Name: Maija West

Category: Law Firm: Innovative Leadership

Firm/Company: Law Office of Maija West

Title: Founder/Managing Attorney

Time in Position: Since 2012

What was your route to the top? 

I got up the courage to start my own law practice because of being a mother. I wanted to have it all—a rewarding law practice, inspiring clients and the ability to have choice around how much time I could devote to being a present mother. My career background before law school was in the nonprofit sector. I chose a legal career to be able to effectuate changes on a larger scale. Since law school, I have had a chance to be a supervising attorney for New Mexico Legal Aid, work in community banking, and to now serve my forward-thinking business clients. Because of my licensure, I have had a chance to serve the community on boards of organizations that I am very passionate about. Choosing law was the best professional decision I have ever made.

What keeps you up at night? 

My biggest business concerns right now are related to how much the external factors of the world we are in are impacting the people in the companies I serve. Factors such as climate change and social/political unrest have very real impacts on the employees and leadership teams who are critical to business performance. How I best support my clients in effectively leading their people from this perspective seems to be crucial to minimizing legal liability and maintaining ROI.

What is the best leadership advice you've given or received, and why do you think it was effective?

Leadership advice is one of my favorite topics! It is hard to choose, so I will share one that we have been discussing this month. We have using Brené Brown's writings on trust to demonstrate how leaders need to show through their actions that they are trustworthy, which we have been applying to contract theory. Here is a great quote of hers: "Stop walking through the world looking for confirmation that you don't belong. You will always find it because you've made that your mission. Stop scouring people's faces for evidence that you're not enough. You will always find it because you've made that your goal. True belonging and self-worth are not goods; we don't negotiate their value with the world. The truth about who we are lives in our hearts. Our call to courage is to protect our wild heart against constant evaluation, especially our own. No one belongs here more than you." In order for me to have the confidence to choose to practice law the way I wanted to, I had to trust myself, and to not seek external validation for whether my law practice had a right to exist or not. I know that my law practice is making a difference because my clients tell me so. I have the honor of getting to serve exceptional leaders through my law practice, and the only way I was able to do this was to have the courage to convey my moral compass through my law practice and the courage to ignore the naysayers.

Looking back, what do you wish you had known when you started out in the legal profession? 

I wish I had known how hard it is for parents to be lawyers and to advance in the legal profession. The statistics for mothers at the firm partnership level are pretty sad. I think it is important for people to understand that corporate attorneys often make a great sacrifice due to the billable hour, often at the expense of family time or self-care. That when we people are choosing to pursue law or not, they need to understand the average annual billable hour requirements, not just their postgrad starting salary.

What is the most valuable career advice anyone has ever given you?

I have been lucky to have lots of advice along the way. But my favorite advice I have been given is a twist on a T-shirt that was popular in my childhood: "He who dies with the most toys does not win."