Sheena Selene Fioritto

To the extent I've had any success, I think it's been the people around me that have helped me get wherever far I got. My dad was always behind me, and he was the biggest influence on my success. He would always listen and reassure me that I could handle whatever was happening, that I was smart enough. He taught me about trying to be honest with myself, trying to be a good person with integrity and morality, and not being all about money or material success. He passed away 2 years ago, but those values he instilled in me are a big part of my success. On my own part, I'd say resilience. I've failed many times, but I've always gotten back up each time. I've never given up. I pride myself on being unstoppable. After I've addressed so many of my issues, and it's cost me a great deal being honest with myself, that has enabled me to be successful in whatever I do from here. Whatever I have now is because I've worked really hard, never give up, and always do things with heart and authenticity with people. I try to treat others the way I want them to treat me, do the right thing, and just work really hard and never give up.

My mentor Ed Zelmanski taught me one of the most important lessons in my career. He showed me that in the law, when you're looking for the answer to a problem, there's not just one answer. The problem is in the question if you're only looking for one answer. There are many answers - there could be 5 really good answers to a question, or there might be 10 really good answers. Your job is to go through and see what options are there, what are the best options, answers, or plans, or courses of action. And then from the ones that you can identify for the client, those 5 or 6 or whatever, then you pick the one that you think is best and you make your recommendation on that. If you're only looking for one answer, that's the problem. And you have to make the judgment and have the guts and the integrity to stand behind your answer and your recommendations. If your client's problem isn't your problem, if you don't care at a human level, if you're just equivocating because you don't want to be on the line if it goes wrong, that's not right. You're always on the line if it goes wrong, always. So I learned to think for myself, and that you can think through anything. There's always more than one answer to a problem.

I have a unique perspective on these things, having been on both sides. I know there's definitely a difference, and privilege is a real thing. My advice is that you have to believe in yourself. If you do the best you can, you do a good job, and you're good at what you do, and you're good with people - all the things that would make you a good attorney or a good person - that should win out at the end of the day. I can see how it feels to be minimized or looked down upon for no reason, just because you are what you are. I've been shocked at how much more easily people would say degrading or insulting things to me than before. So my advice would be just believe in yourself and stick up for yourself. Don't take any crap from people. Because if you don't believe in yourself and love yourself, and stick up for yourself when you have to, if you don't enforce your boundaries, there comes a time when you have to do that. If people are disrespecting you, you have to address it eventually, or those people should not be in your life anymore if they're going to disrespect you as a woman. You have to make a choice sometimes. You don't want to be in an environment where you're being treated like that, so you have to define your own boundaries as a woman, as a person. Know your value. Know your own value as a woman, as a person, and respect that, and don't forget your own value, because nobody else has a right to tell you what you are, nobody else has the right to take that away from you when you've earned it.

AI is such a huge change in the law. It's a challenge because there's a learning curve. I just started using AI about a year ago, in January of last year, and my mind ran wild with all the options and ways I could improve everything I've done for two and a half decades. But it's a challenge because you're not as efficient with the technology as you should be to make really good use of it, so sometimes it makes it harder to use because it takes longer when you're messing around with things and don't know really how to use it yet. It's also hard to keep up because my firm is switching software so often - this comes out, now this is out. But technology has created tremendous opportunities for attorneys that we would never have had before. Being able to work remotely 100% of the time is one example. You can basically talk to anybody across the state of Michigan and provide legal advice. Your pool of clients is as big as you want it to be if you want it. Things that took so much longer as an attorney, like revising documents or comparing documents, you could do it in like a minute now - things that would take an hour or more. So it's a very exciting time, but it's also a very uncertain and difficult time because you have to learn so fast and so much, and try to figure out what is important. It's almost unlimited opportunity if you think about where this technology is right now and where it'll be 5 years from now.

Honesty and authenticity are most important to me in my work and the same for my personal life. I obviously base my life now on authenticity and trying to be as honest with myself as possible, as well as honest with other people. If there's things that you don't like, or you don't want to do, or you don't think are right or correct, you have to speak up. It's important to me to hold myself accountable, always. As I said, it doesn't matter who's in charge, you're always responsible for what you do. Just following orders is never an answer. I've learned to be independent and think for myself. That's one of the values that is so important to me - don't let other people and the way they think define me. I don't think anybody should feel the pressure to fit into somebody else's box, because that's how they have the right to define you and determine your limitations or your capabilities. No, you don't get to define me, you don't get to tell me I'm this small. I know what I am, and I'm not going to allow anyone to tell me I'm less than what I know I am after earning it. Compassion, justice, fairness, and sincerity are also important. I have compassion for clients - it's not just about money. I see them as people because they are people. I don't care anymore about building the biggest firm. Now it's just my independent thought and valuing myself, and learning to be honest with myself and to affirm myself and accept myself. That's the most important value to me - to be able to do that in life.