One Year of Bird Bolt Law: A Reflection

I missed my anniversary.

Not my wedding anniversary, but the one-year mark of launching Bird Bolt Law. I was knee-deep in a hearing and prepping for mediation all week, and it took a dear friend to remind me. (What a good friend.)

It’s worth pausing to mark the moment.

This past year has been nothing short of a ride. Starting my own firm has meant learning not just how to practice law, but how to run a business. I’ve built accounting systems from scratch, developed policies and procedures, hired my first employee, figured out payroll, HR, tech procurement, compliance, you name it. I’ve spent late nights researching insurance clauses and early mornings catching up on admin before the kids woke up.

But the truth is, this milestone isn’t just about building a law firm. It’s about everything it took to get here.

I took my bar exams while articling full-time. I mothered two very young children during COVID while studying, working, and somehow keeping everyone fed and (mostly) sane. Now I’m raising three small kids and running a law firm as a woman in a profession still dominated by men. That’s not a side note. It’s the backdrop.

It’s also the why.

This work is hard. It takes a mental toll that’s hard to describe unless you’ve lived it. There’s this unspoken pressure in law that you should be working around the clock. That if you’re not squeezing every .1 into a billable hour, you’re somehow not doing enough. That kind of thinking creates a culture of burnout. It makes us feel like we’re never measuring up. It’s isolating. It’s unsustainable. And it’s not okay.

As I move into year two, I’m thinking deeply about what it means to build something different.

What if law firms respected boundaries? What if we trusted our teams to do good work without watching the clock? What if we judged success not just by billables, but by impact, fairness, sustainability, and the ability to breathe? Other industries do this. Tech, marketing, startups—they’ve figured out that motivated people thrive when they feel valued, not surveilled.

I want that for our profession. I want that for my team. I want that for me.

I also want to name something else: this is a full circle moment.

I’m not just a woman running a law firm. I’m a feminist building a firm that lives those values. We work differently. We lead with empathy. We believe clients deserve to be heard and lawyers deserve to be human. We treat people with dignity, not just because it’s good practice, but because it’s the right thing to do.

So here I am. One year in. Grateful. Tired. Proud. Still learning. Still dreaming.

Thank you to everyone who believed in me. To my family, who made space for this. To my clients, who trust us with some of the hardest moments in their lives. To the friends who remind me to celebrate. And to every woman lawyer quietly carrying the weight of it all—you’re not alone.

Here’s to building something that lasts. Something that gives more than it takes.

And here’s to year two.