Denise Mayo Harle

The best career and life advice I've received is to not look at other people and envy their life, because that's not my life. My life is my life. As the saying goes, comparison is the thief of joy, and it's a real waste of energy to look at what other people are doing and try to be some other person. The right thing to do is to be who you are and understand that you're going to do things differently and have different characteristics and a different style than others. You need to really lean into that, because that's the way you're going to flourish, the way I believe God created me to be. Don't try to be someone else, embrace your own unique path and personality.

I have two key pieces of advice for young women entering law. First, stop thinking you can plan your life. Release control over this idea that you have to map out the perfect plan for your life to actually accomplish things and achieve things. The path is so much smoother when we realize we can release control, work with excellence, serve others, and do our best, but understand there's no perfect way to plan your future. You need to be open to opportunities as they arise and understand that your path will not look like what you think, and that is absolutely okay. That is actually very much what success looks like. Second, have boundaries. In professions like law, there's pressure to work 24-7, with your email on your phone and even strapped to your wrist on your watch. You have to be able to say no. I personally observe Sundays as the Sabbath and do not work at all, do not look at any work emails, and if work thoughts come into my head, I let them leave. This is really important, especially as a woman who becomes a wife and mom. You have to have those boundaries and a healthy disregard for someone imposing pressure on you to work all the time. That is not healthy, that is not living. You will burn out, especially if you're a high achiever or one of those hustlers for success. The truth is, you can't be replaced as a mom, you can't be replaced as a sister or daughter or friend. You're that one person with your special role. There's a million people that are lawyers who can do the litigation, but nobody else can be Mommy.

The biggest challenge in law right now, which isn't unique to our field but is a real problem here, is the rapid advancement of AI. There's a huge amount of uncertainty about how that's going to affect the legal field and legal jobs. I personally think legal jobs on the whole are probably safer than some other industries because of the type of thinking and advocacy involved that robots currently can't do. But the real dangers are the hallucinations, the fake cases, the bad information, and wrong statements of law that AI produces, combined with the temptation for law students and young lawyers who are getting pressure to bill quickly and crank things out to rely on AI systems that are not reliable. Young professionals don't have the independent knowledge to recognize what's wrong, whereas I would immediately spot a case name I've never seen before in my field because I know pretty much all the landmark First Amendment cases. Young lawyers who are nervous and trying to please a partner and working very fast are more tempted to make mistakes that can be a huge professional risk to their license, reputation, and job. As for opportunities, the law is always necessary, and as technology advances, there are more opportunities and more different practice areas of law. We didn't used to have patent law the way we do now. There is a constant need for lawyers. We're now seeing not only more female undergraduates than male undergraduates, but significantly more female law students than male law students. However, when you look at partners at top law firms, you do not see more women yet. I think this is the moment where the momentum can shift and women can hopefully start to balance out and have the industry reflect our intellect and abilities, because women are fantastically good at analytical reasoning, personal advocacy, and working with clients. Women are as good as, if not better, at being persuasive. There's a real opportunity to see that reflected by women continuing to be more successful in the legal field as they get more senior in their careers. As more women become leaders, there's also an opportunity to shift expectations and make sure there are nursing moms' rooms, flexible maternity policies, arrangements where women can still work super hard and do amazing work but also be available as a mom or wife, because moms are uniquely special and that can't be written out of the equation.

The values most important to me are integrity and hunger. Having integrity means being honest, which should be obvious, but it really means having the integrity to do the right thing when there are hard decisions, and there are a lot of those in life and in the professional world. It means having honest conversations and having the courage to do the right thing even if it means you lose money or upset someone in what you tell them. Hunger is also a really important trait to me, and by that I mean eagerness. I don't mean selfish ambition, I mean the desire to do more, to make a difference, to take on more work, to go above and beyond, to show an eagerness and interest and intellectual curiosity. That's a trait I aspire to have and that I definitely look for when I'm looking for who I want to be working with on my team.