Nikka Maleki:
I equate my success to my relationships. I pour into my relationships and they pour right back into me. I built such an absolutely beautiful community, and being around the people that I love, it just gives me life again.
Sonya Palmer:
What if being human made you a better lawyer?
Nikka Maleki:
To me, building a legacy in a modern law firm means making people feel so seen and heard, leaving people a little better than they came in so that they can echo that on the individuals they meet.
Sonya Palmer:
Nikka Maleki is a law firm owner who speaks the universal language of empathy, and through her, we're taking a different lens on power, one grounded in loss, healing, and the kind of leadership that grows in the dark. She defines success by how deeply she connects with clients, with community, with herself.
Nikka Maleki:
As women, we're taught that we're givers and that we have to give, give, give, give, and give, but you can't give unless you're giving to yourself. Being grounded emotionally is so important for us lawyers, but especially for us female lawyers, because you have all these other identities that you have to kind of fill the shoes in. Creating that space for you and that time for you is imperative.
Sonya Palmer:
This is LawHer, stories of bold women in law, owning power faster and keeping it longer. I am Sonya Palmer. I lead operations at Rankings.io, the team behind this show and behind so many founders building the firms of their dreams.
Today's story is about the kind of power that doesn't come from titles or wins, but from healing, from loss, and from choosing to stay human in a system that often asks us not to be.
Attorney Nikki Maleki turned pain into purpose. She started Sparrow Law Group as a reflection of both lived experience and professional clarity, a place where advocacy begins with listening. Her path didn't start in law. Nikka was chasing a diplomatic dream, ready to serve on a global stage. So let's begin.
Nikka Maleki:
I didn't think that I would find my way to law school. Everything that I did from when I was 16 academically and personally was to get me to go into the foreign service. I wanted to become a diplomat.
Both of my parents are immigrants and I saw how hard they worked, given that they were given the opportunity to come here and really build a life for themselves, and I wanted to give that to others who didn't really have the opportunity that my parents had.
Sonya Palmer:
While in college at UCLA, the perfect opportunity came her way, internship at the United Nations. But the slow-moving bureaucracy grew frustrating. She wanted to help people more directly, more urgently, so she pivoted.
Nikka Maleki:
I thought to myself, "How do I do this on a more regional scale where I can touch people's lives independently, but also hold that value of compassion and humanity and all of those themes that I really wanted to incorporate into my career?"
So I decided it's either I go get a master's in international relations, which was just an extension of the theories I'd already been learning, or go to law school and have a license to actually practice law and talk to people on an individual scale when they're at the most vulnerable point.
Sonya Palmer:
Law school offered a more hands-on path, a license to advocate. But just as she stepped into that new chapter, life shifted under her feet.
Nikka Maleki:
I was in the two-year program at Southwestern and my second day of orientation, my mom had an accident and we tragically lost her.
I had gotten a full ride. My family and my professors were trying to convince me to take the year off, but because of such a shocking loss and just moving to LA by myself in my own apartment for the first time, I decided that I was going to stick it through.
And I remember sitting in these classes and I'm like, "What am I even doing here?" It just felt so numbing. But every single morning I would wake up and I would look at myself in the mirror after I washed my face, and I would tell myself, "Nobody's going to love you like your mother, so you better learn how to love yourself."
As a young girl, you're riddled with insecurity, right? Because the whole world is telling you you have to look a certain way, you have to act a certain way, you have to be a certain way, you have to be the object for a man's desire, et cetera. But to rewrite your own rules, and as a 21-year-old losing my mom at 53, realizing this is the only chance I got and the only way that I can control my life is by the perspective I give it, right? I can't control the events, but I can control how I respond. And finding purpose through that, I mean, it's been a really beautiful thing.
Sonya Palmer:
At first it was just a mantra, "You better learn how to love yourself." A thread to hold onto in the dark. But over time, repetition rewired belief.
Psychologists call it post-traumatic growth, when the worst thing that happens to you becomes the ground you rise from. Eventually the word stopped echoing back as hope and started returning as truth.
Nikka Maleki:
You start believing it and you start embodying it. So much of this I learned from just losing my mother. And before I went to law school I would call my mom every day on the commute.
And when I was driving to law school after I had lost her, that commute felt gut-wrenching. I called somebody else I loved. And it'll never replace, but it was a healthy space for me to remain authentic. And even in my times in life personally or professionally when I didn't feel like I knew what I was doing or if I felt like I bit off something that was a little too big for me to chew, I would just tell myself that I got this.
