Advocate for yourself

We fight hard for our clients every day; women lawyers need to do the same for their own careers

2026 March

What law school didn’t teach me

Law school prepared me to think like a lawyer. It taught me to analyze, to argue, and to anticipate. What it did not teach me, and what no class, professor, or book ever addressed, was how to navigate a career as a woman in the legal profession.

I remember two pivotal moments early in my career. The first was the day I nearly let a job I loved slip away simply because it never occurred to me that I could ask for it. The second was the day I learned that colleagues – some with less experience than me – were earning significantly more. In both cases, my reaction was the same. I felt blindsided, naive, and frustrated at myself for not knowing what no one had ever told me.

The lessons that mattered most to me didn’t come from school. They came from experience, from many moments of discomfort, and perhaps most importantly, from other women and colleagues who were generous enough to share their own. I am a better lawyer and a more grounded professional because people further along in their careers took the time to be candid with me and to tell me things I didn’t know I needed to hear. That kind of mentorship and collegial support isn’t always formalized or even recognized for what it is. But it is powerful and transformative.

There are some lessons that took me longer to learn than I would have liked. I share them here in the hope that someone earlier in her career might learn them sooner than I did.

Lesson 1: You never know unless you ask

I grew up shy and introverted. My parents instilled in me a simple, deeply held belief: Work hard, do the right thing, and what you deserve will come to you. You don’t ask; you earn. I took this all to heart. I rarely asked my parents for anything. I waited and I received. That value served me well in school, but it did not serve me well as a new lawyer.

I graduated law school and passed the bar in 2007, which was a tough year to enter the legal job market. I initially landed my first job with a solo plaintiff’s attorney, only to be pushed back into the job market when she stopped practicing a year later. Then, by some stroke of luck, I spotted a job posting for a larger, well-established plaintiff firm seeking someone to fill in for an attorney on leave, a four-month temporary position. I applied, got the job, and immediately loved everything about it.

A few months in, I learned the attorney on leave wasn’t coming back. I was instantly excited, thinking that this was my chance. I was wrong. They hired someone else with one year more experience, and I wasn’t even considered. There was also another new attorney already slated to join the firm. I was crushed. Even though they extended my temporary contract by a few more months, I knew I needed to start looking for something permanent before my temporary position ended.

That’s when my husband, who was also a new lawyer at the time, gave me a nudge that would change my career. He urged me to approach my boss and ask whether there was any possibility I could stay. “Be honest,” he said. “Tell him you love the firm, that you want to be here, but that you’ll need to start looking for a permanent position if there’s no path forward.” “What’s the harm?” he kept asking. “If your boss says no, you’re no worse off than you are right now.”

My gut reaction was visceral resistance. They clearly didn’t have room for me. Making that ask felt presumptuous, even embarrassing. But after a lot of persuading and a lot of internal deliberation, I put on my big-girl pants and initiated the conversation.

My boss’s response caught me off guard. He said something like: “I’m smart, and I don’t like to lose smart people. Give me a couple of weeks to see what I can do.” Less than two days later, he offered me a permanent position. I accepted immediately and went on to work at that firm for over 13 years. 

None of it would have happened if someone hadn’t urged me to venture out of my comfort zone and ask for what I wanted. I had to unlearn the lesson that good things come to those who wait. I realized that sometimes you must ask to get the good things.

Lesson 2: Know your value and negotiate

For the first several years of my career, I didn’t negotiate. Not even once. I assumed that if I worked hard and did excellent work, recognition and compensation would follow naturally. I was essentially applying the same logic to my professional life that had worked in school.

It took candid conversations with a couple of female colleagues for my wakeup call. The professional world, they told me, is not a meritocracy in the way school is. Hard work matters, but it is not enough on its own. If you want something, you must go after it. Then came the gut punch: I learned I was earning substantially less than colleagues with the same level of experience or less. That was my reality check. And it was my call to action.

As lawyers, we negotiate and advocate on behalf of our clients every day, and we do it well. So why is it that so many women lawyers feel deeply uncomfortable doing the same for themselves? After a lot of thought, I believe it probably comes down to the nature of the ask. Negotiating for a client feels professional and objective. Negotiating for yourself feels personal. And with that comes insecurity, fear of failure, and a particular kind of embarrassment that’s hard to shake. That was certainly true for me.

What helped me move past it was a reframe. I started coaching myself with a question: When has my doomsday vision actually come true? We tend to imagine the worst-case scenario in vivid detail – the awkward silence, the flat rejection, the damage to the relationship. But when I honestly looked back at the moments I had dreaded most, reality had almost always been kinder than my imagination. Things turned out okay or sometimes better than okay. I learned to apply that thinking to whatever fear was standing in my way. Has this catastrophe ever actually happened to me before? What is the realistic worst case – and can I live with it? That kind of perspective-checking didn’t eliminate the discomfort, but it made it manageable.

