Horse-loving lawyer left the law to help run a Colorado ranch
Once an East Coast lawyer, Ami Cullen is now the director of equestrian operations at the C Lazy U Ranch in Granby, Colorado.
Ami Cullen grew up loving horses and competing in hunter/jumper events. But when it came to her career, she decided that law would be her calling. She graduated from law school and began work with a law firm in Maryland working on medical-malpractice cases. Then a visit to a Colorado dude ranch changed everything.
In Running Free: An Incredible Story of Love, Survival, and How 200 Horses Trapped in a Wildfire Helped One Woman Find Her Soul Cullen shares a lightly fictionalized version of the journey that she’s been on for more than a decade.
Just as Cullen once did, Running Free’s main character Emme Muller visits the C Lazy U Ranch in Granby, Colorado, on a girl’s trip and falls in love with the wrangling way of life. She decides to leave her life as an East Coast lawyer to work at the ranch—initially planning it as a six-month sabbatical from her career.
Instead, she stays, eventually becoming head wrangler and marrying another employee at the dude ranch. But in October 2020, the East Troublesome Fire, the second-largest wildfire in Colorado history, imperiled the C Lazy U Ranch. Muller has to work with her employees and horse-loving community members to evacuate the ranch and save 200 horses from a relentless and rapidly shifting fire.
That part of Running Free is also true, Cullen tells the ABA Journal’s Lee Rawles in this episode of The Modern Law Library podcast. Now the director of equestrian operations at the C Lazy U Ranch, it was Cullen’s responsibility to save the herd of horses through two harrowing wildfire evacuations and an ice storm that sent fleeing horse trailers careening off the roads back in 2020.
After the fire was out and recovery had begun, Cullen felt a compulsion to put down her experience in writing. The first attempt produced 80 pages that read like a legal brief, she tells Rawles. By fictionalizing her experiences and creating some composite characters, she was able to write Running Free, her first novel.
In this episode, Cullen discusses deciding to leave the law, what it’s like to help run a dude ranch, leadership skills that she learned from working with horses, and why you’re never too old to take up equestrianship.
In This Podcast:
Ami Cullen
Ami Cullen hails from Chester County, Pennsylvania, where her love for horses first blossomed. Growing up, she competed in the hunter/jumper discipline at the national level. After earning her law degree from the Catholic University School of Law in Washington, D.C., Cullen practiced medical-malpractice defense law at a law firm in Bethesda, Maryland. However, it was during a vacation at the C Lazy U Ranch that she discovered her true passion: ranch life and taking care of horses. Currently, Cullen is the director of equestrian operations and oversees all aspects of the C Lazy U Ranch’s Equine Program. Certified as a horsemanship association instructor in English and Western disciplines, Cullen delights in connecting people with horses and teaching novice equestrians horsemanship.