And usually when you can have that type of self-prophecy, it's a really powerful thing. It's a really powerful thing because you also make other people believe they can have it too, and there's no other feeling like that.
I ended up transferring to the three-year traditional program a month later. And law school for me, I wasn't very academic. I would study two weeks before the finals and then just try to get the B's.
Sonya Palmer:
While studying the law, she was also living inside of it. Nikka and her brother filed a bad faith claim after their mother's life insurance was denied. That experience navigating grief and bureaucracy was more than personal, it was formative.
Nikka Maleki:
My mom worked at the hospital for 30 years, she was a nuclear medicine tech, and they denied her life insurance coverage that she paid into every month for 30 years. And immediately we were tendered the policy.
And that's what made me realize we have a real opportunity as attorneys here to make a difference in people's lives, because if my brother and I didn't find Robert McKennon, shout out to him, to guide us through that whole process, we wouldn't have known what our rights are.
And I was in law school, I was a second year. I knew something didn't sound right, but finding him and his expertise and doing ERISA work, which is very niche, really, it changed the trajectory of our lives. And in that mediation I realized this is what I wanted to be doing for the rest of my life, making people feel the same way.
Sonya Palmer:
Sitting across from a mediator, Nikka didn't just feel seen, she felt empowered, and it clicked, this was the work, helping people find justice in their most fragile moments.
Long before law school, Nikka had been watching her mother advocate in her own quiet, powerful way, standing up for others, making people feel seen. It was never about authority, it was about empathy.
Nikka Maleki:
I think from when I was a little girl, my parents were perfectly imperfect, right? But they were my best models, and I really learned to be the human being that I am today through the nuanced interactions they had with the outside world, right? Because even though my mom, she was a very formidable woman and she was very tough on us, I saw her stand up from a very early age as an immigrant for people who didn't really have a voice.
And so I think from an early age for me watching my mother be that person and being the formidable woman in our house and hustling her way through work and school, I just, I would watch her when I was younger and the interactions she would have with strangers, and that's really what's injected the pulse of how I try to lead with our law firm. It's a human-centered law firm.
I've worked at many different firms. I've worked in big law, I've worked at plaintiff side firms, and there's a model that I think a lot of people try to replicate, but I think when you bring your own flavor to it, that's really where you find the sweet spot.
Sonya Palmer:
But knowing your purpose doesn't mean the path is easy.
Nikka Maleki:
There's brilliant minds across the spectrum, and there's good people doing work that's right for them.
When I was working defense, they would put me on a lot of the sexual harassment cases, and I thought that would be really hard for me, right? And I saw on the defense side that a lot of attorneys, plaintiff's attorneys, could take advantage of how the system is built, and it really overshadows the victims that really have gone through something.
But on the same token, I didn't feel fully comfortable because they were putting me on the sexual harassment cases because of the optics of it, right? And that's really what law is, and it's what I appreciated about law so much, but I wanted to have my agency to fight my fight, not the fight that I was given or handed to. I need to believe in my fight.
So scary to walk away from that stable salary and the bonus incentives working in defense, but just felt like I was going through the motions and I wasn't really leading with purpose, which I think for me is the epicenter of what gives my life meaning.
Sonya Palmer:
Brene Brown calls vulnerability uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure, but also the birthplace of innovation, belonging, and courage. For Nikka, showing up authentically with fear, with fire became a strategy and a strength.
Nikka Maleki:
When I was in law school, what I really loved about it was the Socratic method and that there was no right answer, right? It's not a math class where 2 + 2 = 4. It's we're tasked with these facts and these stories, and we need to tell the story. And whether that's to a mediator, to a judge, to a jury of 12 different strangers of different experiences, it's about figuring out how to best relate to other human beings, and it really intersects with art, film, music. We all bleed the same and we all love the same.
So leading with vulnerability to me means leading with authenticity, finding out who you truly are, and not labeling those qualities as strengths or weaknesses, but being real, because that's a universal language. I can go up in front of a jury and maybe not everyone is going to like the way I look or the way my hair looks or what I'm wearing, but if I can lead with a voice of courage and also show my fears, I think that translates volumes.
And it's really how you find your people, and that's what we've kept at the center of our law firm, right? It's the types of clients that we take on. And like I said, going back to defense work, right? We don't work on volume. We take clients that we believe we can tell their stories with conviction and passion and true advocacy.
And on the other hand, right? Speaking with defense counsel, which by nature is an adversarial relationship, showing them that you're also just a human being doing what you're tasked to do, and that helps narrow out sometimes the defense mechanisms, no pun intended, of what you're getting on the other side.
