Her Story
About Marianna
When I graduated from undergraduate, I did not know what I wanted to do, so I moved to Europe and lived in Germany for a few years and traveled all around Europe. Then I came back to the States and took a job in a dot-com startup in Nashville, Tennessee. While I was there, I realized that I really enjoyed talking to lawyers, and I was just drawn to how they assess problems, so I thought, I think I really want to go to law school. I went to law school thinking I was going to do medical malpractice defense, because my family's in the medical field, and I thought, I'm going to go protect my people. But when I got to law school, I could not stand torts or civil procedure, which are the classes that are the closest relation to what you'd be doing if you did medical malpractice defense. So that was a bummer, but I fell in love with tax and property, and so someone suggested to me that maybe wills. I got a job over the summer through good fortune. I was walking my dog, a lab at the time, and bumped into a neighbor who asked me what I want to do, and I had decided the day before that I thought I wanted to do trust and estates. He said, oh, that's funny. I'm a partner in a firm downtown in the trust and estates department. Would you like to come in and interview for a summer job? So I did get that summer job, and I fell in love with the field. The next year, I took the Wills class, and loved it so much, it was almost like I had already known everything in there, and I was just being reminded of it. It was just so familiar. I was able to become the graduate research assistant to that professor and help her rewrite the Georgia Trust Code. Then I went out and worked for that very same law firm, doing trust and estates. I worked for them for a number of years, and then I went to a larger firm, and then I went to the largest law firm in the world, to do estate planning for people with a net worth of more than $50 million. While working at that firm, I realized how much I missed just sitting around across the table from normal people and helping them solve their problems. So I moved back to the eastern shore of Maryland, which is where I live and it's my hometown, with my young daughter, because I wanted to raise her around grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins. I went to work for a local firm to kind of introduce myself to the area. But I had known since I was about 4 years into practice that I could see a way of doing trust and estates that would be better for the client, and better for me. So I'd always had a dream of going out on my own, and after a couple years back in my hometown, I took the leap, and I opened my own office. Here I am today. I am 8 years into having my own office. I love it. I love it more and more every day.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Marianna
01What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
I would say go work for a law firm that does what you want to do, and plan to be there 80 hours a week for the first 3 to 5 years that you practice. Just dedicate yourself at the front end to learning as much as possible about your area of law and the practice of law, choosing somebody who actually does a good job of managing their practice. Their clients are happy with them, they make good money, all that kind of stuff. And just watch and learn for 3 to 5 years. And after that, you can write your ticket. You know, they say it takes 10,000 hours to become expert or proficient or whatever at what you do. Five years at billing 2,000 hours a year is 10,000 hours. You will have put in the time to be able to hold yourself. So if you want to go out on your own at that point, you can feel comfortable. You've got to do that. If you want to go to a bigger firm, a littler firm, whatever, but get someplace that's good at what you do, and just do it, and focus on it for 5 years.
02What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
The challenges, I guess, you know, like everybody else, as a person who owns a business, the challenges are finding the right people. But the opportunities are huge, because there is something that they call the silver tide, and as the baby boomers are aging into retirement, they're aging out of my field, law generally, as well as accountancy, and young people are not coming into the field at the same rate. And so, also, the baby boomers are a massive generation needing planning, so we have increased need and decreased providers, so I think it's a really ripe field for someone looking for something to do.
03What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
It's probably the same values. It's honesty and integrity. I wanna be at peace and proud of myself at the end of my day, and at the end of my year, and at the end of my life. I want to be proud of how I've served my clients, how I've treated my colleagues, how I've loved my family.
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