Vanessa Vasquez de Lara:
One of the big challenges when you're that small is trying to think for the future. Hire as quickly as you can because the best use of your time should be whatever you actually enjoy.
Sonya Palmer:
So often, especially when you're looking mathematically, hiring is a cost, and people don't think about it that way. It's just a cost, and it feels like a liability when it's an advantage.
Vanessa Vasquez de Lara:
I found that every time we hired somebody, that the firm's income doubled. It almost didn't matter what position it was.
Sonya Palmer:
For the eighth consecutive year, women outnumber men in law schools across the nation, yet this wave of change has not reached the shores of power. Women hold a mere 25% of seats at the table as board members and managing partners, but the tides are turning. Women in law are no longer meekly waiting for an invitation. They are boldly striking out, creating a future where success is defined on their own terms, and law firms fit into their lives, not the other way around.
As this new generation of trailblazers rises, we stand with them, ready to amplify their voices and fuel the transformation. This is LawHer. And I am Sonya Palmer, your host and VP of operations at Rankings, the SEO agency supporting you in claiming your rightful place at the top. This season we're thrilled to present our new mini-series, where we follow the journeys of women attorneys in the early days of opening their own practices. Be inspired by their stories as they navigate the challenges of securing clients, managing finances, hiring staff, and achieving work-life balance as founders.
With a team of seven fantastic female attorneys and a COO by her side, Vanessa Vásquez de Lara has built a thriving family practice that boasts over 250 five-star Google reviews. Vásquez de Lara Law Group started in a shared office just one day a week. Today, Vanessa has grown into much larger office spaces that house seven female attorneys and dozens of staff.
Vanessa's journey in law has been nothing short of impressive, the Super Lawyers Rising Stars in 2015, just shortly after starting her own practice. She's been consistently recognized on the Super Lawyers list every single year, but Vanessa's impact extends far beyond the courtroom. As the current president of the Coral Gables Bar Association, she's a true change agent and leader in her community. She has a knack for bringing people together to make a positive impact.
Throughout her career, Vanessa has remained committed to maintaining a family atmosphere within her law practice, even as it's grown. In our conversation today, we'll dig into how she's managed to build such a successful firm while staying true to her values, the importance of networking, community involvement, and the challenges and triumphs of being a woman in the legal field. Let's dive in.
Vanessa Vasquez de Lara:
I didn't know what type of law I wanted to do when I got my first job doing probate, and it was okay. A year later, I did join a family law firm. In law school, I used to say I would never do family law, and I would never do criminal law. Apparently only until you got to pay your student loans will you not do anything. So I joined that firm and that was a really great learning experience, and I was there for quite a few years. But once I had kids, when I had my first kid, I moved to a part-time schedule.
By the time that I was going to have my second one, I was like, "I really just want to take some time off to be able to enjoy my kids, and be at home." And it was something that I thought would be for a very small amount of time, but ended up being a few years. And once I had been home for a few years, I had done a few other things, helped out a few clients who managed to find my cell phone, and I owned a store for a year.
When I was ready to go back to work, it was like, "Well, I can't imagine being able to work out my schedule in a way that I've been doing it now in a law firm." So it was a, "Okay, well, I haven't been working a few years. I don't have a salary that I need to replace, so I can really start very small." And that's literally what I did. I started. I rented out somebody's interior office for one day a week, for the princely sum of $100 a month.
Sonya Palmer:
That's a steal.
Vanessa Vasquez de Lara:
Exactly. And as I was coming in more and more, before I ended up leaving that office and getting my own office, I think I was paying $400 a month. So it was a really amazing way of being able to start my firm in a very organic manner where I wasn't jumping from a salary to a firm, and having to figure all of that out. I was really able to slowly build it exactly the way that I wanted it to be.
Sonya Palmer:
Take us back to your $100 office. What were those early days like? Were you on the fence? Were you wondering what you had done? What pushed you over or encouraged you to continue to do that?
Vanessa Vasquez de Lara:
To be honest with you, it was really interesting because that first year, the reason I started that year is because I have two boys, now 15 and 18, and they both started school together. So the older one had already started in K-4, but this was the year where he started K-5 and the little one started K-3. They were both in school part-time, and that meant that one started at 8:00, one started at 8:30 and then they got out by 12:00 and 12:30.