With that mindset, and with encouragement from those same colleagues, I did something I had never done before. I asked for a raise, a significant one. But I didn’t go in unprepared. I took time to reflect on my value to the firm, sought input from others about what someone with my experience, skills, and contributions should reasonably be earning, and went into that conversation grounded in something more than hope. I got the raise.

What followed was a gradual but meaningful shift in how I approached my own career. I continued to coach myself to stop waiting to be recognized and started advocating for myself. As my career progressed, I asked again and received. Each conversation became a little less daunting than the last. 

The truth I wish someone had told me on day: Do not expect that your employer is tracking your contributions on your behalf and waiting for the right moment to reward you. That responsibility falls to you. Know your worth, do your homework, and negotiate.

Lesson 3: Build your network one connection at a time

Law school impressed upon us the importance of networking and relationship building, but it didn’t teach us how. For an introverted person who didn’t know anyone outside of law school classmates, that gap felt big.

Walking into a room full of strangers did not come naturally to me. It felt uncomfortable, even awkward. But I pushed myself to do it anyway. The first thing I learned was that discomfort becomes more manageable when you have a strategy. I started by joining bar associations. To see what resonated, I joined some tied to affinity groups, some based on geographic location, and some for plaintiffs’ attorneys. I went with a lawyer friend whenever I could as having one familiar face in the room made the rest of it easier. I joined mentorship programs and signed up for committees. And then, slowly and deliberately, I made myself do the thing that felt hardest – I introduced myself to strangers.

It didn’t happen fast. Building a professional network is not a project you complete. It’s something you tend over time, adding one contact, then another, until you look up one day and realize you’ve built something real. Some of those contacts became colleagues. Some became collaborators. A few became genuine friends.

What I didn’t anticipate was how involvement itself would create momentum. For example, people I met through bar associations encouraged me to chair a committee. From there, I joined the board. Those leadership positions brought visibility, and that visibility brought more connections, more opportunities, and more doors opening. A network thrives on engagement. The more you put in, the more pathways emerge – a leadership role here, a referral there, a colleague you can call when you’re stuck on an issue, or an opportunity to publish an article, or an opportunity to speak at a conference.

None of it would have happened if I had let my discomfort make the decision for me. Networking doesn’t need to come naturally. I learned you can start small. Join one organization. Attend one event, even if you bring a friend for backup. Introduce yourself to one person you don’t know. Then do it again and again.

Mentorship and paying it forward

Looking back, I was not navigating any of these moments alone. Someone who cared about me – a husband, a colleague, a friend – saw something I couldn’t see about my own situation and told me the truth. I was fortunate to have those people in my corner. Not every new lawyer does.

That is why I want to be that person for others who need it, especially for women and minorities who are earlier in their careers. It is not lost on me that the struggles I’ve described in this article – the discomfort of asking, the reluctance to negotiate, the resistance to putting yourself in a room full of strangers can be compounded for those of us who grew up in cultures or environments where self-advocacy wasn’t modeled or encouraged. I understand that experience because it was mine.

I try to be an open door for female colleagues, for newer lawyers, for law students who reach out for informational interviews. I have shared the same advice, the same stories, the same difficult lessons I wish someone had shared with me at the start. What I have found, more than once, is that personal experiences resonate the most. Several women students and lawyers have told me that hearing these candid stories made them feel less alone and better equipped in developing their own careers.

That response is what inspired me to write this article. The lessons here are not theoretical. They came from living a legal career as a woman, from making mistakes and being pushed by people who believed in me, and from slowly learning to believe in myself. If even one thing resonates for a reader the way the right advice landed for me at the right moment, then the vulnerability in sharing my story here was worth it.

The legal profession is better when we bring each other along. I encourage you to pay it forward. The next generation is watching.

Kimberly Wong is a partner and litigation manager at Coopers LLP in San Francisco where she litigates and manages personal injury cases involving negligence, premises liability, wrongful death, products liability, and industrial injuries. Kimberly is a frequent lecturer and author of published articles on various topics related to personal injury litigation. She has been selected by her peers to the Northern California Super Lawyers Rising Star list each year from 2012 to 2017 and the Northern California Super Lawyer list from 2018 to the present. She has had several settlements featured in The Recorder’s annual report of “California’s Million-Dollar Settlements.” Kimberly has served in various leadership roles within the Consumer Attorneys of California, including as an officer, a board member, Chair of the Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Committee, and Chair of the Women’s Caucus.