Samantha Jeffers

I attribute my success to my mom she is everything. She's about 60 and still working, not because she necessarily has to, but she just likes being a busy bee. She's instilled such a hard work ethic in my brother and me. She taught us how to be a good person, how to treat people, but also how to win, and I know in the legal field, you've got to want to win. I think that's a huge part of it - the work ethic she gave us. But it might even be 60-40, because being a good person is critical too. I know some really, really good lawyers who aren't the best people, and it doesn't work out for them. My mom has been a tremendous influence of positivity and support, and she knows everything and is involved in everything that I do. She's amazing, and I'm blessed.

The best career advice I've ever received came from my mom. She told my brother and me when we were younger, 'Nothing beats a failure but a try.' She has always said that. At first, I was confused - I was like, 'Huh? Okay, that's kind of weird sounding.' But she told me to just think about it, and I realized, well yeah, I'm going to have to try regardless, right? What's another way to beat a failure? You have to keep trying and trying to succeed. I also learned that it's sweeter after it's difficult - there's a Latin term for this that I heard a while ago. In the moment, things are really, really difficult, whether you're a student in school or an adult in the law field, or even if you're mid-level or senior level. It's tough, but just know that it's momentary - it's going to pass. Just do what you have to do in this moment to kind of win. That's what I tell myself. What's missing an hour or two of sleep now versus one or two hours of prep to get the sign-up on the competition? You can always sleep the next day.

I would say be fearless and resilient, and don't feel like you don't belong there. I know it's a male-dominated field - it still is, though it's getting better. A lot of the time, especially in competitive law schools like mine where they put our grades on the door and hang them up and everybody comes and looks at them, women think, 'Okay, well, I'm not gonna cut it. There's no way that I'm going to make it here.' My first semester in law school, I got like a B-minus, and coming out of my undergrad with a 3.9 GPA, I was like, 'What? What in the world is a B-minus?' You kind of feel defeated at that point. I would just tell them, you know, you belong here, never think that you don't. Be fearless in a sense where you don't have to be mean - there's a line. It's difficult, like, do I have to be fearless in the sense where I'm stern all the time? You don't have to be that, but just stand firm. Having the good mix of compassion, fearlessness, and resilience is important.

One of the biggest challenges, especially for younger attorneys, is that when you come into a firm with a lot of older male attorneys - and outside of the male aspect - when you're younger, you come in thinking, 'Okay, well, I have to step on eggshells because I don't want to insult anybody, I don't want to make it seem like I'm a know-it-all.' But there are a lot of times that people, and you won't know until you talk to them, but a lot of my partners now really value younger people's opinions. They really do, and they want to collaborate. When I got into the field, I was thinking I have to say 'yes, sir, no sir,' and I have to do what they say, and if I have an idea, I have to keep it to myself because I don't want to insult them. One of the things that was tough was getting out of that mindset, because my parents brought my brother and me up to be respectful, especially to our elders. That translates to the courtroom too - you wear the proper suit, you button it when you stand up, you unbutton it when you sit down. One of the challenges for me was realizing that you're going to come to a point where people are going to value your opinion, and you have to figure out a way to say it without being afraid. You have to know your audience. You don't want to come in and be afraid to share your opinions and thoughts, because then people are like, 'We need somebody a little bit more firm in this position.' It's a challenge for younger people.

The most important value to me is the 'everybody takes the trash out' mentality. In the legal field, I've noticed it's really easy for people to say, 'Oh, that's a secretary job, that's a paralegal job, I'm a lawyer, I don't do that.' I do not condone that, I don't believe in that. If my secretary's sick and she needs me to calendar something, or if she's out of pocket - whether her phone's not working, she's on a plane, whatever the case may be - I think it's important that everybody helps everybody. Being helpful and being there for the people around you is extremely important. You never know what people are going through, and a lot of people on my team are like me - they're not going to say what they're going through, they're just going to be going through it in hopes that they can kind of have it all together. One thing I had to learn is to lean on your support - you don't have to have it together all the time. I want my colleagues and my team to know that if something goes wrong or if they need me to do something, they're not afraid to ask. I always say everybody takes the trash out - I don't care who has to do it, but if we all have to do it, we all have to do it. Being helpful to all regardless of the person's station is what matters most.