Florida Bar Lawyer Jeanne T. Tate Wins HAWL Award
Law career development is a long and winding road, extending through decades of worthwhile experience, if we play our cards right. No one is a better example of that truth than Jeanne T. Tate. Jeanne is another good lawyer doing good in our world through her extraordinary law career.
This week, Jeanne received the 2009 Hillsborough Association for Women Lawyers Achievement Award. This is only the most recent in a long list of accolades Jeanne’s received during her varied career. In 2006, she received the Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute’s Angels in Adoption Award.
But if you asked her, Jeanne would probably say she’s proudest of this achievement: She’s placed more than 1,500 children in loving homes. Three of her adoptive families were seated at my HAWL lunch table Wednesday to show their appreciation. Their happiness was a palpable thing as pictures were passed and tales shared. Perhaps Jeanne’s most lasting legacy will be placing children who need loving homes with parents who adore them.
Although Jeanne’s list of accomplishments is impressive, she didn’t begin her law career as an adoption attorney. When I first met her, she was a civil litigation lawyer at a well respected Tampa general practice firm. I recall clearly when she left that cocoon to start her adoption practice. We all worried that she’d fail. We worried there wasn’t enough business to support a lawyer dedicated solely to adoptions. Jeanne, though, was willing to take the risk. She followed her heart. And she was right.
But Jeanne didn’t stop with merely creating a second successful legal specialty. She’s accomplished much more along the way. The HAWL award she received this week is the most recent in a long line of awards. Jeanne also owns and operates her own adoption agency called Heart of Adoptions®. Jeanne has recently accepted a professorship teaching adoption law at her alma matter, the University of Florida College of Law.
What Jeanne has done in staying well connected to her extraordinary legal career, many more lawyers have also accomplished — when they’re brave enough to try something new and go the distance. Examples abound. Sandra Day O’Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsberg are two of the most visible examples of women who took a circuitous path to a lifetime of lawyering. Scott Turow took another, equally circuitous and successful path. Terry Lewis yet another.
A law career is not a short term project. Law is a calling. Lawyers can, and do, remain satisfied in the practice for decades. With a bit of strategic planning, long term job satisfaction is not only possible, it’s assured.
What about you? What will you do now?
