the book for being written in Plain English!  Who knew it was such a rare talent?

Denise also conducts seminars and webinars on a wide variety of topics, and provides consulting services to individuals and local governments on real estate-related issues. Seminar attendees say Denise has a gift for making anything she teaches entertaining and easy to learn, even the driest and most convoluted legal concepts.

Denise thinks it is somewhat due to a retired doctor, a dental technician and her mother—the strongest, smartest and funniest woman in the world. If she could get through the  ordeal of birthing her first child, and turn it into a great and funny story, then Denise can make her proud by plowing through thousands of pages of foreclosure law, for example, and making you laugh when she explains the high points.