Julia Hensel: You began your career as a paralegal. What first interested you in law?
Dana Brooks: I kind of fell into it. I was raised by a single mother, so even in high school it was very important to me to develop skills, make my own money, and not be a financial burden to her. During my junior and senior years, I arranged my schedule so I could work essentially full-time. I had health insurance, a 401(k), and all of those things while I was still in high school.
I happened to work at a law firm. I did not have lawyers in my family, so simply being in proximity to people in the legal profession was a big deal. I started on the financial side, doing bookkeeping, loan closings, and similar work. Then I met a paralegal who introduced me to legal research, and one thing led to another.
I went to junior college and earned a paralegal degree, which was a great investment for two years of education. I worked as a paralegal for years and eventually worked for my husband at the time, who was a medical-malpractice defense attorney. Again, being around people doing that work gave me an enormous opportunity to learn.
I also spent time as a clinical social worker and a family-law mediator. Eventually, I realized I kept tiptoeing around becoming a lawyer. I finally said, “I just need to go to law school.” So I did.
Julia: You had an extraordinary opportunity while you were still in law school. How did that come about?
Dana: I was very fortunate. While I was still in law school, I had an opportunity to become a partner in an established personal injury firm. Two attorneys had owned the firm for about 25 years and were preparing to retire around the same time. One had someone lined up to succeed him, and the other thought he did, but that person ended up moving away.
It can be difficult to keep people in Tallahassee, so suddenly there was a succession problem. Because I already knew a lot about medical malpractice and had significant experience in the legal world, I looked like a shortcut in some ways. I could hit the ground running.
I was sworn in as a lawyer at about 11:30 in the morning, and by four o’clock that afternoon, I was a named partner in the law firm.
When something like that happens, people wonder why. They ask what is special about you. And if you are a woman, particularly an attractive woman, people may assume you are somebody’s wife, sister, or daughter, or ask who you slept with. People do not always assume that you earned an opportunity on your own.
I certainly benefited from an incredible opportunity, but I was prepared when it came. I had a law degree. I had years of experience. I understood the practice area, and I had maturity and professional experience that many of my classmates coming directly out of law school did not have.
Some of it is luck. But most of it is being absolutely prepared when the opportunity arrives.
Julia: Was it intimidating to become a named partner on the same day you became a lawyer?
Dana: It was terribly scary, but I was fortunate because most of the pressure I felt was internal. By that point, I was married to a successful lawyer. I did not have to work at all if I did not want to. I had children, and I graduated from law school three days before I turned 40.
That was a huge shift for me. I had gone from being someone who grew up with a lot of disadvantages and had to work in high school to someone who suddenly had a tremendous number of choices. Not everyone gets the opportunity to go to law school, much less write a check for it and graduate without debt.
I had worked as a public defender while I was in law school and loved it. I could have afforded to remain a public defender, which is another privilege because many people simply cannot afford to stay in public-service jobs like prosecution or defense.
So the pressure I put on myself was internal. I knew I had been given opportunities that many people do not receive, and I did not want to waste them.
Julia: How did you think about the risk of taking that opportunity?
Dana: Several other people had been given a similar opportunity before me, and they either failed at it or did not take it because they thought it was too risky. They were all men.
I said yes.
It was not because the opportunity was perfectly packaged and anybody would have accepted it. There were plenty of risks. But I assessed those risks and thought about what could happen if it actually worked.
That is something people often forget to do. They spend so much time thinking about everything that could go wrong that they never ask, “What if this goes right?”
I knew that if I took the opportunity, I would have to prove why I had received it. There would be a target on my back. But I know myself very well. Once I commit to something and say I am going to do it, particularly if other people are relying on me, I will keep going.
I did not want to embarrass anyone who had put their neck out for me. I also did not want to make it harder for other women to receive similar opportunities in the future.
Julia: Did you feel that succeeding carried a broader responsibility because you were a woman?
Dana: I did. When you are someone who has not traditionally been given an opportunity, you do not always feel as though you have the same room to fail.
If you are doing something unusual as a woman or as a minority, in many ways you are still going first. And when you are going first, your failure may unfairly affect how people think about everyone who comes behind you.
That creates a tremendous amount of pressure to do it right.
Now that I am further along in my career, I also think the responsibility changes. Once you have made it through that door, you should think about what opportunities you are creating for other women and minorities.