And the reason why I started with that one day a week is because I really didn't have a lot of time. I really went into the office when I dropped them both off around 8:39, and I left to go pick them back up between 12:00 and 12:30. So it really worked with my life, and I was really able to fit me into my practice, into my life, and my family's life. And that's why I really never looked back.
I couldn't imagine having a job where I'd be able to come in at 9:00 and leave at 12:00. And I really kept that pattern for many, many years where I was the one that would drop off and pick up the kids from school. I designed the work that I was doing and the firm that I was running, so that I'd be able to leave for all of elementary. The boys, once they started full-time, they would get out at 3:00. So I designed it so that I was leaving the office normally around 2:15, 2:30, 2:45 or 3:00 if I wanted to just get to the end of the pickup line instead of the front of the pickup line.
Sonya Palmer:
A lot of love for school systems, but the operations manager in me is like, "What are these pickup times?" If you have kids like you do, that go to different schools, they get dropped off at different times, picked up at different times. I'm always like, "There must be a better way." So what were some of the challenges you faced in those early years?
Vanessa Vasquez de Lara:
To me, the challenges that I had are the challenges that I feel like every solo really encounters, which is how do you get clients? How do you get staff? How do you figure out what to charge your clients, what to pay your staff? How much to spend on an office? I still remember the first office that I got, it was me and two other attorneys. We all met in BNI, which for those that don't know what that is, it's a networking and business exchange organization. One was quitting her job and starting her firm, and going out with us. And the other one had had his own firm, but very similar to my experience being in somebody else's office.
So this was our opportunity to do our own thing, and I still remember we found this great office, fantastic location, and it was three offices and a conference room. So it's like, "Okay, it's perfect. It's one office for each person." There was two support spaces in the middle, so imagine three lawyers were with two support spaces, but none of us had any staff. So we were like, "This is perfect." And I still remember my husband saying, "You don't think you're going to outgrow this really quickly?" And I was like, "It's like $1,000 a month. I mean, no, we can't afford anything bigger." Within a year we had to move, we had to request for the landlord to find us more space.
Sonya Palmer:
That's incredible.
Vanessa Vasquez de Lara:
It's one of those things that it's really hard. I think that one of the big challenges when you're that small is trying to think for the future. You feel like you're so stuck in the day to day that it's very difficult to plan or even consider what might be different or difficult or might make your life easier in the long run.
So you end up like us where we ended up moving into this office and within six months I think we had to tell the landlord, "Hey, do you have anything bigger?" And he was like, "I don't right now, but I will in a few months, so if you can just hold on, then I can get you into something bigger." So I think a year after we moved into that building, he did get us into bigger space, and I think it was almost twice the space. And then I had two offices, another one of the attorneys had two offices and our third friend was like, "I am not getting any bigger. I am good with one office." But now we had, I think, space for maybe five or six support staff members. So it was definitely something that we were able to grow with. I think in less than another year we had asked the landlord for more space.
But at that point, the landlord was like, "Listen, I really don't have anything else that I can put you into at this point." And we were like, "Okay, we'll see what we do." But probably within another year after that, the other guy that was growing as quickly as I was growing, him and I were both like, "Yeah, I think either you got to go or I got to go because we're just going to run out of space. You know?
I think I had an office with three desks, so we were really stacking them in there. And eventually, I left with a friend that needed less space, and I found a much bigger office. And I decided, "I'm just going to sublease until I need it and then I'll take it back." And our friend stayed in the other office, and eventually he moved into the penthouse in that building and I've expanded the space. I've got here three times already, but we definitely found that you got to think about the future. You have to think about the investment. It tends to be worthwhile when you're thinking a little bigger than when you're thinking of, "How do I do something today?"
Sonya Palmer:
I love that. And I think it's something that female lawyers, in particular, need to hear because a lot of times it's, "I'm a lawyer, I'm a mom, I own my own firm. Goal achieved." And then it's just about maintaining that, and not enough of them think about growth and growing. And I always encourage them. I think that women led small businesses are extremely important. So I always want to encourage, like, "Think bigger." And it's when you do own a firm and you are an attorney and you have a household and kids being in the weeds, it's very easy to just stay there.
So I admire you for doing that, for thinking about that very early on. And it's so fun to hear it take place in such a physical way because a lot of times it's numbers, and bottom lines, and cases, and attorneys. So to hear that you were just physically growing out of your office space is fun. You mentioned attracting clients, how do you get clients? So how did you do that and then establish your reputation in the family law space?
