Laura Noble is the founder and Managing Partner of The Noble Law Firm, a recognized leader in employment law. With over 30 years of diverse legal experience, Laura’s approach combines powerful advocacy, empathetic client service, and technological innovation in all stages and aspects of employment disputes. Laura strives to cultivate a positive workplace culture built on the core values of collaboration, leadership, empathy, integrity, innovation, and equity. These values—combined with outstanding team members and advanced technology—allow The Noble Law Firm to help level the playing field for employees.

Laura Noble: Sure. So one of my goals is to encourage other women to become leaders, either in their current firms or to start their own practices. So we know that women are graduating from law school in larger numbers than men, and they have been doing so for the last decade, and yet about 25 to 28% of law firm owners are female.

So that doesn't make any sense. Those numbers don't add up. So what is going on. It people assume that it's about childcare issues, but the data suggests that is really a very small reason that keeps women in leadership positions.

Let's dive in.

So, welcome to the show, Laura. Why don't you sort of introduce yourself, short intro and tell us exactly where your firm is. I know you've got multiple offices, so tell us about that.

Laura Noble: Yes, and thank you for having me. I'm excited to talk to you as well. So our firm originated in North Carolina. We are in Raleigh and Winston-Salem and Charlotte, and we've expanded to Charleston, South Carolina. And I am licensed to practice in New York, so we still have some presence there. And we have two attorneys who also are licensed to practice in the DC area.

Jonathan Hawkins: You know, are you licensed in South Carolina?

Laura Noble: I am not, but my, one of my lawyers is.

And I wanna dive into that 'cause I think it's really interesting story. I think could be very impactful for a lot of folks. So, you started out in the big city, right? The New York and you were a prosecutor, right?

Laura Noble: That's right. So really my interest in law school was focused on social justice issues. I did some anti-death penalty work, which brought me into the criminal realm. And I had a very influential professor who introduced me to that line of work. And I applied to work at Legal Aid in New York. But they had a hiring freeze.

Jonathan Hawkins: So did, so you, you were attracted to social justice. Did you always wanna be a trial lawyer too?

Laura Noble: I always wanted to be a lawyer and I don't know when or why I just, it's so cliche, but I really, I don't have any memory of wanting to do anything else. I wanted to be a lawyer from the time I was 10 years old. I was in advocacy groups in high school. I was a student lawyer in college. There was just, I knew that was my calling and that's what I wanted to do.

And by the way. I'm still a lawyer who will never tell a lawyer joke. I have such enormous respect for attorneys. I think they do incredible work. The fact that we have a pro bono commitment where we give of our time voluntarily, and I know most attorneys go into the profession because they want to help people.

Jonathan Hawkins: That's a great name by the way, a firm you got lucky there.

Laura Noble: I did, and maybe that was part of it. You know, I read somewhere once that somebody's last name actually does influence their outcome. So if your name is James Smiley, you're likely to be a dentist. So who knows? You know, maybe it was destiny.

Jonathan Hawkins: That's funny. I was talking to somebody the other day that their last name was law, so it's like I could, it's the law firm,

you know, it's

Laura Noble: there you go.

Jonathan Hawkins: or is it just the law firm? Yeah. So, so yeah. So you start out in the prosecutor's office. How long did you do that? And then eventually you did pivot out of there and sort of take us through sort of the progression and maybe why you decided to leave.

Because you would often have family members in the courtroom and people crying as their family members taken away to jail. You know, justifiably so just didn't, it didn't feel like this is where I wanted to spend the rest of my life. I didn't feel like I was doing enough to move in the way that I wanted to move, so I left.

And the natural progression out of the DA's office is to go to a large, well-established litigation firm. Which I did in New York. And so moved to the civil side. The firm was comprised of former US attorneys, so I thought, okay, the, you know, these are my people, but I didn't realize that it was defense firm of for management.

I'm not gonna lie. I mean, going from riding around in a police car and jumping out at crime scenes and pulling bullets out of the wall to a windowless room full of files, just it was a very tough transition.

Jonathan Hawkins: And what about, I assume you guys billed hourly. What was that like? Coming from a non hourly, just government, you know, you don't have to worry about all that to then all of a sudden you've got a bill. And in New York, I imagine you gotta really bill probably right.

