Q: When did you know you would pursue a career as an Attorney?
MJL: My father was a lawyer, so I decided quite young that I wanted to be a lawyer too. I was around 12 years old and never wavered from then on.

Q: Can you share with our audience, the types of law you specialize in?
MJL: My practice focuses entirely on employee benefits and executive compensation, primarily on the retirement and deferred compensation side. For example, I work with 401(k) plans, pension plans, SERPs, compensation programs making payments over multiple years, etc. I work a lot with fiduciary committees responsible for plan investments, making sure they follow the law and good governance processes. 

Q: What aspects of the daily job of being a lawyer interest you the most?
MJL: I love helping our clients solve complicated problems in a difficult area of the law. It takes a long time to develop the knowledge base and experience needed to quickly how to solve problems. To practice in employee benefits, one must work in two very different types of law. The first is tax law. All benefits are subject to detailed rules codified in the Internal Revenue Code and regulations. Thinking through these problems requires an analytic mindset. The second is labor law, as set out in the federal Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA). ERISA focuses more on principles of fairness and duties to plan participants, requiring a more flexible and justice-oriented mindset.

Q: Why did you decide to attend law school?
MJL: I had decided when I was young to be a lawyer, but by the time I went to law school, from a more mature perspective I thought it would be good way to integrate complicated intellectual challenges with real world problems. I love intellectual challenges but couldn’t see staying in the “ivory tower” my entire adult life. I like working with people, so law enabled me to do that.

Q: What is your approach or philosophy to winning or representing a case?
MJL: I don’t do any litigation, but I still take seriously the responsibility to be an advocate for my clients, even though working in a highly regulated area. For example, when I’m drafting a plan document for an employer, I make sure to include provisions that would protect my client in the event of any lawsuits. When I represent clients before the IRS and DOL, it’s tricky, because they are both the opposing party and the judge; your arguments must consider their point of view and still convince them your client is right.

Q: Can you share with our audience the type of pro-bono work you do?
MJL: I primarily work with large employers, so my expertise doesn’t translate well to much pro-bono work. I do, however, work with the 401(k) committee of a nonprofit, Forgotten Harvest, doing the same thing I normally do with much larger employers. Forgotten Harvest recovers food that would otherwise be discarded and distributes it to the hungry. 

Q: What was the most challenging part of law school for you?
MJL: I went to a very competitive law school and had heard stories about how cut-throat all the students were. So, I kept to my pre-law school friends and family. It took me until after my second year to realize that the cut-throat reputation was unearned and the students, for the most part, were interesting and good people. I still regret not connecting with my law school peers earlier.

Q: What advice would you give to young women who want to pursue a career as an Attorney?
MJL: A law degree can open many doors and career paths. However, law school is expensive, and practicing law can be hard and demanding. You shouldn’t do it because you can’t think of anything else. But if you want to be a lawyer, go for it! Although some sexism remains in the legal field, we are far beyond where we were when I started practicing. Women are no longer novelties—rather, they are usually respected peers. Challenges do remain, though!

Q: Were there moments in your career that were pivotal to getting where you are today?
MJL: When I was the first woman at my first firm, one of the respected partners, a tax lawyer, informally took on mentoring me. There was no formal program, but he took an interest in training me and shaping me into a real lawyer. A formal mentor may or may not do that. He had me help him with restating and submitting to the IRS retirement plans to comply with recent changes in the law. In a few years, the firm asked if I wanted to specialize in employee benefits. I would then be the only person in the firm focusing solely on benefits. I said yes, and the rest is history.

Q: What expectations did you have after graduating and receiving your law degree?
MJL: I expected that I would make it, even though not many women were practicing at the time. I expected I would not ever work for a larger law firm, though, and I ended up working for two of the largest firms in Michigan (Honigman and Warner Norcross).

Q: What are the best practices you have employed to build a successful career? 
MJL: Practicing law demands that I exercise every faculty I have to its maximum every day: intelligence, curiosity, tenaciousness, organization, friendliness, focus, analytical thought, compassion, patience, creativity, communication skills. It’s not something you can do with a partial commitment of your abilities.

Just as important, though, is that you have a clear understanding of your family priorities. You have to be clear with yourself and your partners where your lines are. It’s amazing how much of the world will accommodate that when you’re clear. But when you’re on your law projects, you have to be on 110%.

Q: What's your advice for women in male-dominated fields?
MJL: The most important thing is to believe in yourself. It’s difficult for others to believe in you if you don’t believe in yourself. Pleasing everyone is not going to happen, so don’t worry about that. I have told younger women that, if someone doesn’t at some point call you a bitch, you probably aren’t doing your job. I am not counseling anyone to be obnoxious. But if you are worrying about what others are saying, you’ll be distracted from what you should be doing. Women are trained to be pleasers, and men expect it, so it’s hard. You can’t function, though, if you’re always trying to avoid being called names. 

Q: What's the greatest fear you've had to overcome to get where you are today? 
MJL: I hate networking in an informal, cocktail hour kind of environment. I would rather give a speech, any day. I have two ways of dealing with it. First, I acknowledge that sometimes things are uncomfortable, and I can live through being uncomfortable. Second, I don’t necessarily have to “work” the room. I can instead just try to get to know a few people, using my genuine interest in people. Oddly enough, the fact that I actually like people and find them interesting makes working a room hard for me.

It offends me to flit from person to person, engaging in superficial conversation, just to further my practice and push my law firm. But if I instead genuinely focus on a few people and get to know them, then I’m in my element. I am coming to believe it may be better too for my career in the long run when people know I am genuinely interested in them.

