Dawn E. Norman, JD

I think naturally, I am entrepreneurial. I've always approached my career from an entrepreneurial standpoint, asking what can I do and how can I leverage the skill set that I have. I think a lot of that is just remaining flexible and open, and not allowing the space to dictate the way you move in it. So understanding the space, observing the space, using good judgment, building good professional judgment, but also knowing yourself and really understanding how your skill set translates to the space. The other thing is I've really been fortunate to have great mentors that really, I was able to pull little things from each of them. I was a little bit of a non-traditional law student in that I went to undergrad, and then I went to grad school, and then I worked for a little bit, I got married, then I went to law school. I had my first baby in law school. So my path has always been kind of one that looked non-traditional, and I think that not having those kind of constraints on what my legal career had to look like really gave me a lot of rich opportunities to try a lot of different things, and not being afraid to do something new has been a big part of that.

I was making a pivot from ExxonMobil to Chevron, and part of what drove that desire to pivot was just looking for more balance in terms of my family and work life. At the time, I was interviewing multiple places, and this lady was not a long-established mentor of mine, but she became a mentor of mine during this interview process. One of the things she said to me was don't be so impatient that you feel like you have to take the first opportunity that comes your way. You have to really spend time evaluating us as much as we're evaluating you. And although you have a need, it's important to understand that it's a reciprocal need, and so there has to be a fit that works for you and your family without compromise. I felt like I needed someone to give me that permission, because I think lots of time, as lawyers, we tend to be overachievers, and if there's a challenge, we feel like we can conquer it, but that's not always the answer. Doing more, and bending yourself, and conforming is not the answer.

I would encourage them to think outside of the box, to not feel that your skill set can only be used in one way. And as you gain experience, think about how you might translate those skills to areas that drive personal passion and allow you to kind of innovate your career always, so it's not static. And you'll need that flexibility as you grow into your career, and into your family, and into other life dynamics that just naturally come up along the way. So I think the biggest lesson in that is just remaining flexible and not being limited by the traditional definition of what being a lawyer is.

The need to destigmatize incapacity planning for families, incorporate technology and accessibility into planning tools, scale educational efforts, and bring more emotional intelligence into legal practice. There is strong ongoing demand for thoughtful family continuity planning.

Flexibility, sound judgment, mentorship, emotional intelligence, education, and empowerment.