We were lucky to catch up with Tanaz Salehi recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Tanaz thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Before we get into specifics, let’s talk about success more generally. What do you think it takes to be successful?

Some would say, tenacity, grit, relentlessness.  I don’t disagree. But for me, the recipe is this: humility, empathy, curiosity, and relentless fine-tuning all the above. Humility means knowing that your role or position can be replaced if you lose passion and drive. If you become complacent and lose your vigor, you can lose your client base, your magic. Providing excellent service means always being the best you can be, even when you’ve earned your client’s trust. Especially in today’s fast paced, non-stop corporate climate, employees and leaders can easily burn out. Work/life balance is necessary, but what is more crucial is perspective. If you approach a setback with humility and curiosity, your lens on it changes the associated feelings. You start to understand what went wrong, or how you mis-prioritized . Now, instead of burning out, you expand, grow, and reach higher levels of understanding. Then comes the empathy. Empathy is needed not just for others, but for yourself. We tend to disconnect from our hearts when we work. We become all cerebral- and lose our faith, our kindness to ourselves. Negative self-talk can not only destroy your day, but can create a toxic work environment for others. We must be kind to ourselves. Allow the bad days to end, wash them down with empathy, and decide that tomorrow is a new day. Then, repeat that practice with your teammates. Be gentle with failure. Understand that mistakes are the foundation for innovation and improvement. The recipe also demands constant curiosity. Be curious about your clients. What irks them, what pleases them, what makes them euphoric? Ask them how you can improve, how you can better serve, what they need the most to serve their business. Curiosity about your employees and teammates can gift you a wealth of knowledge. Try to learn what motivates them, what makes them feel passionate, what keeps them up at night, what part of their job they love the most, what can be improved at the office, and of course, learn from them. Extract wisdom from what they do- determine their special niche and observe it, and improve from it. Everyone has their own brand of magic. I try to find it in everyone I meet. Finally, fine tune your craft. This involves taking all the above, and refine, edit, revise, finalize, and re-do. Learn more about your trade, read as much as possible, listen when given feedback, improve even 1% each day. Life is nothing if you are not expanding, reaching, and growing. It becomes dead weight. Work becomes stagnant and feels like a hamster wheel if we are not stepping off and reaching for new ground. Every day, I wake up and think, you are good at what you do, you love what you do, but how amazing is tomorrow going to be when you learn something new, when you become a slightly more kind, more knowledgeable, more well-read person than the person you were yesterday. Be humble, be empathetic, be curious, and then fine tune it.

Tanaz, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I am the Managing Shareholder of a boutique defense firm, Salehi, Boyer, Lavigne, Lombana, P.A.  We represent corporations, insurance companies, and contractors.

My legal career started with federal civil rights cases and hefty appellate briefs. Weekends and late nights were spent pouring over voluminous files. It’s true that most law firms feel like a factory warehouse. The key to escaping the monotone environment of typical firms is to create your own.  After years of working as an associate, I was lucky enough to develop clients. Since the beginning, my  work has always felt fascinating and fun, all the time, every day. Every single case is new, unique and interesting, and if it doesn’t feel like that first blush, I look again. I like to find the golden nugget in every case. I think my clients understood this, which led to more cases and opportunities. At our prior law firm Oscar Lombana, Donald Lavigne , Scott Boyer, and I developed a mutual trust, respect and care that transcended the big-law culture of blood, sweat and billing. We relied on each other, cared for one another, celebrated our mutual successes and commiserated our losses. These guys — now my partners — were the best lawyers I had ever met. I wanted to forge a lifelong alliance with them. One night, after a sushi dinner, we mapped out our plan and our vision for the firm.  We made that dream into a reality and we live it every day.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

After immigrating to the U.S. after the Iranian Revolution, we built our lives here. Somehow, my family decided to move to Iran when I was 15 years old. My mother was not happy about the decision to return to Iran — she started to lose her hair from the stress. She silently cried when she was washing the dishes or doing the laundry. I always caught her in the midst of it, but she would wipe them away and put on a smile. I tried to convince my father to rethink it, but the decision was made. The day my mom left, I felt an emptiness inside me that never quite left. I didn’t see my family for over seven years. During that time that I was alone in the US, there were years that I worked as many as five (5) jobs at a time, slept in my car for two weeks, was burglarized of everything I owned, and had to negotiate my way to stay in law school despite having a very large balance owed. I eventually earned a scholarship. I eventually paid it all back. Working was never a burden. I loved earning money, and I love figuring out strategies to survive, and then thrive. I learned to live on my own. Those years taught me that life ebbs and flows. Every good spell is followed by a downturn, but it always, always picks back up. No feeling, circumstance or situation is permanent. I learned that any money problem can be fixed. I picked up shifts at the local Outback Steakhouse, I made sure to only buy what I needed, and to save as much as possible. I also learned that friends can become family. The friends I made at UF and Outback Steakhouse are my closest friends today. Struggle carved its way deep inside me. That carving made me deeper, richer, more capable of holding grief, holding empathy, holding stress, and also more able of carrying love. Struggle is beautiful and I wouldn’t change a single second of my past. I am the woman I am today because of it.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

I have had to unlearn traditional business ethics, traditional business mentalities, traditional business strategies- mostly male-minded, mostly antiquated notions. For example, most law firms are humorless, dry, faceless organizations, devoid of fun, lacking empathy, thin on humility, short on warmth, and meager on feedback. Generosity, vibrance, freedom, fun, whimsy, creativity, and YES, definitely empathy are needed in all industries. Law is a deeply creative, artistic craft, in my opinion. It requires wit, humor, charm, nuance, flavor, and a deep sense of empathy. You must be able to understand the other side if you are negotiating a settlement. You must meet the opposing party with common ground if you want to reach a resolution. You must be willing to be creative if you want to work through the laws, statutes, rules of court. You must see the vision of the case before you can tackle it. Lawyers cannot practice law in a faceless, desert environment. They need to feel the case, to feel the client, to understand where it can head, foresee the landmines, and enthusiastically strategize ways to get around it. I love running our law firm, and more so, I relish running it with my three male partners, who also employ this mentality. They are incredibly fun, constantly evolving, full of heart, and absolutely, genuinely love our clients, our work, and our teammates. We all had to leave the Biglaw culture behind, and unlearn that toxicity to come out it with fresh hearts, and fresh minds. We win cases because of this. We succeed because of these tactics and this perspective.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://salehiboyer.com/
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/salehiboyer?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/salehi-boyer-lavigne-lombana-pa
• Other: https://www.theclm.org/Magazine/articles/when-preparation-meets-opportunity/2330 https://attorneyatlawmagazine.com/tanaz-salehi https://www.law.com/dailybusinessreview/2021/07/26/once-homeless-miami-attorney-tanaz-salehi-now-runs-an-insurance-defense-firm/?slreturn=20220628130247 https://www.law.com/dailyreportonline/2021/08/05/as-delta-variant-spreads-southeast-firms-stay-nimble-on-return-to-office-policies-to-a-point/ https://salehiboyer.com/2021/10/19/managing-shareholder-and-proud-uf-alumni-tanaz-salehi-was-recently-featured-in-the-florida-gator-magazine-fall-2021-edition/

Image Credits
Tanaz Salehi, Esq.