Laura Noble: Very long hours. Although the hours didn't bother me because we had long hours at the DA's office. Yeah, the billing was onerous and, particularly 'cause I didn't care for the work and I didn't realize what a luxury it is to like the kind of law that you're practicing and like the causes that you're advocating for.

And so I wasn't particularly great at it. So I left and went to a nonprofit, a large nonprofit at Covenant House New York where I put together a lot of, again, what I do today. So I put together their kind of internal law firm where we gave provided services to the homeless and runaway adult young adults who were there.

And we worked with a lot of pro bono attorneys that I also did a lot of advocacy research and writing on public policy issues while I was there.

Where they're like, man, I hate what I'm doing. What do I do? And then, you know, it's like, should I quit Braxton Law? Do I hate being a lawyer? Is it the firm? Is it the kinda work? And it sounds like maybe you sort of went through that and you decided to leave. So take me through sort of, you know, maybe what took you to the nonprofit versus going to another law firm or trying something else.

Laura Noble: It really was a misalignment of values at the civil litigation firm. And I looked around at the other firms that were doing the same kind of work and thought, well, that's not going to provide any better alternative to where I am right now. So let's go back to either government or nonprofit or work.

So I wanted to work at home one day a week, which is hilarious now, right? I mean, new lawyers, our Gen Z lawyers will be horrified at this, but I wanted to work at home one day a week. I had a full-time nanny because I wanted to be with my newborn, and it wasn't, I was just researching, writing, you know, half of my time and they said, no, I could absolutely not do that. I had to be at work every single day, and it was not a nine to five, it was more of a, you know, eight to seven kind of job. And I made the decision that, you know, I wanted to be a new mom and more than I wanted to be a practicing lawyer. So I left that job. I loved that job, but I left that job and I stayed home seven more years and had two more children.

And I'm talking about women who you know, top of their class, all the credentials, all that stuff that have kids and or decide they wanna work less or whatever, and you're just like, not tap into that. And it's just seem always seemed to me back then that is insane that they're not trying to figure that out.

I guess nowadays maybe it's a little better. I don't know. What's your perspective?

All of those things really shaped how I came to develop my firm.

Laura Noble: No, I never thought I was gonna start a law firm and sometimes I wonder, you know, there's that old cliche that the people who don't wanna be leaders are the one who's, who should be leaders. And may, maybe that's true. I'm not sure yet. I'm still playing that one out, but I came to North Carolina with my family.

So you know, marched out into the workforce with my resume in hand and tried to get someone to hire me and no one would hire me. I had a very weird background. It didn't, there was no straight line. I couldn't say, you know, look at me, I'm a real estate attorney. Yeah. I, or a criminal attorney, or, I just didn't have any experience that made sense, you know, A to Z.

Although I thought, you know, I brought sort of a host of abilities and experiences to the table, and no one else agreed. And so I was very discouraged. And someone suggested go to the law library and we still have those and sit down and look at all the areas of law and pick one and decide which one you wanna do, and then get really good at that.

It you know, my personal experience of having a newborn in the workplace, being a new mom every female attorney can give you instances of sexual harassment or gender discrimination. I'm an entrepreneur. My parents are entrepreneurs. I liked the intersection of sort of, you know, individual clients and their journey and their struggles and business and I thought that I could make an impact so that's the law that I chose.

Jonathan Hawkins: You know, it's funny, you talk to a lot of people, and I get this question too, and they're sort of like, how did you end up where you were and looking forward, you don't necessarily see it coming, but when you look back, as you just sort of referenced, there is sort of a direct line. It all makes sense as you look back.

So you choose employment law, you dive in, you start learning it. Is the intent still maybe you're gonna go help another firm or was it at this point you're like, I'm starting my own firm?

Laura Noble: I will say I think we're very fortunate in the sense that we got to pick so many lawyers who are unhappy, I think are the ones who go to that first clerkship. Then the money's really good, and then they think, well, I'll just stay here and pay off my school loans.

It's my personal theory. So I again thought that I. I was teaching myself, but I knew that I was not going to be able to be the kind of lawyer I wanted to be without a mentor. So I engaged in a series of you know, meet and greets with folks, took them out for coffee, et cetera, and looked up sort of super lawyers in New York, in North Carolina and made an effort to reach out to them and go and meet with them.