It is easy to walk through a door once somebody has already opened it for you. I think we should be asking what we are doing for the people who do not yet have an open door.
Julia: You have said that women spend so much time thinking about reaching the top that they often forget to think about what happens afterward. What do you mean?
Dana: I recently spoke to a group of women and told them, “I’m 58, so let me tell you what you need to be thinking about now: your succession plan.”
Women focus so much on ascension, building, growing, and reaching the top. We are often so convinced we are not going to get there that we never stop to think about what happens when we actually do.
But I am telling women: You are going to get there. So then what?
What are you building for? What do you want your legacy to be? Maybe it is creating opportunities for other women or minorities. Maybe it is something you want to leave for your children. Maybe you want to make an impact on your community.
Or maybe you simply want to reach a point where you can enjoy everything you have worked so hard for without feeling guilty about it.
Whatever your motivation is, define it.
Julia: You also encourage people to figure out their “number.” Why is that important?
Dana: I think everyone should have a number. What is the amount of money or resources you need before you can say, “Okay, now I have choices”?
Maybe once you reach that point, you decide to practice the kind of law that changes lives. Maybe you start another business. Maybe you devote yourself to something completely different.
But if you do not have a number, what is the goal? Is the goal simply to acquire more and accumulate more?
More what?
If “more” is the goal, you are constantly trying to fill a vessel with a hole in the bottom. There will never be enough if you do not understand what enough means.
That does not mean you should stop being ambitious or stop shooting for the stars. It means you should have something meaningful you are working toward. Maybe you want to help a certain number of people out of homelessness. Maybe you want to grow the firm to a particular size or expand into new practice areas.
But simply pursuing more money, more possessions, and more things is a hollow pursuit in my view.
Julia: What have been some of the most difficult lessons you have learned about leading people?
Dana: The first thing is that they are not going to do it the way you would do it.
I have also had a real reckoning with how much personal injury law has changed. There is a tremendous amount of outside money entering the industry, and that changes the way firms practice, acquire cases, and compete.
Today, if you want to be successful as an owner of a plaintiff’s personal injury firm, you have to be a businessperson. Being a lawyer is only one component of the operation.
You have people opening cases, ordering records, managing files, analyzing data, handling intake, managing vendors, and doing many other specialized jobs. The trial lawyers may be the people practicing law in the traditional sense, but owners spend enormous amounts of time managing people, resources, systems, and numbers.
It has become much more of a science if you want to do it well.
Julia: How has marketing changed the business of personal injury law?
Dana: Marketing is the bane of our existence.
There is an old saying that half the money you spend on advertising is wasted; you just do not know which half. Truer words have never been spoken.
Attribution data is more important than ever. If you are uncomfortable with technology, do not want to be highly competitive, or do not want to understand things you cannot simply read about and master yourself, you are going to have to rely heavily on vendors.
That means a huge part of being an owner is vendor vetting. You have to determine whether someone is actually going to deliver what they are selling you, speak with references, and understand which products and services are worthwhile.
The amounts of money firms have to spend are enormous.
We are also competing against companies that are not necessarily constrained in the same ways law firms are by advertising regulations, and that may have vastly more money to spend acquiring leads.
Those are often clients who historically would have found us through goodwill, referrals, prior service, or simple name recognition.
That world has changed dramatically.
Julia: Has the way clients choose attorneys changed too?
Dana: Absolutely.
We used to get clients through meaningful connections. Someone had worked with us before. They told someone else about us. People remembered our name because they had seen it in the community.
Now clients are constantly being reached through their phones, digital advertising, and highly sophisticated marketing campaigns.
We also have to understand who our clients are. I am not primarily dealing with people coming to me for wills, estates, probate, or business transactions. I represent people who are hurt.
Often, the reason an injured person needs a lawyer is that they cannot absorb the financial loss on their own. They may not have good healthcare relationships or insurance. They may not be able to miss work for appointments or do everything necessary to recover fully.
And when somebody does not fully recover, those consequences can follow them for the rest of their life. They may spend fewer years in the workforce or have a reduced ability to earn income.
Those kinds of problems can snowball through an entire family and contribute to generational poverty.
What we do can be extremely gratifying, but the way clients find us has changed. Today it may simply be whoever is most visible on their phone or has the most compelling commercial.
For someone under enormous financial stress, messages like “What is my case worth?” or “Get your money now” can be very powerful.