Vanessa Vasquez de Lara:
When I started practicing, it was one of those things where obviously I had time but not money. So in the beginning, a lot of the things that I did were much more time-intensive. I joined that BNI chapter, which was great for my business in the sense that I had never sold myself. And with BNI, there are weekly meetings. And you're doing your commercial, your elevator pitch every single week regardless of whether there's anybody new in the room. So you really get into that habit of talking to people and of talking about what you do and who your ideal client is, and who you're looking to meet.
So I feel that that was a really, really great experience for me at that time. And as we got bigger and bigger, I had a little bit less time, but we had a little bit more money. So then we started getting into a little bit more on the digital platform. My first website, it's an embarrassment. I used it when I did a presentation in a legal conference a few years ago and I had to go find it. And I'm like, "Oh my goodness." It was basically a landing page and my resume, that's it.
But back then, this was 10 years ago, it was really when the internet was starting to become more of a thing for attorneys and finding your place there. At the end of the day, we started investing more into that kind of stuff. I got a new web page. We started doing, not real SEO, but we started doing a little bit of blogging and creating social media accounts. And then had a Facebook, and a few years later had Instagram and Twitter. It allowed people to get to know me in a way that makes the relationship feel a little bit less daunting for almost everybody.
Getting a divorce or going to family court is really the first time that they've been in court unless somebody's maybe been in a foreclosure. Which definitely in the 2008, 2012 time, was a lot of people family law tends to be the first time that they're in court. So ultimately them being able to feel comfortable when they come into the office because they feel like they know me a little bit better or they know my team a little bit better, that's really been, I feel like a game changer for us.
So getting clients came from just going out in the beginning, networking, doing a lot of talking to people, telling people what I did, and then it slowly shifted to a lot more digital stuff. And then as I got bigger and bigger and now our team is 25 people, the pendulum has shifted again where I'm not in production anymore, I am not in court.
So now I'm back to what I really enjoy, which is the networking and meeting people and talking to people and more of a brand ambassador is what I would say. So it's shifted again where we're doing a lot of things, but what I really enjoy is getting to talk to people and meet with people and meet with potential referral partners.
Sonya Palmer:
No matter where you are in your journey, look to those around you to get to the next level. Vanessa leveraged her role as the outgoing president of the Coral Gables Bar Association to strengthen her network and create meaningful connections within her local legal community. She saw an opportunity to become an advocate for the organization and its members in a way that she couldn't as a regular board member. By taking this proactive approach, Vanessa not only gained valuable insights into her legal community, but also forged new relationships and expanded her professional network in a meaningful way.
Vanessa Vasquez de Lara:
My term is wrapping up now, and that's been a really fun thing this year. When you're a board member, you're putting in the work, but I took it as almost my mission to improve the organization, and that's really kicked off a year of networking that's been more intentional. So I reached out to over, I want to say 2,500 attorneys whose addresses were listed in Coral Gables. And I said, "I want to meet with you. I want to hear how the Coral Gables Bar can benefit you, how we can work better for attorneys like you."
A lot of people really took me up on that offer. It was really great. And so I've been meeting with people much more intentionally in order to understand what they want to get out of the bar, out of our local bar, but also being able to find out what they do, and get to meet people. It's been really a fun way of getting to know other attorneys in my community, that but for being the president of this organization, I wouldn't have done.
Sonya Palmer:
I love that you just reached out to 2,500 attorneys, and it worked, I think is maybe even the more important line. It worked. So you're a big proponent of networking. Why is it important for women and attorneys in particular to build, maintain, participate, and be a part of organizations like that?
Vanessa Vasquez de Lara:
We get referrals from all kinds of people who I don't even know, and I believe that that is really a product of my activism, my getting out there, my helping any attorney who needs help. I really enjoy mentoring, especially younger female lawyers, and being able to, "Listen, this is what I went through that you don't need to go through. Make sure that you don't wait until you feel that you need to hire. That's too late. You're three to six months too late if you're like, 'I got to hire somebody.' You really need to try to see that trend coming."
I love talking to these attorneys and talking about what has worked for me, and what has not worked for me. Because at the end of the day, I feel like it's not a zero-sum game. I do honestly believe that when you assume that the business is out there, that you're going to find the business out there. And it's not like, "Well, if I teach you something now you will take a client away from me."