Q: Can you tell our audience one of your most memorable moments your career?
MJL: I was once debating a client’s problem with an IRS agent and was asking that she tell me what her authority was for her position, but all she could say in her defense was that her manager said that’s what the law is. I gave her the authority for my position and said she had to have some kind of authority for her position other than somebody said so. She broke down, nearly in tears, and said she had “never felt so violated in my life.” I realized then the POWER of knowledge. Here, the IRS agent was the final arbiter of the decision, unless we went to court. She had all the institutional power and I had none. But what I had was knowledge, experience, and confidence. My partners still tease me, decades later, about having intimidated the IRS to tears.

Q: Which woman inspires you and why? 
MJL: Harriet Tubman. She was unbelievably brave, smart, and successful. Men assumed she wouldn’t have the courage or physical ability to do the dangerous work of guiding others out of slavery in a murderous environment. One wrong step and she and her charges would be history. She proved them wrong by believing in herself and her mission. And others followed her because her sense of her own strength and ability came through to them. They trusted her with their lives. She didn’t wait for anyone else’s approval. 

Q: Can you tell us how you manage your work life balance?
MJL: Having a life outside of my career has always been important to me. I have been happily married for 40+ years and had two wonderful children, now adults. The key ingredients have been: (1) my clarity about what I wanted and communicating that to my firms, and (2) my husband’s support. My experience is that firms can be understanding if you bring real value to the table, are clear to them about your boundaries, and always handle your responsibilities. You can’t ever just walk away. You can’t say “I leave every day at 4:00. Deal with it.” But you can manage your time, especially if you practice in an area that’s somewhat predictable. I worked reduced schedule most of my career and managed to succeed. Sure, there were some late nights, but most of the time we could manage.

And I mean we. My husband ratcheted down his own career and took on more than his share of the household chores so that I could focus on my career and on the family. It was a joint decision. We decided having vibrant lives and spending time with our family were the most important things. So how do we do that? I was making more money, so that was the choice that gave us the most time with the most stable income.

Five Things About Mary Jo Larson

1. What’s your favorite thing to do in your free time?
I wouldn’t say any of my time is “free.” When you’re billing time, no time is free. You can always be billing more time. But I DO carve out time for myself and my family, both on a regular basis and for vacations. If you wait for a good time to take a break, you will never take it. I have served on some non-profit boards, but my favorite personal things are:

Reading- I am usually reading 4 or 5 books at a time, all different types—novels, biographies, non-fiction, poetry--so I can pick up whatever I’m in the mood for. When the kids were little, I could only read while nursing or in the bathroom. I made it through many books that way!

Travel—Until COVID, we took one significant trip each year. We went all over the world: Europe, Central and South America, Asia, the U.S. We haven’t made it yet to Africa. I plan the trips without any travel agent—it’s a hobby. We stay and eat in local places, to better experience the place and support the local people. 

We always took the kids with us. I highly recommend taking your children anywhere. Do not underestimate them and take them only to “kid friendly” places. When our son was 5, after hiking the Kalalau trail along the Napali Cliffs on the northern shore of Kauai in Hawaii, he exclaimed “This is better than Disney World!” They hiked at Machu Picchu, went tubing through the cenotes in Belize, climbed Tikal in Guatemala, perused Saint Mark’s Cathedral in Venice, zip-lined in Costa Rica, meditated on Picasso’s Guernica painting in Madrid, scaled glaciers in Glacier National Park, snorkeled in Saint Lucia. And so on. Children love exploring the world. They can be great companions on these adventures.

Music – Music is an important part of my life. I am an amateur musician myself, but my husband is a musician professionally and we have many musician friends. I attend shows, both where my husband is performing and otherwise, sing in a choir, and recently took up ballroom dancing with my husband. We love it! We consider it an extension of our immersion in music, but in a more physical way.

Food – One of my very favorite things to do is to have a leisurely dinner at a great restaurant with my husband. He is also an excellent cook. My sister recently said that we eat better than anyone she knows. 

Beach – My sisters and I inherited from my parents’ property on Lake Michigan. We have about 1,000 feet of beach frontage. We are there every second we can manage over the summer and early fall. Nothing better than sitting in the sun with your family, talking, eating, reading, singing, laughing. It’s a good life.

2. What was the last book you really got into?
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration, by Isabel Wilkerson. The migration of so many Black people from the south is a key part of American history that I never learned about in school, even though Detroit played a major role in that migration, and I have known people who were part of that migration. But it was always personal, family history as I heard it, not the mass movement that Wilkerson reveals. The U.S. today is shaped by that migration. Isabel Wilkerson is an excellent writer, making this history fascinating and relevant to today. My sense of who we are as a country was changed by this book.

3. Where’s the strangest place you’ve ever been?
One of them is Ha Long Bay in Vietnam. Thousands of small, tall islands thrust from the sea, so you feel like you’re in a forest of islands. We stayed a few nights in a junk in the Bay and kayaked around the islands during the day. Very strange.

4. Best and worst flavor ice cream?
All my life, my favorite ice cream flavor has been Jamocha almond fudge. It’s still my favorite. Least favorite—Neapolitan. Whose idea was that? Disgusting. Whatever flavor, I’m an ice cream snob. Cheap grocery store ice cream, all squishy and gross, will not pass my lips, regardless of flavor. When people offer ice cream and I say, “what kind?,” they usually tell me the flavor. I want to know the brand.

5. What would your perfect vacation look like?
I like mixing up relaxing and adventurous vacations, but if I could choose only one vacation, it would be on Lake Michigan on the beach with my family in July. In March, I’ll take that vacation on St. John, U.S. Virgin Islands.