Julia: How does your firm try to distinguish itself in that environment?
Dana: For us, it comes down to the personal touch.
We have very good paralegals and case managers who genuinely care about our clients. Clients can speak with their lawyers, and we want someone looking at the case from beginning to end to make sure we have considered every possible avenue of recovery.
Most injured people are not looking for a fight.
They already have enough going on in their lives. Taking on an insurance company is usually not at the top of the list of things they want to do.
What motivates people is putting the problem behind them as quickly as possible, dealing with the financial consequences, and getting back to everything else they care about in their lives.
Our job is to help them do that.
Julia: You spent much of your career handling medical-malpractice and professional-negligence cases. Is there a case that has stayed with you?
Dana: Honestly, all of them have affected my life.
I handled largely medical-malpractice and professional-negligence matters, and I kept relatively few cases because each one required so much attention. I would spend years with my clients.
You cannot give that level of attention to hundreds of cases at the same time.
I have watched people figure out how to spend the remaining months of their lives. In some situations, I was fortunate enough to recover enough money that they could travel or do things they would otherwise never have been able to do.
I remember one man in particular. He had received an abnormal test result that should have led doctors to discover his cancer. Instead, the result sat in a file, and nobody looked at it.
Seventeen months passed.
He finally learned he had cancer because he was trying to close the hatchback of his car and broke a rib. The cancer had metastasized to his bones.
It was terrible because the progression could have been avoided.
But eventually, we were able to recover enough money that he knew his wife would be financially secure. He had grandchildren overseas whom he had never met, and he was able to fly first class so he could travel comfortably and see them.
Knowing that he could die in peace without worrying about his wife, and that he could meet those grandchildren, affected me deeply.
Julia: Were there other clients whose stories stayed with you in the same way?
Dana: I represented another woman with breast cancer whose case was devastating.
Again, important test results had been sitting in somebody’s file. She continued going to follow-up appointments and asking questions. She knew other women in her support group were receiving certain treatments and would ask whether she should be receiving them too.
She was reassured that everything was fine.
But important information had been overlooked.
I watched her become progressively sicker and eventually die a slow, miserable death.
Then you think about everything her daughter experienced afterward.
She graduated without her mother. She went to college without her mother. She got married without her mother. Eventually, she became a mother herself without her own mother there.
Those cases stay with you.
Julia: You have said that medical-malpractice litigation can also be extremely difficult for the healthcare professionals being sued. What do you mean?
Dana: By the time an experienced medical-malpractice lawyer files a lawsuit, that lawyer has generally already investigated the case extensively.
I have spent my own money investigating it. I have consulted experts. I am not suing someone simply to be mean.
By the time the defense experts review everything, they may end up telling the defendant many of the same things my experts told me.
So sometimes I wonder: Why are we making this worse than it needs to be?
Medical-malpractice cases can drag on for years. Obviously, my clients have already suffered enormously, but I also see what prolonged litigation does to doctors, nurses, and other healthcare professionals.
It is extremely disruptive to their lives.
In other professional-negligence cases, you sometimes see people respond differently. Someone may essentially say, “You got me. That was not my best day. I made a mistake, somebody was harmed, and I need to take care of it.”
Then everyone can resolve it and move forward.
Medical malpractice often does not work that way. Instead, everybody is forced through years of litigation even when the answer may ultimately be fairly clear.
Julia: Do you think medical-malpractice lawsuits create meaningful changes in healthcare systems?
Dana: Sometimes they do.
There are unquestionably important consumer protections that have come from plaintiffs’ lawsuits. Sometimes litigation exposes a genuine systemic problem and forces something dangerous to change.
But there can also be overcorrections.
There is an old saying that bad facts make bad law. Sometimes something extremely unusual happens, and everyone reacts by creating an enormous policy change around an event that may never happen again.
Not every medical-negligence case represents a systemic failure. Sometimes somebody simply had a bad day and made a mistake.
If every mistake creates another complicated compliance requirement, eventually doctors may spend more time documenting things than treating patients.
And when the rules become incredibly complicated, people make other mistakes.
You can pursue noble goals and still go about achieving them in the wrong way.
Julia: When you think about the future of Fasig | Brooks, what matters most to you?
Dana: Dana Brooks is a name and a brand. It is a big part of me, but it is not all of me.
I worked very hard to build that name and establish what it means in our community. That is why I kept the name professionally even after my personal circumstances changed.