Sonya Palmer:
At her firm, power isn't about volume, it's about intention. Nikka and her team only take on clients they believe in. They fight with heart, and heart is hard to argue with.
Nikka Maleki:
Coming from defense work, you're really given a lane, right? And it's like, "Okay, master your lane." Whereas when you start a law firm, and we're about 14 months in, there is no lane, you create your own lanes, and then it's about perfecting what that looks like for you, continuing to live out the values, making sure that when you hit those big settlements it doesn't change the way you do business.
Doing the work of an attorney, you're also a business person, so you're responsible for constantly and continuously being a leader and acting out the values of the firm or what you want the business to look like.
Sonya Palmer:
Vulnerability doesn't just connect you to clients, it shifts the energy in the room, even with opposing counsel, because when you lead with humanity, defense is lower, dialogue opens, outcomes change.
Nikka Maleki:
As women, sometimes we're completely overlooked. I can count on more than two hands how many times I've been called sweetheart by clients and by defense counsel.
Speaker 3:
Sweetheart.
Nikka Maleki:
This is something my business partner has taught me a lot, Joubin Hanassab. It's about not getting too reactive, right? I'm the firecracker of the firm and he's really taught me stoicism and staying calm and asserting what you know, your confidence. I think that really is that quiet confidence. Walk quietly, but carry a big stick.
So it's definitely something I'm learning from him, and I'm super grateful to have him as a business partner. I mean, he's changed the trajectory of our firm just by having him next to me.
Sonya Palmer:
Starting your own law firm doesn't solve everything. Sexism, bias, that doesn't disappear. But what does change is your ability to choose your circle, to design a culture, and to decide what kind of leader you want to be.
Nikka Maleki:
I honestly wanted to build a firm that replicated the models of what my mentors did before me. It's building a firm that maintains the human component at the center of the firm, not the money, not the cases, it's the humanness and the storytelling, and everything else will fall into place.
That's what we want to be known for, is making big differences in people's lives that have made to be felt little, because it's a legacy, it translates time. I want to make people feel seen and heard, regardless of the outcome. Of course we're very competitive and we want to win, but it's the process, it's the handholding from the intake to a potential trial, the lifecycle of a case where you really make people feel like they have a friend, and I think that's the most important thing in our field.
Sonya Palmer:
Growth is easy to chase, integrity is harder to keep. Nikka is determined to do both, to scale with intention, to hire with heart, to keep humanity at the center of her business.
Nikka Maleki:
We're starting to scale and we're starting to get bigger, and obviously as you get bigger and you bring on more help, you need more cases, et cetera. It's about pausing, making sure that you're making the right hires who also echo the same values, and building out a machine that is meant to serve the community while also maintaining the original values. That's the beautiful intersection of what we do, and I'm figuring it out.
Sonya Palmer:
Starting a firm is scary. So is stepping into the unknown. But as Nikka learned from her mother, you don't wait to feel ready, you make it happen anyway.
Nikka Maleki:
The fear. The fear of not knowing if it's going to work, but then I also realized in life from a very early age, also from my mother, is that you'll never really know. You just make it happen. I didn't know I was going to lose my mom on my second day of law school right after she moved me into my new apartment in Downtown LA. She was my life.
Through her teachings and through me watching her throughout her own life, separate of her title as mother, but as friend, colleague, sister, wife, I learned what womanhood really, what it really means and what femininity really means, and that's embracing and adapting.
Sonya Palmer:
Today she sees a new kind of power rising in women, a mix of empathy and fire, vulnerability and vision, the kind of power that doesn't conform, it redefines.
Nikka Maleki:
I think women are more badass than ever right now. I mean, it's such a beautiful, beautiful intersection of women finding their voice, their power, not conforming or subscribing to what the norms that have been placed on us. Also using their femininity and their strength. Yeah, women are just so beautiful.
Women speak a language of magic that I don't think anybody else could, and it doesn't matter who you are and where you come from. We have this level of empathy that is transcendent, and when we use that, we can do really, really big and powerful things.
Sonya Palmer:
Nikka Maleki is proof that you don't have to trade humanity for success, that vulnerability can be your greatest asset, and that even through grief you can grow something beautiful.
Subscribe to LawHer for more stories of bold, brilliant women rewriting the rules and embracing power. Please share this episode with someone who needs it.
Nikka Maleki:
Find exactly what it is that makes you you and go all in on it, because once you do that, you will speak a universal language.
