Laura E. Bayer

I attribute my success to my God-given spiritual purpose to do my best and help other people do their best. Really, it's just love, loving others. That's what it's all about. My parents played a huge role in shaping who I am, especially my dad. He was a city planner, and people would come to him a lot because he truly cared. I grew up outside of Philadelphia in Norristown, in a row house, and we were surrounded by some of the wealthiest areas in the country, but we lived where everyday people were just trying to make it. I had a really strong sense of love of community and wanting to help people. I was very idealistic when I was young, thinking you just put forth effort and you'll always get a good result. That's true, but it takes a long time sometimes to get there, and it's having patience with that. My dad was always talking about how to make the neighborhood better, and I was watching and listening. He was really amazing, caring about breaking the poverty limitation over people. That really hurt me to see, and I was driven to get equality. Even now, at his age in his 80s, he's still very politically active in the community with a pretty good presence on Facebook. He has his own circle of influence, advocating for equality and helping an entire city balance housing opportunity for everyone. I blame it on him that I went to law school.

The best career advice I've ever received is don't get intimidated by other people. Be your authentic self. You need to discern when to be in a collaborative team-type spirit with people around you, versus putting a boundary up when you kind of have to discern when something's not for you. That comes into play every day. I was pretty shy when I was young, and I had this fire for justice, but I had people telling me, no, don't, you can't do that. Not you, you don't have the personality for it. I didn't always apply myself at that age, but I didn't listen to that. I listened to my internal voice. A lot of people have preformed beliefs about what any kind of job or position or person should be. Like, you know, it could be a business owner has to do this or act that way. Same with the law, a lot of people have preformed beliefs of what that looks like. And that is not reality. Most of the time, that preformed belief that the culture has is like 1% of maybe how it actually plays out. So basically, you just need to be you and not worry about what people say that they think that should look like. Do whatever it is you want to achieve.

Do not give up if this is your dream. Don't let one bad day or one bad case result seemingly make you feel like you're not going to succeed. You've just got to persist. Also, connect with other women as much as you can, because I think it still is pretty male-dominated. It's improved a lot over the years, but when it comes to a lot of firms, they're still, you know, a lot of male authority. It depends geographically where you're at, but connecting with other women is so important. You have to not let life shut you down when these things happen. You have two choices - you can either let it just destroy you, or you can use it to get stronger. And you can't wait for other people to be there to show you every detail of the way you should go. The people that I work with are great people, but they're not in charge of my path and my development. That's from my choices. Even though I'm helping other companies not do things that are discriminatory, there's still a little bit of resistance in Pennsylvania regarding gender, so it's pushing back on that just by doing well, working hard, not letting it stop you.

The biggest challenge I see is dealing with narcissistic personalities that come through in a lot of cases. That can be in every area - in the courtroom, in the case itself amongst family. A lot of what we do is counseling people. It's not really the law. The law's there as a structure, but that's not what these cases often resolve on. It's more the facts and the relational issues. So it's a lot of counseling people on how to set healthy boundaries, how to come out of toxicity, how not to get intimidated, when not to go to court, when it's better to resolve things without going to that degree. Because if you're doing it for the wrong reason, if you're doing it to punish somebody, for example, that's not going to get the result you want. You'll just end up spending money and you won't be satisfied. So it's a lot of counseling people to guide them to really think about why they are doing this and what it is that they would like to see happen, versus the preconceived notion of what a court case is. As for opportunities, they're so vast. There's not enough attorneys, honestly. We're trying to hire, and there's just not enough people that understand this. You can go through school and have these tools of what the law says, and most attorneys coming out of school can navigate to find what the law says. But it's really more helping those coming into the field to navigate the personalities and the relationships and help people set healthy boundaries.

Integrity is the most important value to me in both my work and personal life. Making sure you're doing things for the right reason, recommending things for the right reason. Not everyone agrees with this, and that's okay, but intentions impact the results. I see it a lot, and they matter. It's about being your authentic self and making sure your intentions are pure. My priority is God first, and then my daughter and me. I'm very interested in spiritual topics and growth and my relationship with God. I view every person that comes across my path as valuable, and there's a reason I'm talking to them. They may be there for a legal reason, but I love the fact that I'm able to go past that to build their confidence. There's healing that happens even though we're dealing with a legal issue. I just try to let things flow and connect with people, because it's really about the connection with the people, not always just the legal topics.