Redefining Success and Prioritizing Yourself feat. Suzi Hixon (December 2022)
Suzi Hixon is an intellectual property attorney, podcaster, and founder of Legally Blissed, a community helping women lawyers become better advocates for themselves. In this episode, Suzi shares why lawyers need to prioritize their mental health, how to define success according to their own values, and why changing career paths doesn't mean abandoning everything they've worked to achieve.
About This Episode
Background
Suzi Hixon is an intellectual property attorney and entrepreneur whose career has taken her from patent prosecution to trademark law and eventually into community building. Born in Colorado and raised in Kentucky, Suzi studied biology at Centre College before attending the University of Kentucky College of Law. She worked in Louisville for approximately eight years, spent time living in California, and eventually returned to the Kentucky town where she grew up.
“While we're amazing advocates for other people, we are not really super great advocates for ourselves and that includes kind of taking care of our own mental health and prioritizing ourselves," shares Suzi Hixon on You Are A Lawyer.
That realization inspired Suzi to create Legally Blissed, a community designed to help women attorneys prioritize themselves while supporting one another. Through conversations on her podcast, Legally Blissed Conversations, Suzi noticed that many accomplished women lawyers struggled to advocate for their own needs. She wanted to create a space where those women could connect, share experiences, and challenge the idea that professional success must follow one particular formula.
Why Law School
Suzi didn't always plan to become a lawyer. As a biology major, she originally imagined attending medical school and becoming a pediatrician. However, concerns about the MCAT and her experiences with challenging science courses made her reconsider that direction. Law school became an opportunity to continue her education while figuring out what she wanted to do professionally.
“I kinda went to law school, like, really not knowing what I was gonna do," reflects Suzi Hixon on Episode 69 of You Are a Lawyer.
While studying at the University of Kentucky, Suzi participated in a study abroad program in Munich, Germany, where she was introduced to European intellectual property law. The experience helped her recognize that intellectual property could connect her scientific background with her legal education. During the spring of her third year, she passed the patent bar, opening the door to her first position in patent prosecution. Although her career ultimately moved toward trademark law, that experience gave her a starting point in a field she hadn't originally considered.
What Can You Do with a Law Degree
Suzi's career demonstrates that lawyers don't have to stay committed to their original professional plans simply because they've already invested years in them. She began in patent prosecution, working on mechanical designs that didn't always connect with her biology background. When she was introduced to trademark work, she discovered that she enjoyed working with brands, logos, and marketing professionals more than the patent work she had been doing.
“If you don't want to do it anymore, do something different. Don't don't fall into that sunk cost fallacy," explains Suzi Hixon on this episode of You Are a Lawyer.
Suzi encourages lawyers to recognize that their education and professional experience remain valuable even when they change directions. She believes attorneys can take the skills they've developed into different legal specialties, entrepreneurship, or entirely new careers. For lawyers who feel unhappy in their current positions, she recommends examining the specific sources of dissatisfaction before making major changes. Sometimes the issue is the employer, the type of work, or the professional environment rather than the legal profession itself.
Lawyer Side Hustles
Suzi's entrepreneurial journey began with Legally Blissed Conversations, a podcast where she interviewed women attorneys about their experiences, challenges, and accomplishments. Those conversations revealed recurring themes around mental health, self-advocacy, and the pressure to meet traditional expectations of success. Suzi eventually expanded the podcast's mission by creating Legally Blissed, a community where women lawyers could continue those conversations and support one another.
“We talk about defining your values before creating your goals, which I think is really, really important because there are a lot of ways to kinda go after your goals,” shares Suzi Hixon in Episode 69 of You Are a Lawyer.
Through Legally Blissed, Suzi encourages members to examine their personal values before setting professional goals. She believes that lawyers can become so focused on pursuing titles, salaries, and traditional milestones that they forget to question whether those achievements align with what they actually want. Her community offers resources and conversations around self-reflection, mindset, and self-advocacy, helping women attorneys define success in ways that make sense for their individual lives.
About Suzi Hixon
Learn more about Suzi.
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