Noelia Smith, CAP

I attribute my success to my mother. She's 90 years old right now, and she came here from Cuba with a 4th grade education and built her business from the ground up. She instilled in us that if you want something that's there, you just have to work for it and get it. Don't let anything stand in your way, and that's exactly what I did. She taught me early on that you just have to work for it. That's how I got to where I am now - being in Denver managing a multi-state firm is where I wanted to be. I've always wanted to manage a multi-state firm, and my goal would be to eventually manage a global or national firm that has offices in other countries, but for right now, I'm really happy, and if I retire here, I will be very happy with my career.

The best advice I've ever received is to make sure that you're not the smartest one in the room. If you are the smartest one in the room, then you're in the wrong room. As cliche as it sounds, it is true. I've been in situations, in meetings, in boardroom meetings, and they have even said things that I don't even know what they mean - they'll say a word that I don't know what it is. I just shake my head and say yes, or of course, and I'll write it down, and as soon as it's over, I will run to my desk and look up that word. What does it mean? What were they talking about? And I will make sure I know what it means. That's one of the things I try to tell people all the time. You don't ever have to say no, or I don't know how to do this, or what is it? Just say, okay, you know what, I don't have that information, let me get right back to you, and go figure it out. Just figure it out. With all the technology at our fingertips now, with Google and AI and Copilot and everything else, just figure it out. This literally just happened to me a couple weeks ago when I was reviewing evaluations for a legal assistant position. One of the attorneys said the woman was a polyglot, and I had no idea what it meant. I had to look it up - it's somebody who knows multiple languages. Now I know the word, now I know what it means, and now I'll be able to use it.

I would say don't be afraid to start from the bottom. I think that, you know, unfortunately, we all know that college degrees are important and education is very important, and I would never steer anybody away from it. But if it's something that you don't want to do or simply can't do, because let's just be honest, education's expensive and not everybody can afford it, then I would say you've got to get your foot in the door somehow, and that means sometimes starting at the bottom. So maybe you don't necessarily want to be the receptionist, or be a file clerk, or be a runner, but if you're trying to break in, and not just in my field, but I think in any field, then you have to be ready and willing to put in the work. And just know that at the end of that, you'll get your reward, you'll reach that goal. Unfortunately, I think sometimes people want to come in at the top already, without experience, without the knowledge, without putting in the work, and sometimes that's just a little harder, and you can't always do that. Most of the time, that's not the way it works.

The biggest challenge in my field right now is work-life balance. It's finding the balance that works for you and your staff, especially with the new generation and the way things are now with working from home and some offices offering unlimited PTO and things of that nature. Currently, my assistants get to work one day from home remotely, and it's got to be a Tuesday through Thursday, so no Mondays, no Fridays. I've been working with management because I think they should change that - I think it should be at least 2 days, and let it be a Monday or Friday if that's what they want. The idea of, oh, if it's a Monday or Friday, they'll take a trip, or they'll be somewhere else - okay, who cares? As long as they're getting the work done. I'm very much a huge proponent of, I don't care if a Smurf is doing the work, as long as when I go look at it, it's done, I'm good. If the person is not performing, if they're not doing what they're supposed to, it will come out in the end. If we gave them a little bit more flexibility, I think it works a little bit better and lets people know, hey, they trust me, I'm gonna do better, I'm gonna work hard, I'm gonna do what needs to be done. The biggest opportunity in my field right now is growth. If you want to make a good living, if you want to have a good career, if you want to grow, you want to be challenged every day, but maybe you can't afford to go to school and get a bachelor's degree, or you want to be home with your kids and not have to work at night and on weekends, the legal field for me is a great opportunity for that. You definitely have to align yourself someplace in a firm where there is room for growth, where there is the opportunity because they are larger, but even if you go in a small firm, you get the knowledge there, you get the experience, then you can always go to a larger firm.

Balance is the most important value to me. Coming from a generation back in the 90s where you just work, work, work - I literally went in and worked until the day I went into labor with my daughter, both times. You worked when you were sick, you worked when you were tired, you just worked. You just did what you had to do because the thought process back then was you had to be there, you had to be where they could see you. But I think in the time now that we are, we know you don't necessarily have to be in the office, you can be sick at home on the couch but still working or getting jobs done, and at the end of the day, it's going to be there tomorrow. That's a hard lesson that I learned, again, being a single mom with two daughters. I was working at the law firm in the day, 9 to 5, and then I was working at Old Navy from 6 to 11, 4 days a week, and on the weekends, just to be able to take care of my girls and do what I needed to do. I even worked at a bail bondsman office at night sometimes. So I would say balance is important. I think you do have to just turn off and focus on yourself, take care of yourself. Because if you're not well, and you get sick, or you're just not in the correct headspace, you can't do it. I run a firm with 85 people in one office, the other office has about 10 people, and I have to be in the right frame of mind to manage 100 different personalities, different issues, everybody coming to me with anything and everything you could possibly imagine. If I'm not in the right frame of mind to handle that, there's no way I can do it. It's not just the business side of it - yes, we do law, we run cases, we manage them, we file things, but I also have people. I work with people. They're people. One of the biggest compliments I got was from an assistant recently during her end-of-year evaluation. She said to me, you know, I just want to thank you because you see me as a person. When you talk to me, you talk to me like a person, like you know me, like you're a friend, like a person, not just a worker here in your office. We all have lives outside of work.