But I do not have a strong emotional need to see my name on a building forever.
I do not need people working at Fasig | Brooks long after Fasig and Brooks are gone simply because our names are there.
This is a business.
I do not know who will eventually own it. Maybe it will be our junior shareholders. Maybe it will be someone outside the firm. I do not know.
What I do know is what I want people to remember about us.
I want anyone who has ever dealt with our firm to feel that they received excellent representation from people who actually cared about them.
Not people who simply wanted to make money from redistributing money between insurance companies and injured people.
I want clients to know that we genuinely wanted their lives to be better. They were hurt, something disrupted their life, and we wanted to help give them another opportunity and a fresh start.
That is what matters to me.
Julia: What are you thinking about for your own next chapter?
Dana: Personally, I want to know that whatever I am involved in is contributing something.
That is something we taught our children. Do not simply take from the world. Contribute to it. Do not be a burden on the world. Make something better.
So now I am trying to figure out what my next contribution should be.
Sometimes I think about going back into the courtroom. I also love to write, and I have another book idea I am working on.
It is essentially about leaving.
How do you know when it is time to leave something?
Maybe it is leaving a business. Maybe it is leaving a religion, a relationship, a career, or some other part of your identity.
At some point, you realize you do not have forever.
You cannot keep doing something simply because it is familiar or because you have always done it. Eventually, your energy changes, your health changes, and your options change.
I am at a point where I am trying to figure out what the next chapter or next act should be.
Julia: You previously wrote Functional Feminism. What interested you in that subject?
Dana: I wrote Functional Feminism because I thought the conversation around feminism had become somewhat dysfunctional.
It sometimes felt as though there were only certain acceptable ways to be a woman, and I do not think that works.
Women should have choices.
If somebody wants a very traditional life, that should be available to her. If she wants an entirely career-focused life, that should be available too.
What matters to me is that women have enough opportunity and independence to choose whatever life they actually want.
My background as a social worker also makes me interested in demographics, behavior, patterns, and predictions.
Women have made tremendous progress.
At this point, I find myself increasingly worried about men and boys and some of the ways they are struggling.
That is an area I would like to spend more time researching and working on.
I have several things that interest me. I do not know exactly what the future is yet, and that is okay.
Julia: What advice would you give a woman considering opening her own firm or pursuing a partnership opportunity?
Dana: Do not listen to somebody telling you no.
If one door is closed, walk around and find another one.
I met a woman who had been an insurance-defense lawyer. That can be an appealing career because you have a decent salary, you understand the expectations, and there is a fairly predictable professional track.
But she wanted more autonomy.
She already had a baby and realized that if she did not leave then, she might never do it. She thought, “I will have another baby, and then another, and eventually I will feel like leaving is no longer an option.”
So she started her own firm.
She called people she knew from law school who practiced in areas like probate, wills, divorce, and other fields. She knew those lawyers probably had occasional personal injury cases sitting in their offices that they did not really know how to handle or did not have time to learn.
She essentially told them, “Let me take those cases, resolve or litigate them, and we can split the fees.”
They were happy to do it.
Within a relatively short period of time, she had saved around $40,000. Then she got an office, hired some assistance, and kept building.
Julia: What did she do particularly well as she built the business?
Dana: She spent as much time working on her business as she did working in the business.
She figured out how to use law clerks and other people to help with the legal work so she could spend more of her own time building relationships.
She worked the phones, called people, and wrote thank-you notes for every referral. That is how she grew the business.
So my advice is: do not accept no. Figure out another way. If you do not know how to do something, find someone who is doing it successfully and ask, “What did you do?”
Find mentors. And if you have already accomplished something difficult, be a mentor yourself. Show someone else how you did it.
Julia: How should women think about mentorship from men who already hold positions of influence?
Dana: I would not be where I am without men. They got into many of these spaces first, and they still control a lot of access and opportunity. So do not assume a man cannot help you.
At the same time, you cannot necessarily do it exactly the way men did it.
Historically, many business relationships were built through golf, poker, cigar clubs, country clubs, and other male-dominated spaces.
Maybe you are comfortable in those environments, and maybe you are not.
If you are not, you have to find another way to build those relationships and create opportunities for yourself.
Men still hold many of the decision-making positions, so you cannot simply alienate them.
Be strategic, learn from people who have already done what you want to do, and build relationships in a way that works for you.
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