What I've really seen in practice is that, even when I gave my secrets away to other family attorneys, business comes from that because they might be a solo who can't handle a case. I know of another attorney that she was going to go on maternity and she was a solo. And she was like, "Call Vanessa. I can't handle this right now." Or, "Vanessa has a team of staff. This is probably something that's easier handled by somebody with staff."
So we get cases even from other family attorneys. And I truly believe that sharing and being able to network with other attorneys is really what has allowed us to be as successful as we are. Because I'll also get tips from them and hear about technology that maybe they're using that I haven't heard of. Or an organization that I should get involved with, or something that I can send my associates to. So if you stay in a silo because you're thinking that you can get all your business online or you can do it all yourself, that really does quite a disservice to you, to your practice and to your team and your staff.
Sonya Palmer:
No, I completely agree. At Rankings, we're marketing SEO, but we always encourage firms, "You want to have more than one channel, always. Especially if you're someone that wants to grow." I want to go back to something you just said, how the network helps with hiring, and you grew so quickly in a good way. Were there any signals it's time to hire, outside of, "We don't have an office for this person?"
Vanessa Vasquez de Lara:
Yeah. So to be honest with you, it is one of those holy grail skills, I think, to figure out, "Okay, we are growing faster than I can handle by myself." My biggest piece of advice to solos is always, hire as quickly as you can because the best use of your time should be whatever you actually enjoy and whatever you are best at. Which for a lot of solos does tend to be that networking or bringing in the business, meeting with those potential clients. It's not necessarily doing the actual work on the file because although, yes, you're making the hourly rate that you are charging on that file, but you're not meeting with the client that's going to hire you, that's going to bring that work.
I saw an attorney recently talking online about, "I was told that I shouldn't do some of these low-level things because there's a better use of my time, but I really enjoy that low-level stuff." And my advice is actually not that you can't do some of that low-level stuff, but that you need to figure out that balance and for a lot of attorneys doing and being in production is not going to be the best use of your time.
So bringing on that amazing associate, that amazing paralegal, that great bookkeeper, that great receptionist, I'm always surprised when I find out that attorneys are answering their own phones. Because although, yes, it will allow you to talk to that client one on one, now that client thinks that they can reach you at any time. And they will go ballistic when they call and somehow they get your voicemail. So I don't feel that answering your own phones is the best use of your time. I think that somebody that can help to triage that situation and give you the calls that you need or be able to answer somebody's question without interrupting you is a better use of their time.
So in the beginning, I found that every time we hired somebody that the firm's income doubled. It almost didn't matter what position it was because I feel like it was not just having a team member that's able to take that work off my plate. But almost allowing for that bandwidth, allowing for that mental space. To be able to focus on, "Who do I need to meet, who do I need to talk to, what do I need to do that's a better use of my time than answering my phones, or doing my own consultations or doing that legal research or whatever other legal task that new employee took off my plate?"
It was something that, early on, I really saw that happening very quickly. After that it becomes a skill that you got to pick up. We just hired an attorney. My husband is my COO and at the time, that was our seventh attorney. And he is like, "I don't think we have the work." And I'm like, "Trust me on this. I really feel that we need to open up that bandwidth. The associates are indicating that they may be at capacity. And although mathematically they're not at capacity, you want to make sure that that means that very quickly they will actually be at mathematical capacity."
So having somebody that is able to bring and have some of that bandwidth, we've quickly brought that associate into the fold. And she's already handling quite a few cases. So it is something where you develop a little bit of that sixth sense, but in the beginning you really have to hire. There's nothing that will make you work harder on your firm than knowing payroll is coming up. So it's a motivator, while it's also that assistance to make sure that you can do all the important things.
Sonya Palmer:
I love what you said, especially that hiring made you more money. So often, especially when you're looking mathematically, hiring is a cost and people don't think about it that way. It's just a cost and it feels like a liability when it's an advantage. So I think giving permission to business owners to hire early is extremely important, especially again, women owned businesses who tend to feel like they can do it all.
They'll just work harder, they'll just work more. They'll just DIY it. And so again, to give someone who has done this, to give license to someone who is thinking about opening their own firm, or they're in their $100 interior office, permission to hire someone. That they don't have to do it all and that that will actually be very advantageous for them.
Other thing that I really liked that you said is networking as a business owner really is business development. That is a very good use of your time, any business owner's time because that is how you bring business into the door. So yes. Excellent. So you mentioned on operations in there as well, cost-effectiveness. When did you know it was time to bring in a COO?
