Refusal to Give Up

My sister and I were born in Istanbul to wonderful parents. When I was 7 years old, we emigrated to Israel due to political unrest and my parents’ desire to raise their daughters in a more empowering place. Although we were Jewish, we still experienced major culture shock going from very formal and reserved Istanbul to very open and outspoken Israel. We also didn’t speak the language at all, and I spent much of the first years of school just staring at the blackboard, not understanding a word of what the teacher was saying.

Despite these difficulties, I leaned on my family. We ate every meal together and spoke only Turkish at home. I watched my parents work hard at their jobs during the day and attend school in the evenings to learn Hebrew. Having attended university at night while working during the day to pay for their higher education, my parents always knew and instilled in us the importance of an education. They also instilled in me the strength to be proud of myself, my family and our background, even though we were different from most people around us. That was when I first learned the power that being different gives us as individuals and as a collective society of individuals.

I felt comfortable enough in who I was and where I came from, which allowed me to speak up when people mispronounced my name over and over again. Shayla was not a common name in Israel, and every time someone butchered the pronunciation, I made sure to correct them — even the adults! It was a very formative experience for me and lay the groundwork for the confidence I’ve had throughout my legal career.

I knew I wanted to be a lawyer from the age of 10 when I watched my first lawyer drama on TV. I wanted to be someone who saw a problem and worked hard to solve it. To make that dream a reality, I took legal courses when I was in high school, attended law school in Tel Aviv and then emigrated for the second time in my life, this time to the U.S. when my husband moved to Boston to attend MIT for business school.

Similar to my first immigration experience, I struggled with the language and cultural barriers. I had already built a successful legal career in Israel and Europe, and all of a sudden I had to start from scratch in the U.S. I had never lived in an English-speaking country before, and although I worked with English-speaking clients, my English was simply not at the level of U.S.-born lawyers. It took me a year and a half to land my first job at an American law firm. People would ask me how I kept going during that period of rejection. My answer was simple: “I’m not a person who gives up.” I knew I was meant to be a lawyer, and I knew eventually someone else would see that. That’s why I say to others now, “If you have the patience and the ability to wait a bit, just keep at it. All it takes is one person to believe in you.”

That “one person” in my legal career arrived in 2004. He was a partner at a law firm who took the time to really get to know me during the interview process. Where others had dismissed me outright, he saw something special. He gave me my first chance, and my law career started then and there.

It brings me great joy to say that I had a similar experience when I decided to join Kirkland in 2022. The people here got to know me for who I am. Personal connection means everything to me, and Kirkland absolutely cares about who people are beyond the profession. We all have our own stories and own personalities, and we’re all encouraged to be ourselves. I’ve been here for more than two years, and I still feel that way.

I’ll always be grateful to Kirkland and those throughout my life who have been that “one person” to believe in me and help me reach that next step.