And she said, I'm not really a coffee drinker. I'm more of a drink drinker. And I said, sure, that works too. So I took her out for some drinks. And by the end of the night I said, I need to come work for you. And she said, I'm not hiring. And I said, I don't care. I really need to come work for you. And so she describes it.

I showed up in a little basket on her doorstep. But I really did just march into her office and say, don't mind me. I'm not here. I'm just gonna watch. And you know, put all ego aside. I knew nothing about the workplace. I was so technologically disadvantaged. Again, I had missed it. I had been home raising babies, so she sent me a calendar invite and it popped up, you know, on my outlook or whatever, and I thought, that is so cool.

Never asked her for money, you know, never asked her to pay me. She kept saying, I'm not hiring you. I said, it's fine, I don't care. And then I started working on a case with her and she said, oh, she's a very fair and kind person. And said, okay, you know, I'm going to we resolve the matter. Here's your fee.

So then I used that fee to rent an office next to her. Well, first I started in a table in the hallway 'cause I couldn't afford the office. So then I worked on another matter, and then it eventually was able to rent an office next to her. So it was just me in a little office next to her. And that is how I started getting cases from the cases that she didn't really want to do that were too small for her.

And then after a few months of doing those cases I realized I needed help. And so I started hiring.

Live beneath your means. You do not spin everything you make, you know, because you limit your options in the future. So that's the thing I'd point out there. But the other thing, you know. You moved to North Carolina, I presume you didn't really know anybody.

You didn't go to law school there, you didn't know any lawyers.

And that is a huge disadvantage. I mean, compared to the people that grew up there. Went to law school there, been working there.

Laura Noble: It is and it isn't. I will tell you, I was too stupid to be afraid, and that helped, right? Because there's a lot in North Carolina of, do you know who my daddy is? And I didn't. So I just, I just kept suing people. So there, you know, it wasn't, it wasn't.

I mean, it's a lot more fun. We, when you are friends with people you work with, right.

Laura Noble: Absolutely abs and even the new lawyers that end up joining our firm they all come through the firm as law clerks and it's hard to get our attention even to hire a law clerk. And so you know, this the process of perseverance and you know, continued engagement and showing up again and again, and again and again.

Jonathan Hawkins: Love that. Love that. So the other thing I don't think you mentioned was I mean you still had, your kids were in school, but you, there were still, I mean, they weren't out of the house. Right.

And so what was that like managing the boat? Both of those?

Laura Noble: Well, again, back to the things that influenced me, that led to the creation of the type of law firm that I have. So once I started hiring I realized that I was starting a firm which was terrifying. But I thought, okay, well. If I'm going to do this, and it looks like I, I need to do this. 'cause the work was coming in and I couldn't do it alone.

We were paperless from day one. And there was never a requirement that anybody had to, you know, live near enough to the office that they had to be there every day. There's, we never, no one ever was because I needed to be able to take a kid to soccer practice and, you know, go to a school meeting and be able to access my files in the car while I was waiting for the kid to come out of, you know, for the pickup line. And that's how we developed the firm.

Jonathan Hawkins: That is hilarious. Yeah.

So You know the other thing too that you're sort of, you know, just hearing you talk sort of at the forefront, you know, maybe not everybody, but a lot of folks nowadays are talking about culture and building the firm and all this stuff. But you were way ahead of the curve on that too, it sounds like.

Laura Noble: Right. I mean, we could spend an hour talking about the things I did wrong as much as the things that I did. Right? And I'll tell you the first five, six years of the firm was about survival. You know, it was about getting clients getting help figuring out how to be an employment lawyer, figuring out I didn't know the rules of civil procedure for North Carolina.

What is our mission, vision, and values? And everyone participated. We split up in groups. We had long debates back and forth. And we ultimately came up with, you know, sort of our operating principles and that became a core you know, guide PO Post for how we do business.

Laura Noble: You know, it's kind of been, once we've nailed them, we've nailed them. And we so collaboration, leadership, empathy you know, immediately leaps to mind, equity, inclusion, diversity. We, that's always been part of our our values. I mean, we're a law firm that represents individuals who believe they've been mistreated at work discriminated against, harassed, wrongfully terminated, though that's a big bulk of what we do in addition to breach of contract, non-compete wage and hour violations and the like.

