And for 20 years, Donato began building her practice. Representing clients in all matters of family law. It wasn’t until December of 2017 that she would face another major turning point in her firm.

“It was early morning when my phone rang,” she says. “My friend was calling to tell me my office building was on fire. I laughed – she had a twisted sense of humor – and brushed it off. Finally, I picked up my phone to text a friend with the fire department and froze. There was a photo of my building engulfed in flames.”

Donato raced out the door in flip-flops “because when your world is burning down, you don’t stop to think about shoes.” She watched as firefighters carried out the remnants of her office – diplomas, photos, memorabilia.

“The pieces of the life I had built one long, hard day at a time.”

Fortunately, Donato had scanned most of her cases into Dropbox a few weeks prior. And with several will signings scheduled for the next day there was no time to mourn. She found temporary office space down the road and dragged in a folding table, a printer, a chair, a laptop and setup shop.

“The work didn’t stop, so I didn’t stop.”

She found a permanent office and planned to move in early January. The night before, she received a call from her temporary landlord. A water main had burst and her office had been flooded.

“The little refuge I had cobbled together after the fire was gone,” she says. “Half of what I’d salvaged from the fire was destroyed. Two days later I moved my office for good. No desks. No filing cabinets. Just a folding table, a printer, a laptop and sheer determination.”

Two years later, COVID hit. “While many around me were panicking, I stayed calm,” she says. “After all, when you’ve survived a fire and a flood, what’s a pandemic?”

She threw herself into learning and began to really shift her perspective. She wasn’t just a self-employed attorney; she was running a law firm.