Vanessa Vasquez de Lara:
For our firm, my husband is our COO, so it was one of those things where I really felt that I was reaching a point where I couldn't do all the things. So I couldn't manage all of the legal and all of the operations, and for a long time I thought, "Well, maybe I need to bring in a partner, another attorney where we can share the different roles." But partners were like marriages. And A, it's not easy to find that perfect fit that meets exactly your weaknesses and complements your strengths. It was one of those things where I wasn't quite sure how I was going to do it.
My husband is an engineer by trade, he is not an attorney. And after pandemic within a couple of years, he was really burnt out at his corporate job and we had talked about maybe not necessarily him working at the firm, but maybe him doing his own thing, doing a startup. He was in medical engineering at the time, and at some point he was like, "Maybe we should just try it." And I was like, "Yes, I'm super excited." Because his engineering background and his corporate background really gave him a complete set of skills that I never had.
I never had a job outside of a law firm, and the law firms that I worked before I had my own were very small, maybe two or three attorneys and a handful of staff. So it was something where, I think at that time, I was already bigger than the firms that I worked in before I opened my own firm. So I really didn't have that pattern example that I could follow and say, "Okay. Well, this is how those firms worked." I never worked in big law... And I tend to be very share-y, but most lawyers are not.
Most lawyers don't tend to tell you how they do things, which is why I feel that I really enjoy sharing how I do things because I feel like people don't ask because they don't think that anybody will tell them. I really appreciate that, people who did tell me so that I also do the same. But we brought them on, like, "We're going to try this out. If it doesn't work, there's plenty of jobs." And he has such an amazing reputation, the engineering and the medical engineering world that it wasn't a concern whether you could find a job again if this didn't work out. It was such a relief once he got here and he really observed our firm for a few months.
He didn't jump in and take over anything. But once he started taking on those roles, it was really revolutionary because it allowed me, again, to be able to take those things off my plate, be able to have the mental bandwidth to help my associates more with strategy, be able to lower my caseload, but at the same time invest more in our cases because now I'm the managing attorney.
I'm the head of legal while he's the head of operations. So I mean, I am a big proponent of coaching, and I've been doing legal coaching for quite a few years. So that also helped me to see when I needed more in-house assistance versus just that fractional or external assistance, which I had been getting up to that point. I feel like we really needed it, once we were over that seven figure barrier. And once we were over a million dollar firm, it became something where my knowledge just did not extend, and my time did not extend, and my abilities did not extend sufficiently to be able to do other things and wear all the hats.
Sonya Palmer:
I think it's a different perspective too. I'm operations. I think having someone who's not an attorney, not a lawyer, but very familiar with the space, come in and look top down. Because you guys see it through a very specific lens, and it just allows creative and original ways to solve problems. So I think that was very, very smart. So big shifts, solo, part-time, grow, grow, grow, bringing in your husband in as your COO, you mentioned seven figures. You're talking about leadership, coaching, I think sharing is teaching. You're seeing a lot of leadership terms and you are now seven all female attorneys. Tell me about maintaining the culture that you set? You've said something like sharing, coaching. Have you maintained that culture throughout all of this?
Vanessa Vasquez de Lara:
So that's really been one of my key initiatives. Makes it sound like something that's very, very small, but it is something that I've become very intentional about. I did a leadership training. It was a three-day training, and I think we spent a whole day on your firm's culture and developing that and cultivating that. So that's really something that we work really hard at. At making sure that our values are utilized in our marketing, in our hiring, in our management, and in our branding. Because it's something that really affects everybody's life. I always knew that I wanted to create a law firm that was better, different, more better than the places I had been at, particularly for females and female attorneys. Because I hate the statistics of how we are such a tiny part of upper management and big law, how women tend to drop out of the law firm career path, particularly when they have children.
There's a lot of things that I felt could have been done better by the firms that I was at. And so that's always been a guiding principle of mine, trying to make sure that not just my attorneys, but my entire team is able to... If your kid has a whatever, at school, you don't need to worry about whether you're going to be able to go to that. If you need to work from home because your kid is sick, there's not a problem with that. We really pivoted very quickly during COVID because my entire team always had laptops. We've never had desktops because I always used to do a ton of work from karate, from TaeKwonDo, from basketball. Because I'd pick up the kids from school, but oftentimes we'd have the extracurriculars.