But that was a guiding principle for me. Again, having experienced what I experienced. I knew that I wanted our culture to be unabashedly inclusive and encouraging of a diverse group of people who may have not had an experience of feeling like they belong at other law firms.

So you wanna make sure you recruit in people that are in line with those values. So how do you incorporate those in sort of the recruiting process?

And that will blow up a place quicker than anything you can imagine. So now we talk about, well, we send them a bio of the firm a copy of what our values are and examples of them. We do a initial interview with our HR person and then we open it up and so that, it's an interview with me.

It's an interview with lawyers. It's an interview with the legal team that's gonna work with them, the paralegals and the legal assistants. And ultimately it's a you know, no diva policy. So if we have someone who has attitude, you know, has some superiority, complex has a I say jump you say how high management style that is not gonna work for us.

And I don't care how brilliant you are, that's just not gonna work in our culture.

Jonathan Hawkins: And so I know that you're a largely virtual. Are you only virtual? Do you have offices? I mean, do people have a place to come in if they want?

So, yes, we have a our main office is in Raleigh. It's new actually. We just moved in about a year and a half ago. We were in Chapel Hill before that. And then we have brick and mortar in Winston-Salem and Charlotte and Charleston. Yeah, that's it for, that's it for now, but

Jonathan Hawkins: Well, yeah, we'll get to that in a minute too.

Real quick. Thanks for listening. If you're getting any value out of this podcast, please take two seconds to hit the subscribe button and leave a five star review. It would really mean a lot to me. Now back to the show.

Jonathan Hawkins: You know, I was looking at your website and something cool on your website that I've not seen on any other law firm website is you have a page for pets which I thought was really cool. So, you know, tell me about that. What was the inspiration for that?

And, you know, is that, you know, are they, are you bringing the pets into the office or tell me about it.

So when I was a working mom with school aged children, I didn't want to separate that out from the work that I was doing it. There was no way that I could say to someone, I'm not gonna be around for from three to five because I am gonna go see my daughter's, you know, school play or her practice or whatever.

So and I wasn't gonna be embarrassed or ashamed about that either. Like that was part of who I was. That's what the whole me bringing to the table. And that I think, brings value to my ability to empathize with people who find themselves in difficult workplaces. So you know, the idea about the pets is this is a really significant part of people's lives and it's a fun part and it, you know, it gets just.

Jonathan Hawkins: always happy to see you when you come home,

it's not always the case with the kids. Right.

Laura Noble: Right. Right.

Jonathan Hawkins: So I imagine you get a good response from clients, I imagine but has it helped or do you get comments about it from clients that are

Laura Noble: Surprisingly, not as much for that. I used to have a video, I don't think it's still on the website of me. I'm a second degree black belt and TaeKwonDo, and I used to have a video of me in a fight. I mean, a, a, you know managed at the doche and people loved that video for some reason. I think it's one of the, you know, I'll fight for you kinda lawyer and I was literally kicking someone, so they thought that was funny.

I used to get a lot of good feedback on that one. I don't think it's up anymore though.

I don't know.

Laura Noble: We're not the largest in South Carolina, but we are the largest plaintiff's employment firm in in North Carolina.

Jonathan Hawkins: So tell me, my sense is that it's a fairly conservative jurisdiction in the federal, at least the federal, but I know here in Georgia, 11th circuit's known to be pretty conservative, but I think maybe your circuit's even more conservative. I don't know what's that been like?

And, that was just sort of throwing down the gauntlet for me to say, I think you're wrong. I think we can and, well, no one's tried it before, so let's do it. So there we were able to sort of see a niche and create a niche and, you know, using the technology so that we could be fast and furious against our big firm counterparts has really helped us.

And being, critical thinkers about the kind of cases that we take and then following the systems that you know, I put in place for how we deal with cases made us very efficient. And so those combinations, I think led us to you know, knock on wood being successful.

Jonathan Hawkins: And maybe that outsider mentality probably helped too. 'cause like, screw y'all, I'm gonna show you.

Laura Noble: I, again, I was too stupid to know what I should be afraid of, so.

So, maybe take me through some of the things you experienced and then if you've got it, you know, do you have any advice for other women attorneys out there on, you know, how to handle it, how to deal with it, or how to overcome it?

