Jennifer Novak is an environmental attorney and founder of the Law Office of Jennifer F. Novak in Rancho Palos Verdes, California. Her firm represents property owners and businesses in environmental compliance, enforcement matters, soil and groundwater remediation, and land use. She has been practicing for more than 20 years and building her firm for thirteen of them.
I asked Jennifer what led her to start her own firm.
She had spent years in government service — including time as a Deputy Attorney General — and reached a point where she had to make a choice. She could stay on the path she was on, or she could go into private practice and develop the skills she had never had the chance to build: how to develop business, how to run a firm, how to serve clients in a different way. She chose the harder path.
"I didn't want to get to that point where I would be a 20- or 25-year lawyer who had never gained those skills and therefore limited my own ability to survive in an industry where lawyers are routinely working 40 or 50 years."
She is candid about the fact that the first chapter of building the firm was slow. It took years before she was operating with the intentionality she has now. The shift, she says, was significant.
"There is a huge change in who I am today versus who I was six years ago."
I asked what has shaped how she leads today.
Jennifer set out to build what she calls the perfect law firm — and she still uses that phrase, deliberately.
"I used to say I was trying to build the perfect law firm, meaning *a place where we are treated as whole human beings*. We are allowed to be people with flaws and with the need to grow and develop, who care very deeply about our clients, but at the same time have a strong commitment to what we do and the importance of it."
That philosophy shows up in how she manages her team of nine. She invests in her people in ways that larger firms often say they cannot.
"I talked to partners at large law firms about the fact that we have a coach available to our employees to talk them through anxiety, imposter syndrome, or to figure out what their goals are and how we meet those goals. And I have a lot of people say to me, 'I really wish we could do that at my law firm.' My attitude is — why can't you?"
She keeps the team connected through intentional communication — heavy use of Slack, voice messages that replicate the feel of walking someone through a project, and consistent overlap built into the schedule so that distance never becomes distance. She has staff located and working internationally, and the firm has built its communication rhythms around making that work seamlessly.
"If you all believe very strongly that you're part of a team, then you want to reach out to that person. You want to communicate."
I asked what she has learned about people over thirteen years of building.
She has thought carefully about what it means to lead people well — not just manage them. Her answer centers on the difference between holding people accountable and investing in their growth, and why the best leaders have to hold both at once.
"I want to invest a lot in the team and encourage growth, encourage mistakes that we can learn from. Not everybody wants to be on a partnership track, not everybody wants to kill themselves all the time. It's really meeting everybody individually where they are."
That philosophy, built over more than a decade, is what the build actually looks like.
Are you a property owner or business in California navigating environmental compliance, enforcement, or remediation? Connect with Jennifer Novak and check out the Law Office of Jennifer F. Novak.