So I was always working on my computer. The design of our office was always with laptops, using the cloud, using Box for our files and using programs that were web-based versus computer-based.
And that allowed us to really pivot very quickly during COVID because everybody just grabbed their laptops, their monitors on their desk and went home back in 2020. It's always been a guiding principle of wanting to make sure that we have that balance. Our billable requirements, we do have them. I do feel that it's important for people to know where they stand and that is the easiest metric that helps us as a firm, make money, but also you as an associate to know how you're doing. If you're not hitting your hours, that tells you you're not doing well. If you're exceeding your hours, that tells you you're doing very well.
I believe that it's an amount that allows for that balance. It's on average about 30 hours a week. So that's something that it's always been a guiding principle. And it even led to two of our associates had babies last year and we brought a nanny into the office. So we have a nursery in the office, we have a nanny in the office. So they're able to bring their babies to work. So we cut down on the commute of having to drop off a baby at a day care, having to get everything ready, having to do all the things in the morning. And then having to rush and be worried that you're not going to make it to the day care before they close at the end of the day.
We just have it in-house. The babies tend to be healthier because they're not sharing with a bunch of other kids. They're just here, it's two babies. And that's something that gives them peace of mind. We're helping to subsidize it. So it's something that is a lot less expensive than what my associates would be able to do if they had to hire a nanny in-home.
So I feel that it allows for a lot of happiness. We get to snuggle with babies. When you're having a tough day at work, nothing makes you happier than getting to go and play with a six-month, eight-month, nine-months-old baby. So it's really something that has fit into our culture, and our company's overall, of being in a great place. And literally, it is a testament to our work-life balance because we're having our team being able to come in, those associates come in typically by 9:30 instead of by 8:30.
So we've baked it in to the experience that our employees have, and that's something that we get to brag about. And we've gotten resumes from attorneys that, "I heard about this. I saw your social media." That resonates with people, and that's really what your culture should be about. The culture should feed your branding and your branding should attract the right kind of people, the right kind of employees, the right kind of clients. But it should also repel the wrong kind of people and the kind of clients.
And if it's an attorney who maybe has a grumpier type of outlook on life, who doesn't like to collaborate, who thinks that they would be annoyed by babies, they barely cry. But somebody who thinks that they'd be annoyed by that, that would repel them. And this probably wouldn't be the best place for them to be at. So it's like culture really works when you are intentional about it.
Sonya Palmer:
100%. I think that is incredibly smart for a lot of what you said, but you have highly trained, highly intelligent, highly qualified lawyers. And going back to how we opened this drop-off lines, even if there is this balance, there's so much time, I don't want to say wasted, but the commute in a way... And their peace of mind, you said that. They're not having to think about what's going on at school, what's going on at daycare, what's going at home with the nanny.
They can just pop around the corner and check. I think that's brilliant, and you will attract a lot of very talented people who want to do really good work, have families. So it's also refreshing to hear someone who actually lives their core values versus just pretty words that they plucked, that they want to be someone who's actually living their values. And I want to wrap up. Because you have said that you pride yourself on your firm having a family feel, so what does that mean to you?
Vanessa Vasquez de Lara:
So how I like to explain it is, a good family member is going to always have your back, no matter what. But they're not going to be scared of being truthful and honest with you.
Sonya Palmer:
Don't be afraid to start small, but think big. Whether you're launching your own firm or gunning for a promotion, every step forward counts. Embrace the power of incremental progress and trust that your hard work will pay off. No matter where you go, stay true to your values and vision. As you navigate your career in law, there will be plenty of voices telling you how things should be done, but as Vanessa's story illustrates, some of the most fulfilling and successful paths are the ones we forge for ourselves.
So whether you're dreaming of starting your own firm with a killer culture or shattering glass ceilings in big law, know that your perspective and your voice matter. Keep pushing forward, supporting your fellow women in law, and creating the change you want to see.
If you found this content insightful, inspiring, or it just made you smile, please share this episode with the trailblazer in your life. For more about Vanessa, check out our show notes. While you're there, please leave us a review or a five star rating. It really helps others discover the show. And I'll see you next week on LawHer, where we'll shed light on how another of the brightest and boldest women in the legal industry climbed to the top of her field. Until next time, stay inspired, stay empowered, and keep making waves in the legal industry. You've got this.