So they feel. Like they're, they have to put on a jacket of a different personality when they walk into a firm and they have to be some, you know, hardass litigator, tough guy and, you know, knock everybody down and stomp on them to climb to the top. And it feels fake. And it, again, my working theory is you don't do your best work.

If you don't feel aligned, if you feel fake, if if you're, you know, getting, you know, just trying to get along to, to get ahead doesn't bring out the best in you. And so I wanted to create a firm where we cultivated that experience so that we could nurture and grow more female lawyers into, into leadership positions.

And so, Has that helped? I mean, I'm sure you broadcast, I mean we're talking about it now, but you broadcast, Hey, this is who we are. This is who we are. It probably helps you, I would think, in the recruiting nowadays. You know, you talked about earlier you just needed bodies and you didn't care.

Well, now sort of you've got a track record and sort of a message that hopefully attracts the right people. Have you found that to be true?

And they say, you know, you created a model workplace. Not everyone I'm sure you could find people who say we were horrible, right? I mean, that we're not the right fit for everybody. But that was the goal, right? So as part of our values, vision, mission, we established the triple bottom line, which is we do have to have a financial goal, right?

We're not a nonprofit. And we have to be mindful of doing well for our clients, doing well for the people who work for us. We have a a client goal. Obviously, we want to try to be as successful as we can and their clients achieving a goal, but we also have a social impact goal, and that can be through appellate work.

We've been at it for about 16 and a half years. So, you know we are able to look back in a pretty decent body of work where we've met those triple bottom line goals.

Jonathan Hawkins: I like that triple bottom line. I've never heard that before. I like that. So yeah, so we've talked a lot about sort of the firm, you know, it's, you've grown it from, you know, the table in the hallway to what it is now. So like, tell us what, you know, how many attorneys you have. I think you've got four at least offices.

Sort of tell us some of the stats.

Laura Noble: Right. So we're eight attorneys now. My firm administrator is actually an attorney, but she's not a lead counsel. She's doing a wonderful job as firm administrator, which again, it's kind of is interesting in terms of the culture that we have. So she came to us as a law clerk and then she became an associate and then she became a lead attorney and enjoyed the work and did great.

And we kept talking and a position opened up as a firm administrator and we worked it out that. She took the position, which was, you know, not what any one of us that had envisioned. But it's a place where we like to work towards people's strengths and we're not so focused on, you know, labels or titles or identities, but what are you good at and how can we use that strength to benefit the firm?

Laura Noble: I sure do. I sure do. It's very challenging.

Jonathan Hawkins: yeah, how do you do all of that?

Laura Noble: That's a good question. Well, I have the smallest docket of any of the other lawyers. So that's one piece of it. I have I try to hire people smarter and better than I am who are really good at their jobs. I work with our systems. We do, you know, we have a fantastic intake department.

It is really cool technology.

Jonathan Hawkins: I'll tell you I have just recently just gone down the AI rabbit hole if for a while. I mean, I played with it for the last couple years. I'm like, it's cool. It does some cool stuff, but I really felt like it was just Silicon Valley overhyping it like they did Crypto or something just to try to get people to buy whatever. But in the last couple weeks I've seen some stuff that has just blown me away and I am, I'm drinking the Kool-Aid now and I'm like, oh my God, I need to rush into this as quickly as I can because otherwise I'm gonna be left behind. So.

Throughout these depositions and three minutes later, it will give you a chart

Jonathan Hawkins: It's amazing.

Laura Noble: that would've taken a first year associate three days to do. It's incredible.

Jonathan Hawkins: it's amazing. You know, I was talking to somebody this morning about it and, you know, which I think is great for somebody like you, me experienced attorneys. It, I think it's gonna be a problem for the new attorneys. They're gonna, they're not gonna get, I think it's gonna be hard to train them.

And then one of my partners was the judge. And then we split up teams into, you know, plaintiff and defendant. We had a case file that was an employment discrimination file and everybody. And then our paralegals were the witnesses and our paralegals and legal assistants. And we did a whole trial and it was fascinating and great experience and I was so impressed by the new lawyers.

But they don't get much court time like you and I did. And they still did a wonderful job.

Jonathan Hawkins: That is so cool.

Laura Noble: it was great. We're gonna do it every year. It was so much fun.

Jonathan Hawkins: That was awesome.

Laura Noble: I will tell you that it was, we didn't get to a full verdict because we didn't have enough time. Next year we're gonna do two days.

Jonathan Hawkins: That's hilarious. That's awesome. So, you know, so we don't have that much time left, but there, you, there's so much I wanna touch, but I do wanna hit this. So, because I'm always fascinated when a firm grows beyond one office. And it's, you know, it's probably challenging to open a second office in the same state, but then when you go across state lines, it probably the challenge goes up a lot.

So what was that like for you crossing outta North Carolina to open your South Carolina office?

We were recruiting, we wanted to look at South Carolina. We're in Charlotte. We're already in Charlotte, and then we, it's, you know, very close border and we get a lot of crossover and she's licensed in both states. And she just, you know, worked with the firm and had great ideas and was, you know, the right cultural fit.

And we said, let's do it. So, it's been, from an accounting standpoint, not great. But that's not my job. So, you know, I can outsource that. But managing the office has not been difficult again, because we're. We're remote. We always have been. So we do we do four town halls a year two virtually and two in person.

Again, because I see her not much less frequently than I see my Raleigh attorneys because we're, you know, we're in the office maybe once or twice a week.

Jonathan Hawkins: I do like that. Follow the people, not the geography. I like that. That's another good one. You're dropping some gold. So I've got sort of two main questions left. So the first one I like to ask everybody, you know, you, you've seen a lot, you've been doing this. You've had great success growing your firm.

You've made mistakes. All the stuff to, to the younger lawyers out there that maybe have just started a firm or are thinking about it. Do you have any pieces of advice?

Those things that you're not great at because everyone has something they're not great at. And so, and then be very transparent and authentic about it. So, I am time challenged. I'm not great at getting to meetings on time. I think that's a pretty common entrepreneurial problem. It's not great.

Nobody loves that. But I tell people that right up front when they when they start working with me, I say, look here's my issue that if this is a thing for you, if you're a stickler about that, you don't wanna be on my team, that's gonna really annoy you. So let's like move you over to somebody else who's really good at that stuff.

Is it everyone have a personal therapist. Because you can't separate those things that you struggle with at home from what you're struggling with at work. So. You just can't. So if you have, you know, insecurities, if you have aggression, if you have anger management issues at home, that's gonna show up in the workplace.

They're not, you can't separate your soul when you are. It's not like severance, you know, you can't go in and forget about who you are entirely. So really being your authentic self and embracing that is I think, the key to it, to your success.

Jonathan Hawkins: That's so, so important. Okay, so last question. We talked about this a little bit in Nashville, but I want to explore it a little bit more, but, you know, you're looking out in the future Now what's your vision? You know, you're the biggest firm in North Carolina for your practice area.

Laura Noble: Hmm. Decade. That's generous given my age. But you know, I wanna continue to expand, but not for the purpose of expansion alone. I want it to be, for a strategic reason, which is I want more people to understand, particularly in the Southeast the challenges they have with the kind of legal landscape that we have set up, you know.

Employees most, most of the public still thinks that your employer has an obligation to treat you fairly. They do not. That is not required under the law. They do not have to treat you fairly. They just can't treat you illegally under certain kind of very rare exceptions. And I want a platform where I can.

For instance, in North Carolina, we don't have a state anti-discrimination, anti-harassment law. We have a wrongful termination common law, but we don't have an anti-harassment law, so sexual harassment is not against the law in North Carolina, under North Carolina state law. So these are the kind of things that I think about that I would like to do.

I'd love to have more clinics in law schools that, that emphasize first of all, practical skills so that people can get out and actually do the work of a lawyer. And second of all, employment law, obviously. So, that we have a lot of goals still to look forward to.

Jonathan Hawkins: You gotta have goals. It keeps you getting up in the morning, right? So Laura, this has been fun and I mean, I've got a ton more to ask you, but I wanna be respectful of your time. And but for those out there that wanna, want to get in touch with you, maybe again, you said you follow the people, not the geography.

Laura Noble: Absolutely. So we are at thenoblelaw.com. You can look up my me, Laura Noble in North Carolina. We're involved with NELA, we're involved with the North Carolina Advocates for Justice. You know, we've done I think a pretty good job of our website educating people about who we are and what we do. And I would love to hear from you.

Jonathan Hawkins: Awesome. Thanks Laura.

Laura Noble: All right. Thank you. This has been such a pleasure. Thank you for having me.